My thought too…and Lotus Eaters, and Bread and Circuses, and Vanity Fair in the Pilgrim’s Progress, and Toytown in Pinocchio (which turns boys into Donkeys). This fleeing from life and boredom is maybe ever easier, but not really new.
I suppose what one could say is that it has been democratised. It used to be the preserve of the upper echelons of society. Now we can all be, in a sense, idle rich.
Yes, that could be said, David. Many do seem to want the expensive three-to-seven year sabbatical from reality that some university faculties offer. Unfortunately, like the Pinocchio story, it tends to make jackasses of those who take up the offer.
In fairness I think most of them pass through and go on to be reasonably sensible adults. There is a minority (actually largely at the top end) who go on to become jackasses, admittedly!
I had this conversation with my son (25) who didn’t go to uni, but most of his pals did. When I suggested that I might be the only who came out of uni far more conservative than when I went in, he told me that his pals had a similar experience.
I can say, though, that Arts and Humanities are now more like ideological seminaries/madrasas than seats of knowlege and critical enquiry. The change during my time from undergrad to PhD (2010-2019) was quite dramatic.
I think our contemporary equivalent of the Land of Toys in Pinocchio (Island of Lost Boys in the film) is the marketised university. The broader world of the slave/manqué imagination is perhaps more akin to Cockaigne of medieval myth, as depicted by Breugel.
Another very good and important article. I have been reminded of a particularly striking single line from TS Eliot's "Four Quartets" ie.
Distracted from distraction by distraction
The reader needs to be aware that one meaning of distraction is extreme mental distress, which may be triggered by boredom, although other meanings are also applicable (this is the concentrated and allusive language of poetry). The line comes from "Burnt Norton" section III and the full sentence of which it forms part reads (with slashes to indicate line breaks):
Only a flicker/Over the strained time-ridden faces/Distracted from distraction by distraction/Filled with fancies and empty of meaning/Tumid apathy with no concentration/Men and bits of paper, whirled by the cold wind/That blows before and after time,/Wind in and out of unwholesome lungs/Time before and time after.
The poet would surely have been thinking of cinema with "flicker" but as this was the early 1940s may well also have had in mind an emerging technology called television. Subsequent screen-focused technologies have only worsened the negative impacts that Eliot perceived.
Yes, to be 'driven to distraction' by distraction, as it were.
People downplay the importance of TV in all of this, because they're so used to it. But it has such a deadening effect on people. Hours each day, essentially just sitting on a sofa doing nothing at all. What a human cost we pay for the privilege of having something fancy to stare at.
I'm often struck, sitting by a bonfire, how we are drawn to a flicker, and how a fire will stimulate the imagination through what I'm guessing is a kind of hypnosis. I think of the history of the hearth fire and times when folks would tell stories and later, read stories by the hearth... and later still, how the tv took over the role of both hearth fire and story teller. At what point does this progress (or evolution) turn on itself and have a negative impact, become a liability, enslave the mind? Surely, it's something to do with how passive one is in the face of these technologies.
I think you are right about the passivity of screens versus hearth fires. In his novels, Charles Dickens repeatedly writes about characters looking into a fire and being inspired to reach out imaginatively, pondering possible futures in a creative not passive way. In his final completed novel, "Our Mutual Friend" Dickens actually goes so far as to have a brother and sister argue over the point of such creative imagining, with the young man dismissing it and his sister confidently asserting that it is a way of engaging with reality (and she purposely uses the term "reality" in countering his inability to see beyond the material facts about how the flames of the fire come to be produced). It is abundantly clear that Dickens is fully on the side of his female character in this encounter.
Striking how applied naturalism can turn to a form of dismissive materialism, emptying the world of meaning and vitality. I'm reminded (as often is the case in these reflections on McGrogan's observations) of Iain McGilchrist's thoughts on left- and right-brain approaches to the world.
