What happened to deep conversations?

[Dr.Grass]

Immortal said:

Dr.Grass said:
It's because people aren't deep anymore. They watch TV series and spend hours and hours on blogs viewing and commenting on totally meaningless junk that has no real impact on their lives. My parents used to regularly spend the day at the library simply reading. How many people today have the patience to read a book?

Smartphones are just as guilty. Totally FRYING up your brain by giving you the opportunity to 'browse' and 'just have a look' at every point in time. What happened to mental gravity? GONE. Self control? GONE.

How about spending some time gardening instead of commenting on useless things on facebook. Bah. We are devolving fast.

There is too much emphasis on quick access to information. People are becoming less knowledgeable DUE to having 'the world at their fingertips' 24/7. Better learn to plant some vegetables than spending hours and days salivating over a new phone that will be old news in a few months time.

Good topic.

Firstly, I'm just loving your philosophical standpoint here. Depressingly few people have the empathy to realize that we're in the exact same position as so many before us and that our ideas and conclusions are likely to seem as foolish to future generations as older theories do to us. Considering some thinkers had this stuff down millenia ago, we really are sub-par in some respects.

Despite this, I think it's much more interesting to disagree with you. In particular, you're being far too cynical about modern human culture. I mean, surely you realize that this idea of newer generations being too irresponsible and not thinking enough is also as ancient as they come? Why would you think you're right about this when, historically, people haven't been?

Also, I don't think watching TV and commenting online a lot are necessarily opposed to thinking and self control at all. If you really think people lack self control today, I think that they always have and you're attributing a causal relationship to this lack of thinking and an increase in these modern indulgences because you've just taken note of them at the same time.

"you're being far too cynical about modern human culture. I mean, surely you realize that this idea of newer generations being too irresponsible and not thinking enough is also as ancient as they come?"

I would like to suggest that I'm not being cynical at all, but merely that the human being has complete ignorance of his own potential. Significantly, my position is that the human being has systematically forgotten his position. I don't want to debate your points here, because that will inevitably go into an infinite digress. What you have done is used my claim that our other friend here was being an absolutist towards his own culture whilst claiming to subscribe to a relativistic world and turned it against my implicit evolved man that I haven't specifically pin pointed.

If I tried to debate that now then we would traverse the field of Anthropology heavily (and it is usually a fruitless task to even begin that) and I loathe it so much anyway. My world view of history and yours is no doubt radically different. The linear timelines accepted nowadays is a far cry from my "we have always existed" understanding. I don't want to debate that point, because then evolution, the British empire, India, Hinduism, the Maya, and a lot of archeaology would become involved.

Point being my shift has ended and our beam is back online and the apprentice nuclear physicist here has now been informed of the modus operandi.

:)

But you like to debate for debate's sake, and (if my memory serves me correctly) then you are rather adept at it...

So, even though it's 4 hours past my bedtime and I'm getting up in 3, I'm going to go ahead (since I can't resist) and use the exact same point as you used on me:

"I don't think watching TV and commenting online a lot are necessarily opposed to thinking and self control at all"

How would you know something is hindering you're progress in a certain direction if that very thing is all you've ever known? When was the last time you've spent a significant amount of days away from a 'i flash 50 times per second' one-eyed-guru? Have you experimented with real self control? Control of the tongue, stomach and genitals? How about observing your own thoughts consciously for an entire day - what about always doing so? Too much strain? Too difficult? Or is it just such a foreign idea that it is much easier to dismiss it?

" think that they always have and you're attributing a causal relationship to this lack of thinking and an increase in these modern indulgences because you've just taken note of them at the same time."

Whilst I like this argument (it's ethos has surfaced a few times now), can it not almost always be applied? Blaming (not used in the derogetory sense here) the accused (ditto ;) ) of simply being caught up in his own world?

^ We have now reached the very limits of our Western philosophy with this point. To crack these walls one needs to venture far beyond the walls of the academic west. There where the professor scrutinizes without become one with the teachings. There where the teacher isn't fundamentally required. There where I just take tax payers money and observe one of the biggest shams in the world. Oh peasants, you need not look to the ground in shame for your lack of papers hanging on the wall. These intellectual giants can hardly move pebbles in the real world.

I might be digressing, or even avoiding the points, but I've just done physics for the last obscene-amount-of-hours and I need some relief for my mind. I'm sure you don't mind.

:)