Strong disagreement here! 1984 was about an opiated, programmed masses. Everyone was heads down, keeping to themselves in that world, doing as they were told, receptive. It was the ultimate spectator culture. Subservience was required, radical participation, radical inclusivity (thinking of others) was not.
You might be scared of strong messaging- a common thema to both scenarios- but the messages are about as opposite as it gets: RECEIVE versus BE.
Since being a school kid, I have felt that a lot of the world keeps a very very very strong filter up. They don't engage, they don't see most of the world around them, they selectively pick & choose a very limited part of the world to acknowledge & engage in. It's taken me a long long time to see & acknowledge how scary the world can be, to learn to empathize with how burdensome the outside world is, how infrequently being non-spectator & being receptive & engaged is rewarded, how usually slim those rewards are.
In many ways, there's a bit of a tragedy, especially in cities, where engaged people too often are not entirely well, not entirely kind, are not just engaged or interested benevolently but angling to attention, up to something.
I still really prefer a world where we can be heads up, aware of each other, aware of the world about us, casually participatory with each other as we go about. It's such a waste of personage, of society, when people keep to themselves, wrap themselves in their tight knit world, shut themselves off to the world: radical participation seems like such a natural expectation, such a natural way for each of us to be ante-ing in, a little bit, to the world we inhabit. Inclusivity to not tune each other out. But alas, yes, there is also quite the din in the world, many visible & worse & more dangerously many not obviously apparent unpleasant noisemakers out there, good reasons to just go about quietly, on your way, staying in your own world.
I’ve never been to the actual burn, but went to a regional one once. And I agree wholeheartedly with you; it was the complete opposite of 1984. I was invited because of a dude I sat next to at a coffee shop once in a while and had some occasional good chats with.
The event was absolutely mind blowing, and I wasn’t really part of the “altered” crowd (I had some beer and a bit of weed, but no psychedelics or anything like that.) Within an hour of our arrival, I was helping a group of people I’d never met who were building a very large structure (that we burned to the ground on Saturday night, naturally.)
The biggest takeaway, for me, other than making friends that I still keep in touch with a decade later, was that the reality and social systems we take for granted every day are truly just systems we constructed and don’t have to be how they are. Sure, burner life probably isn’t sustainable as a long-term societal structure, but it was really amazing to take a vacation from normal life and drop into a completely different paradigm.
Everyone just pitched in and did whatever needed to be done to make it a great weekend for everyone. We built things, we shared food and drink, we sang ridiculous songs at Jerk Church on Sunday morning, we danced and didn’t care how stupid we looked, and we popped up a temporary community for a weekend. It really stuck with me.
>I still really prefer a world where we can be heads up, aware of each other, aware of the world about us, casually participatory with each other as we go about. It's such a waste of personage, of society, when people keep to themselves, wrap themselves in their tight knit world, shut themselves off to the world:
It seems you have taken Wittgenstein's old phrase "the limits of language are the limits of my world" and substituted "language" with "social media." You are already aware of the people who don't participate, they do exist and participate in your world, you just want them to behave differently than they do. You want them to post more photos, engage more on social media. I've never seen anyone be so blunt about this who didn't run a social media company or work for one themselves.
I don't like people being more guarded and filtered than they would like to be, but I appreciate that there is more to a person than what they post online. The hiddenness of people can sometimes add to the intrigue of getting to know them.
>really prefer a world where we can be heads up, aware of each other, aware of the world about us, casually participatory with each other as we go about. It's such a waste of personage, of society, when people keep to themselves, wrap themselves in their tight knit world, shut themselves off to the world
Very well said, but far more than a mere preference, I feel that interconnection is the engine driving our cultural and societal evolution and progress. Our paradigm shifts occur at the crossroads where different cultures and ideas freely intermingle. This is why the encroachment of mass surveillance will lead to a cul-de-sac for humanity. Radical inclusivity leads to the opposite of 1984...
You might be scared of strong messaging- a common thema to both scenarios- but the messages are about as opposite as it gets: RECEIVE versus BE.
Since being a school kid, I have felt that a lot of the world keeps a very very very strong filter up. They don't engage, they don't see most of the world around them, they selectively pick & choose a very limited part of the world to acknowledge & engage in. It's taken me a long long time to see & acknowledge how scary the world can be, to learn to empathize with how burdensome the outside world is, how infrequently being non-spectator & being receptive & engaged is rewarded, how usually slim those rewards are.
In many ways, there's a bit of a tragedy, especially in cities, where engaged people too often are not entirely well, not entirely kind, are not just engaged or interested benevolently but angling to attention, up to something.
I still really prefer a world where we can be heads up, aware of each other, aware of the world about us, casually participatory with each other as we go about. It's such a waste of personage, of society, when people keep to themselves, wrap themselves in their tight knit world, shut themselves off to the world: radical participation seems like such a natural expectation, such a natural way for each of us to be ante-ing in, a little bit, to the world we inhabit. Inclusivity to not tune each other out. But alas, yes, there is also quite the din in the world, many visible & worse & more dangerously many not obviously apparent unpleasant noisemakers out there, good reasons to just go about quietly, on your way, staying in your own world.