Yes - and in the end we cannot deal with the matters of the soul without talking about that which feeds the soul, the transcendentals (good, truth, beauty) but ultimately also worship, which structures the rest of it. This is why the UK faces a specifically religious reckoning as a major element of the crisis is the assertion of a new (for the UK) form or object of worship. Sadly those in our national life whose responsibility it is to pay attention to these things are asleep at the wheel - or glued to their screen...
But the 'advance of technology' goes way back. Consider morality plays as diversion from a life of toil. Theatres as places of mass entertainment. The Cinema for audiences. Televisions for families. Computer screens. Smartphones. And yes ear buds and 3D Goggles. You can draw a general conclusion that "distraction" first worked on communities, then on smaller and smaller groups, then individuals, then on an 'immersed individual'.
An AI summary (another advance of technology) of the risks of distraction:
"Distraction can lead to negative emotions, increased anxiety, and decreased focus, particularly in academic settings. It may also hinder emotional regulation and contribute to long-term maladaptive behaviours if not managed properly."
We are moving to living in the Matrix (without the pods)... although there are still people who resolutely choose to live outside the Matrix. But the political question has become (according to Google Translate!):
Quis administratores administrat? or Who manages the managers?
Sadly most of the managers live in their own version of the Matrix too; only a few can step outside.
Thought provoking stuff, David. I can't help but consider the flipside: how this technology lulls one into death in life, or a dead life, and how this predicament is tied to the death wish. I view a lot of what's going on as autolysis, the death knell of our times, the desire for medically assisted death, the notion of the anthropogenic impact on the planet and how humanity ought to die to save the world, the ubiquity of narcissism and narcotics, and all manner of self-destructive ideas and behaviours--true decadence. It's over now; it ain't goin' any further.
This is very true, but I think things may not be quite so bad as you say. When I was in my teens, I got sucked into the NHS-and-welfare machine, through the NHS psychiatric service, which has a justified reputation as one of the worst parts of the NHS. I ended up stuck for many years in limbo (I think ‘Hell’ would be too interesting and exciting a word for it) and developed a kind of learned helplessness and fatalism.
However, I did eventually get out and into a more productive and fulfilling life, in part due to realising the need to take risks if I wanted to have any kind of a life and also due to finding help in the charitable sector that I couldn’t find in the state sector, the kind of help that leads to personal growth and not just the maintenance of a stable, but awful, status quo.
I don’t want this to sound too “bootstrapy” (as my American wife would say), as in some ways my life continues to be imperfect (more than the way everyone’s lives are imperfect) and my wife and I rely more than most on parental support of various kinds (but not much state help, not least because she’s not a citizen yet). But I think, or maybe just hope, that something inside most people would eventually rebel against a culture of universal welfare and zero challenge. Of course, the rebellion itself might be awful in a different way.
But you are right that this is, at least in part, a spiritual question and I’ve been fortunate to have had a strong base of religious belief and practice that has helped structure my life and provide access to meaning much of the time (not so much in my darkest moments, but at key moments), including the idea that marriage, family and community are not optional parts of a meaningful life, but the very essence of it, and the risks attendant on trying to find them simply have to be taken.
I am not so sure, though, that modern interactive technology represents a kind of passive observing of entertainment.
In fact, that seems to me to be more of a description of the pretty-much dead medium of television.
If you are playing a computer game, you are typically engaged in a struggle - indeed, a life or death struggle that is normally not seen in modern life. It is a synthetic creation, to be sure, but it is not merely passive observance. You seek to beat a Boss, or to beat another player, or even to kill another player.
More interesting, it seems to me, are the themes explored in Sword Art Online at one point, where a girl who has a terminal illness and is crippled in real life, chooses to spend her last days in a virtual reality game, in which she can run, jump and fight like anyone else. Was she choosing a slave existence?
