Tea at Trianon: Distracting Yourself to Death

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Thursday, December 12, 2024

Distracting Yourself to Death

From Culturcidal:

It’s kind of like “channel surfing” used to be on TV before we got Amazon Prime, Netflix, and all these other services that gave us more control over what we watch. You’d sit there, kind of bored, and say “Friends” would come on. You weren’t really a huge fan of “Friends,” but the couch was comfortable, and it was tolerable. Then, “Oh look, it’s ‘Seinfeld.’ I’ve seen this episode, it’s okay, but I don’t have anything else to do.” At least when you binge on “Game of Thrones” or “Breaking Bad,” there’s an endpoint. You immerse yourself in it and you can’t wait to see the next episode, but then it’s over.
Is binging on a show like that a bad thing? Generally, I’d say, “no.” Sure, you may spend way too much time on it and it’s probably not going to be one of your lifetime highlights, but typically people really enjoy doing it and since it does have an endpoint, you can only spend so much time doing it. If it disrupted a week or two of your life, but you were able to relax, let go, and have fun, it’s not so bad. This differentiates it from channel surfing, which is only mildly entertaining, but it never had to end. Is that good for you? No, because it can suck up large amounts of your life without really adding anything of value, even a good time.
You may say, “Binging on a show, channel surfing, whatever. What difference does it really make?”
Well, it actually makes a big difference because, in the modern era, we increasingly have something called an “attention economy.” We now have a variety of social media sites and even games that make more money by keeping you on their sites for as long as possible. It would be perfect for them if you slept, then got up, got on their site, and used it all day long, even when you were eating dinner or on the toilet. Rinse and repeat, FOREVER. (Read more.)