The One Ring, now only $29.99/mo.!

Assignment: Have we as a society become overly obsessed with entertaining ourselves? How much investment do we have in the trivial? How dependent our our existences based on our interactions with electronic media? The purpose of this assignment is to address such questions. You are to live one day (a straight 24 hour period) without interacting with any form of electronic media. This assignment is based on the essay Danna Walker “The Longest Day” which ran in the Washington Post on Sunday August 5, 2007. Make sure to reflect on the essay and other readings/discussions in class. What did you make of this experience? How hard was it to accomplish? What were were expectations? What did you learn from it?

First, let's set the stage for this assignment in my personal context. On any average day, I'm certainly little different than anyone else of my generation: I have my computer on all the time, with my instant messenger programs running, browsing the Internet while watching cartoons on TV or playing video games. If I drive, the radio (or equivalent audio) is playing, and while I dislike talking on the phone, my cellphone is nevertheless on and ready to be answered, should someone call. However, I've "fasted" at least for one week before when on a relatively recent family vacation, so a day hardly seemed an issue. I started on a Friday night (technically Saturday since it was at 2AM) and until 2AM the next night, cut myself off from all electronic media. For nearly all my waking hours that day, I took the opportunity to read my required reading for my Chinese Lit. class, Journey to the West, only breaking for about an hour to help my sister and father move some things to her new house (during which I required that the radio and such had to be off, so we *gasp* talked to each other! I know, what a concept.) I might need another three days like this one soon to get through the other three volumes of that book...

Overall, the day was not hard for me at all. The book is actually fairly interesting to read, and while it was a bit exhausting to continually read for so many hours on end, it's not something I haven't done before on my own accord with a Harry Potter or Dark Tower book. Admittedly, however, I'm a bit disappointed in myself when I finished the first volume a half-hour before 2AM, and instead of just going to sleep, I read a little of another book and waited until after 2AM so that I could turn my computer back on and check on "what I missed" on my usual Internet sites. There was nothing that couldn't have waited until tomorrow, yet, like Frodo learning that The Ring hadn't been lost but instead was in Sam's possession in The Return of the King, I was greedy of that which I knew could use again. It doesn't help that I have a sort of superstition that "the party starts when I'm gone" and, while I don't quite see the Internet as literally a party, it does feel like "stuff happens" for lack of better words. Oh well -- nothing I didn't already know before.

There's a part of me that sighs at the concept of what's essentially considered a "modern life fast" as if electronic media were as necessary as food, that people would actually complain about parting with their cellphones or the radio in their car. Are things like reading a book or doing some manual labor really that difficult or undesirable? And yet, part of me would be a hypocrite if I were to judge others less for thinking that -- I would unlikely be able to recognize myself without technological self-extensions such as video games and the Internet. But why should these newer media be singled out? Why are newspapers exempt from similar scrutiny, or any print for that matter, or the spoken word? Anything man-made -- technology -- is an extension of ourselves, extensions that are remediations of each other (can you think in terms outside of language? What came first: thought or technology?). But I digress -- this media deprivation experience is one that should be exercised more often, so long as it makes people more aware.

I think, when it comes down to it, questions about our culture's dependence on entertainment and technology is a bit misleading. Our (America's) main export is, at least characteristically within this century, in entertainment. For the majority of our short national existence, we've held an isolationist perception on world events. Our lives are not unlike the Hobbits that lived in the Shire in this sense, and like them, we ultimately can not ignore the events around us, but unlike them, we are no longer small and humble as a people, but instead, spreading our influence more like Mordor. Books have already examined the nature of Tolkien's works and the stories they tell of technology and, by default, power, culminated in the One Ring, so I'll avoid going on about that. I do believe however, that deprivation is not the ultimate answer to the problems that arise from these technologies -- casting the One Ring into Mount Doom will not save our Middle Earth, because we're the ones that created it, and we would destroy ourselves and what makes us human in the process. Then what?

I don't know. What do you all think?