I did think about this when writing the post. Video games, you’re right, may well be more ‘active’ and beneficial than the dead medium of TV. But they only in the end distract from the struggle - what they provide is a simulacrum. In the end they are still passive in the sense that they do not involve engagement with the world. They’re a bit like Robert Nozick’s experience machine.
Just out of interest, when you described Kojeve as a Stalinist thinker, does that mean you regard him to have been supportive of Stalin's philosophy?
(I'm using the word philosophy to differentiate from Stalin's concrete actions of ordering the killings of untold numbers of people for various "reasons" )
Also, this isn't directly related, but in terms of the notion of Statehood, have you read anything by the American historian Timothy Snyder?
I've been dipping into his book "Black Earth", in which one of his theses appears to be that one of the ways the Nazis enabled the majority extermination of certain Jewish populations (Poland, some Baltic states) was by first "eliminating the state", both "bureaucratically" and also by literally killing large numbers of State officials.
Yes, Kojeve was a Stalinist in the sense that he attempted to synthesise, or rationalise, communism and the state. Orthodox Marxism (or Engelsism, perhaps more accurately) predicted that under communism the state would disappear. Kojeve rather identified the end point of communism as the universal and homogenous state - state in the sense of an end state, but also state in the sense of the actual State that would be present in all human social interactions. It would be the biggest State that there could ever be. He cloaked this in Hegelian language, but it is pretty obvious when you read the Outline of a Phenomenology of Right. There is also quite a bit of evidence to suggest he was working for the KGB when in France.
I haven't read 'Black Earth' but it sounds plausible. There was huge antisemitism in Europe at that time and giving people license to conduct pogroms by looking the other way (and perhaps by doing away with institutions) was part of the story of the Holocaust. But obviously the mechanisation of the process through the death camps could only have been done by state apparatus.
By the way I read Kundera's "The unbearable lightness of being" a week ago. It's possibly the most powerful novel I've read since either Harry Potter as a child or Joseph Conrad now, and its been rolling around my mind and changing how I want to live my life as a trainee teacher.
Ironically, even though I could say he describes women in a rather objectifying and disturbing manner, it gave me a lot of perspective on what it might be like to be a woman.
Having said that, I'm yet to read Dickens, Toni Morrison, Austen, Achebe, George Eliot etc. although I've just started Henry James and like him.
Interestingly, the novels thesis is similar to but more nuanced than that of the self help bestseller "The Subtle Art of not giving a fuck", which in my opinion is one of the most offensively bad and unhelpful books I've ever read. In theory, the books message is mostly good but I think it's portrayed in a very arrogant manner, which meant I didn't take much away.
It really made me think about how powerful novels can be through their use of narrative and perspective, when I used to think fiction was useless because it's all "made up".
It's helped me with the story I'm writing at the moment.
Joan Didion: ‘We tell ourselves stories in order to live.’ Narrative is how we make sense of the world. This is why stories are important. They communicate meaning much more effectively than any series of facts.
Thank you, that's funny, I was actually reading her essay last week called "Why I write", where she explains her thought process similar to my borderline obsessiveness over minor details and what they could tell you about a story.
Having said that, her writing could press mine over the top of its head for ten reps.
Do you see the difference between "narrative" and "facts" similarly to how some authors see the difference between "truth" and "facts"?
I come from a Mathematics background so am slowly wrapping my head into the world of literature and philosophy.
It was realising that I'll be dead sometime in in the next 2 - 4 decades that makes me grind through researching the hitherto unsung history of the US cavalry reconnaissance unit who liberated the Normandy town that is now my home. In other words, I wanted to engage with something bigger than me and leave something behind when I'm gone, that transcends me. I don't know if that's really salient here, but it kept arising as I pondered the futility of being rescued from the existential horror of being nothing more than a momentary blip among billions by seeking passive entertainment.
“And the likely upshot will be that we will be forced into the realisation that attending to matters of the soul - rather than the battle of ideas - provides a more helpful path out of our predicament than ideological confrontation.” Amen to that.
