http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/unread
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Remember that whole year you had to have Piketty on your coffee table to be accepted in polite society?
Bonus panel
http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/unread
Remember that whole year you had to have Piketty on your coffee table to be accepted in polite society?
I wish it was still required reading for kids but TBH 1984 wasnt a good read and were already living in survailence state reality so theres not much point trying to warn about it. Its bizarre to me that 1984 was presented to be like exaggerated dystopian fantasy like what government would actually waste resources on arson and public humiliation courts. 10 years later I find out the Chinese and their cultural revolution made Orwell’s 1984 setting look like a Iibertarians themepark by comparison. wonder if Orwell knew about the Chinese or if the realities of eastern culture make our worst fears and ideas of tyranical government control dystopia look quaint in comparison.
My “new” favorite dystopian prediction is the one made by David Foster Wallace.
The idea that only deriving happiness and pleasure from virtual things will, in a meaningful way, lead to your own death. Most of infinite jest plays on the theme of losing touch with humanity when pleasure is so easily found through technology.
Yes it is this reductive cynicism that made me bounce off Infinite Jest eventually. I fucking love video games and when me and my bro play Beyond All Reason together we are genuinely connecting in a way that idle conversation pales in comparison to, even when in person.
Infinite Jest totally faceplants in this regard to perceive this capacity of joy and humanity and it ultimately undermines the rest of the book because of it in my opinion.
Idk I guess I feel like Infinite Jest has a similar hollowness in its examination of the human condition as do most Black Mirror episodes?
I wish DFW had an easier/happier time at life and was able to continue writing as the potential was certainly there to make a truly great novel like Ulysses or The Magic Mountain, Infinite Jest just simply takes on too much cynicism and sinks before it can reach that horizon.
All life is artificial in the sense that every adaption we have as a species subject to evolutionary forces is accidental, modern technology is no different in its awkward relation to the body. We evolved to scan far off forested hills with our gaze not stare into a glowing screen ok, but we also didn’t evolve to walk upright until it just happened and it became a part of “human”… I genuinely don’t know if DFW took this to heart, I have never gotten a consistent indication from his writing that he did.
Ultimately in my opinion Infinite Jest ends up feeling like a far less fun and more emotionally and conceptually limited Gravity’s Rainbow.