Two Cultures? Why not both?

Assignment: Who won you over in “Two Cultures”? Engage the discussion of Postman and Paglia and state your own perspective. Comment on specific points that the author’s make in developing your perspective on the issues at hand.

First, some context, for my theoretically-ignorant audience. "Two Cultures - Television versus Print" records a dialogue between two scholars: Camielle Paglia, who argues for the side of television, and Neil Postman, who argues for the side of print. The dialogue debates the significance and power of each, their effects on our present culture, and how education should work with each (primarily with television). The dialogue is structured such that the reader is weighing the pros and cons of print and television, and while the dialogue ends with no clear "victor," the two scholars appear to both agree that 1) both print and television are powerful influences on our culture (though it is not agreed on whether television is a good or bad influence) and 2) that "print" and the philosophies that arise from it should be reinforced in our culture's education (though it is not agreed upon whether this need is to resist or compliment television and its philosophies).

At first, I might have said that Paglia won me over. From what I read, she is born in a generation closer to my own, and consequentially shares a perception on print and television more similar to my own than Postman. With every argument that Postman raises, she appears to agree with his strengths and then raises other perspectives that uncover the apparent flaws in Postman's perceptions. However, I am also a writer, and sympathize with who I perceive to be the "bad guy" -- Postman. I'm not ignorant to the unfair advantages that Paglia has in both opening and closing the dialogue, in standing for the underdog side of the "unacademic" medium of television, the "defensive" rebel figure against the established "offensive" norm (the David and Goliath structure), and that, at the end, she comes to the same conclusion as Postman, even if her premises in constructing her arguments are different. However, the structure of the conflicting viewpoints is misleading, and I am forced to say that neither Paglia nor Postman ultimately have the more compelling argument as they are structured in this debate.

...what?

If you examine the arguments that are being made, print and television are not the root of their debate, but of the philosophies that they encourage. Paglia states "The history of Western civilization has been a constant struggle between these two impulses [Apollonian and Dionysian], an unending tennis match between cold Apollonian categorization and Dionysian lust and chaos," and while she had said that in regards to the suppression and recent return of "paganism" through television, I see it as a summary of their dialogue. The two do a very thorough job of clarifying the Apollonian nature of print and the Dionysian nature of television. They start with the Judeo-Christian roots in God as a "word-only" God, forbidding images so as to discourage the Dionysian paganism, which is a cornerstone of Western civilization, defining literacy (and Apollonian philosophy) as a technological and not "natural" philosophy ("Humans are not biologically programmed to be literate"). They then continue that visuals -- and television by default -- are Dionysian, as they encourage instinct over thinking, of "rapidly losing any sense of sacrality" (losing the Apollonian element). The argument, then, is Apollonian versus Dionysian -- the ego versus the id. To argue that one side is more right than the other would be to argue whether ying or yang is more right. The truth is, you need both.

In Paglia's defense, I do not think she is arguing against print, but the structure of this debate attempts to lure the reader into thinking that they should believe in one side or the other. I'm fairly certain that she actually understand this necessary balance, if only because of her conclusion. Postman's main concern is that television (and the visual-Dionysian philosophy) will overpower culture, to which Paglia ultimately agrees needs to be checked with "logocentric" education. While there are a few instances Postman appears to erroneously argue his points (his correlation with "sacred" as Apollonian and "secular" with Dionysian, mostly), I feel those moments are not truly erroneous, but merely incorrect labels of an otherwise correct perception of the two philosophies.

So I wasn't entirely truthful -- I feel Paglia made the better argument. I just think my assessment isn't made on "content," but instead, on the medium itself, and my preconceived perceptions that I share with Paglia.

Due to how I tackled this assignment, I feel I wasn't able to tackle some of the specifics the two mentioned: how the Judeo-Christian religions (and Western civilization by consequence) are Apollonian, what exactly Apollonian and Dionysian philosophies consist of in this context, philosophical detachment, etc. If necessary, I will write another post tackling these specifics.