“The point is not the substance of the object of observation, but the fact that you will be fully engaged in the act of observing at almost all times. And you will thereby forget that you are mortal, and the rage at boredom will diminish.” Which ironically is a pretty good definition of contemplation - the difference being one is paying mindful attention to what is actually going on, as opposed to the distracting fantasies on the screen in front of one’s nose.
What part does the 'big lion' play, the emergence of a Trumpian type figure who eschews a lot of the current norms. Would I be correct with the simplification that people are 'dedicated followers of fashion' and the easier the fashion is to follow then the more follow it (tech being the lubricant ). Until an opposing fashion starts to emerge?
I have also noticed tendency at play, whereby both directions are followed simultaneously, by way of example, a young well private school and university educated woman, spending her time as a digital nomad (surfing in summer, skiing in winter, tik toking in her self converted camper van, finding her 'own voice') yet simultaneously outpouring the injustices found on her journey and advocating for the injustices of the 'slaves'. I suspect that one's deeds are more important than words, and what I observe is that nature cannot be overwritten (the woman in question clearly following the master pattern), yet espousing the 'nuture' dogma of the day which will change with the season. A cracking piece that maps so well to what I see and experience but I suspect there is more master in the DNA of the masters than you suggest, something along the lines of the 80/20 rule.
It's more or less impossible to answer the question of how much is nature and how much, nurture. What is for sure is that fashion has to have an influence, and fashion will eventually be forced to change.
Regarding the 'both directions' thing - it is also noticeable how now it is possible to win recognition through embracing subservient 'slave' modalities.
Soma, not quite as Huxley envisioned.
My thought too…and Lotus Eaters, and Bread and Circuses, and Vanity Fair in the Pilgrim’s Progress, and Toytown in Pinocchio (which turns boys into Donkeys). This fleeing from life and boredom is maybe ever easier, but not really new.
I suppose what one could say is that it has been democratised. It used to be the preserve of the upper echelons of society. Now we can all be, in a sense, idle rich.
Yes, that could be said, David. Many do seem to want the expensive three-to-seven year sabbatical from reality that some university faculties offer. Unfortunately, like the Pinocchio story, it tends to make jackasses of those who take up the offer.
In fairness I think most of them pass through and go on to be reasonably sensible adults. There is a minority (actually largely at the top end) who go on to become jackasses, admittedly!
I had this conversation with my son (25) who didn’t go to uni, but most of his pals did. When I suggested that I might be the only who came out of uni far more conservative than when I went in, he told me that his pals had a similar experience.
I can say, though, that Arts and Humanities are now more like ideological seminaries/madrasas than seats of knowlege and critical enquiry. The change during my time from undergrad to PhD (2010-2019) was quite dramatic.
Yes - I’m familiar with this dynamic at Russel Group Law Schools. The change in the last 15 years has been profound.
I think our contemporary equivalent of the Land of Toys in Pinocchio (Island of Lost Boys in the film) is the marketised university. The broader world of the slave/manqué imagination is perhaps more akin to Cockaigne of medieval myth, as depicted by Breugel.
Another very good and important article. I have been reminded of a particularly striking single line from TS Eliot's "Four Quartets" ie.
Distracted from distraction by distraction
The reader needs to be aware that one meaning of distraction is extreme mental distress, which may be triggered by boredom, although other meanings are also applicable (this is the concentrated and allusive language of poetry). The line comes from "Burnt Norton" section III and the full sentence of which it forms part reads (with slashes to indicate line breaks):
Only a flicker/Over the strained time-ridden faces/Distracted from distraction by distraction/Filled with fancies and empty of meaning/Tumid apathy with no concentration/Men and bits of paper, whirled by the cold wind/That blows before and after time,/Wind in and out of unwholesome lungs/Time before and time after.
The poet would surely have been thinking of cinema with "flicker" but as this was the early 1940s may well also have had in mind an emerging technology called television. Subsequent screen-focused technologies have only worsened the negative impacts that Eliot perceived.
Yes, to be 'driven to distraction' by distraction, as it were.
People downplay the importance of TV in all of this, because they're so used to it. But it has such a deadening effect on people. Hours each day, essentially just sitting on a sofa doing nothing at all. What a human cost we pay for the privilege of having something fancy to stare at.
I'm often struck, sitting by a bonfire, how we are drawn to a flicker, and how a fire will stimulate the imagination through what I'm guessing is a kind of hypnosis. I think of the history of the hearth fire and times when folks would tell stories and later, read stories by the hearth... and later still, how the tv took over the role of both hearth fire and story teller. At what point does this progress (or evolution) turn on itself and have a negative impact, become a liability, enslave the mind? Surely, it's something to do with how passive one is in the face of these technologies.
I think you are right about the passivity of screens versus hearth fires. In his novels, Charles Dickens repeatedly writes about characters looking into a fire and being inspired to reach out imaginatively, pondering possible futures in a creative not passive way. In his final completed novel, "Our Mutual Friend" Dickens actually goes so far as to have a brother and sister argue over the point of such creative imagining, with the young man dismissing it and his sister confidently asserting that it is a way of engaging with reality (and she purposely uses the term "reality" in countering his inability to see beyond the material facts about how the flames of the fire come to be produced). It is abundantly clear that Dickens is fully on the side of his female character in this encounter.
Striking how applied naturalism can turn to a form of dismissive materialism, emptying the world of meaning and vitality. I'm reminded (as often is the case in these reflections on McGrogan's observations) of Iain McGilchrist's thoughts on left- and right-brain approaches to the world.
Yes - and in the end we cannot deal with the matters of the soul without talking about that which feeds the soul, the transcendentals (good, truth, beauty) but ultimately also worship, which structures the rest of it. This is why the UK faces a specifically religious reckoning as a major element of the crisis is the assertion of a new (for the UK) form or object of worship. Sadly those in our national life whose responsibility it is to pay attention to these things are asleep at the wheel - or glued to their screen...
Grim reading.
But the 'advance of technology' goes way back. Consider morality plays as diversion from a life of toil. Theatres as places of mass entertainment. The Cinema for audiences. Televisions for families. Computer screens. Smartphones. And yes ear buds and 3D Goggles. You can draw a general conclusion that "distraction" first worked on communities, then on smaller and smaller groups, then individuals, then on an 'immersed individual'.
An AI summary (another advance of technology) of the risks of distraction:
"Distraction can lead to negative emotions, increased anxiety, and decreased focus, particularly in academic settings. It may also hinder emotional regulation and contribute to long-term maladaptive behaviours if not managed properly."
We are moving to living in the Matrix (without the pods)... although there are still people who resolutely choose to live outside the Matrix. But the political question has become (according to Google Translate!):
Quis administratores administrat? or Who manages the managers?
Sadly most of the managers live in their own version of the Matrix too; only a few can step outside.
Thought provoking stuff, David. I can't help but consider the flipside: how this technology lulls one into death in life, or a dead life, and how this predicament is tied to the death wish. I view a lot of what's going on as autolysis, the death knell of our times, the desire for medically assisted death, the notion of the anthropogenic impact on the planet and how humanity ought to die to save the world, the ubiquity of narcissism and narcotics, and all manner of self-destructive ideas and behaviours--true decadence. It's over now; it ain't goin' any further.
I more or less completely agree.
This is very true, but I think things may not be quite so bad as you say. When I was in my teens, I got sucked into the NHS-and-welfare machine, through the NHS psychiatric service, which has a justified reputation as one of the worst parts of the NHS. I ended up stuck for many years in limbo (I think ‘Hell’ would be too interesting and exciting a word for it) and developed a kind of learned helplessness and fatalism.
However, I did eventually get out and into a more productive and fulfilling life, in part due to realising the need to take risks if I wanted to have any kind of a life and also due to finding help in the charitable sector that I couldn’t find in the state sector, the kind of help that leads to personal growth and not just the maintenance of a stable, but awful, status quo.
I don’t want this to sound too “bootstrapy” (as my American wife would say), as in some ways my life continues to be imperfect (more than the way everyone’s lives are imperfect) and my wife and I rely more than most on parental support of various kinds (but not much state help, not least because she’s not a citizen yet). But I think, or maybe just hope, that something inside most people would eventually rebel against a culture of universal welfare and zero challenge. Of course, the rebellion itself might be awful in a different way.
But you are right that this is, at least in part, a spiritual question and I’ve been fortunate to have had a strong base of religious belief and practice that has helped structure my life and provide access to meaning much of the time (not so much in my darkest moments, but at key moments), including the idea that marriage, family and community are not optional parts of a meaningful life, but the very essence of it, and the risks attendant on trying to find them simply have to be taken.
I think such a rediscovery or rebellion is impossible without a reinvigoration of religious belief. That might be underway, though.
It’s interesting how screens have moved us away from consuming things, to consuming stories, images, things that do not actually exist.
Very ecological
If we paid the same attention to our world as we do to our screens, it might be 😊
A really absorbing piece.
I am not so sure, though, that modern interactive technology represents a kind of passive observing of entertainment.
In fact, that seems to me to be more of a description of the pretty-much dead medium of television.
If you are playing a computer game, you are typically engaged in a struggle - indeed, a life or death struggle that is normally not seen in modern life. It is a synthetic creation, to be sure, but it is not merely passive observance. You seek to beat a Boss, or to beat another player, or even to kill another player.
More interesting, it seems to me, are the themes explored in Sword Art Online at one point, where a girl who has a terminal illness and is crippled in real life, chooses to spend her last days in a virtual reality game, in which she can run, jump and fight like anyone else. Was she choosing a slave existence?
I did think about this when writing the post. Video games, you’re right, may well be more ‘active’ and beneficial than the dead medium of TV. But they only in the end distract from the struggle - what they provide is a simulacrum. In the end they are still passive in the sense that they do not involve engagement with the world. They’re a bit like Robert Nozick’s experience machine.
Thanks David, I found this very interesting.
Just out of interest, when you described Kojeve as a Stalinist thinker, does that mean you regard him to have been supportive of Stalin's philosophy?
(I'm using the word philosophy to differentiate from Stalin's concrete actions of ordering the killings of untold numbers of people for various "reasons" )
Also, this isn't directly related, but in terms of the notion of Statehood, have you read anything by the American historian Timothy Snyder?
I've been dipping into his book "Black Earth", in which one of his theses appears to be that one of the ways the Nazis enabled the majority extermination of certain Jewish populations (Poland, some Baltic states) was by first "eliminating the state", both "bureaucratically" and also by literally killing large numbers of State officials.
Yes, Kojeve was a Stalinist in the sense that he attempted to synthesise, or rationalise, communism and the state. Orthodox Marxism (or Engelsism, perhaps more accurately) predicted that under communism the state would disappear. Kojeve rather identified the end point of communism as the universal and homogenous state - state in the sense of an end state, but also state in the sense of the actual State that would be present in all human social interactions. It would be the biggest State that there could ever be. He cloaked this in Hegelian language, but it is pretty obvious when you read the Outline of a Phenomenology of Right. There is also quite a bit of evidence to suggest he was working for the KGB when in France.
I haven't read 'Black Earth' but it sounds plausible. There was huge antisemitism in Europe at that time and giving people license to conduct pogroms by looking the other way (and perhaps by doing away with institutions) was part of the story of the Holocaust. But obviously the mechanisation of the process through the death camps could only have been done by state apparatus.
Thank you for your answer David.
By the way I read Kundera's "The unbearable lightness of being" a week ago. It's possibly the most powerful novel I've read since either Harry Potter as a child or Joseph Conrad now, and its been rolling around my mind and changing how I want to live my life as a trainee teacher.
Ironically, even though I could say he describes women in a rather objectifying and disturbing manner, it gave me a lot of perspective on what it might be like to be a woman.
Having said that, I'm yet to read Dickens, Toni Morrison, Austen, Achebe, George Eliot etc. although I've just started Henry James and like him.
Interestingly, the novels thesis is similar to but more nuanced than that of the self help bestseller "The Subtle Art of not giving a fuck", which in my opinion is one of the most offensively bad and unhelpful books I've ever read. In theory, the books message is mostly good but I think it's portrayed in a very arrogant manner, which meant I didn't take much away.
It really made me think about how powerful novels can be through their use of narrative and perspective, when I used to think fiction was useless because it's all "made up".
It's helped me with the story I'm writing at the moment.
Joan Didion: ‘We tell ourselves stories in order to live.’ Narrative is how we make sense of the world. This is why stories are important. They communicate meaning much more effectively than any series of facts.
Thank you, that's funny, I was actually reading her essay last week called "Why I write", where she explains her thought process similar to my borderline obsessiveness over minor details and what they could tell you about a story.
Having said that, her writing could press mine over the top of its head for ten reps.
Do you see the difference between "narrative" and "facts" similarly to how some authors see the difference between "truth" and "facts"?
I come from a Mathematics background so am slowly wrapping my head into the world of literature and philosophy.
It was realising that I'll be dead sometime in in the next 2 - 4 decades that makes me grind through researching the hitherto unsung history of the US cavalry reconnaissance unit who liberated the Normandy town that is now my home. In other words, I wanted to engage with something bigger than me and leave something behind when I'm gone, that transcends me. I don't know if that's really salient here, but it kept arising as I pondered the futility of being rescued from the existential horror of being nothing more than a momentary blip among billions by seeking passive entertainment.
Nobody gets to their death bed and wishes they’d spent more time watching screens. That’s a motto I’ve tried to stick to for the last 7-8 years.
This was wonderful reading - thank you, 🙏
Thanks!
“And the likely upshot will be that we will be forced into the realisation that attending to matters of the soul - rather than the battle of ideas - provides a more helpful path out of our predicament than ideological confrontation.” Amen to that.
“The point is not the substance of the object of observation, but the fact that you will be fully engaged in the act of observing at almost all times. And you will thereby forget that you are mortal, and the rage at boredom will diminish.” Which ironically is a pretty good definition of contemplation - the difference being one is paying mindful attention to what is actually going on, as opposed to the distracting fantasies on the screen in front of one’s nose.
What part does the 'big lion' play, the emergence of a Trumpian type figure who eschews a lot of the current norms. Would I be correct with the simplification that people are 'dedicated followers of fashion' and the easier the fashion is to follow then the more follow it (tech being the lubricant ). Until an opposing fashion starts to emerge?
I have also noticed tendency at play, whereby both directions are followed simultaneously, by way of example, a young well private school and university educated woman, spending her time as a digital nomad (surfing in summer, skiing in winter, tik toking in her self converted camper van, finding her 'own voice') yet simultaneously outpouring the injustices found on her journey and advocating for the injustices of the 'slaves'. I suspect that one's deeds are more important than words, and what I observe is that nature cannot be overwritten (the woman in question clearly following the master pattern), yet espousing the 'nuture' dogma of the day which will change with the season. A cracking piece that maps so well to what I see and experience but I suspect there is more master in the DNA of the masters than you suggest, something along the lines of the 80/20 rule.
It's more or less impossible to answer the question of how much is nature and how much, nurture. What is for sure is that fashion has to have an influence, and fashion will eventually be forced to change.
Regarding the 'both directions' thing - it is also noticeable how now it is possible to win recognition through embracing subservient 'slave' modalities.