Not wanting to sound old and curmudgeonly I couldn’t help thinking ‘What goes around comes around’. Next I’d be snapping my imaginary suspenders with satisfaction and taking a nap. I needed a reset and to stop leaning on folksy old nuggets of wisdom.
‘But if the shoe fits …‘ See - I did again!
The fitted shoe, in this case, is another cultural revolution. We’re currently in the midst of a rampaging Digital Revolution with digital electronics dominating most aspects of our lives. The first revolution was industrial, in the early 19th century, when mechanical machines began replacing skilled human labour and the workforce rebelled.
Enter Mr. Ludd.
Ned Ludd, whose real name was supposedly Edward Ludlum, was an English weaver who destroyed two knitting frames in a ‘fit of rage’ after being whipped for idleness or taunted by a street gang, depending on who you believe. Whether or not Ned Ludd was an actual person is secondary to the fact that his name became the stuff of legend. The symbolism of his mythical leadership grew; often referred to as ‘King’ or ‘Captain’ Ludd and the group’s letters and proclamations were signed ‘Ned Ludd’. The secretive Luddites were mostly textile artisans who recognized that the skillful craftsmanship they had refined over the course of their careers was being made obsolete by machinery. Unjustly, they gained a disreputable, loutish reputation and many of them were hanged for their tactics. In fact, they did not entirely reject technology and their destructive attacks were well-organized and targeted at specific manufacturers, destroying only certain machines in certain factories.
But there was no holding back the Industrial Revolution. In the end the factory owners won. Laws were passed and the army was sent in to break down the criminally rebellious Luddites. Their name still has a negative connotation, implying an unwillingness to do things in a new or different way.
Only a couple of decades later, in 1834, Charles Babbage created a machine that could be programmed by punched cards, and his co-worker, Ada Lovelace, became known as the first computer programmer. In the same year, William Morris was born who went on to become an activist for the British Arts and Crafts Movement and a major contributor to the revival of traditional textile arts and methods of production. His name is now synonymous with craftsmanship and quality.
To paraphrase Karl Marx, digital technology is today’s opiate of the masses, with loads of gadget appeal, endless technical possibilities and unknown outcomes.
One outcome was the result of a recent survey that revealed an unexpectedly high number of adolescents, mostly girls, that reported being sad and depressed. Many of them had considered suicide. Among other findings, the data indicated that three out of five girls surveyed were at risk.
There is certainly too much sadness in the world today and the onslaught of digital technology hasn’t helped.
Numbers don’t lie but statistics can skew one way or another so I tend to get a little punch-drunk when statistical data starts swirling around. It’s my skeptical past coming back to haunt me. I cringe, having gone through the system - the smothering gaggle of charts and graphs, co-relations, covariance, linear regression, statistical probability, seminars and discussion groups - and came out the other side with the cynical chops to prove it.
Drilling down on one specific result or another often leads to over-reaction and misleading conclusions. Grandstanding politicians and specialists gravitate towards startling numbers that will draw attention. Historical parallels provide a more helpful, broader context of understand and possible outcomes.
I mean no disrespect to all the troubled individuals out there wondering how and why it all went sideways on them. But I entertain the fantasy of a certain game show host bellowing “Survey says…!!” to which social scientists everywhere start cheering and high-fiving each other in anticipation of big payouts - grants and bursaries, slinging around some righteous authority, and selling a book or two! A flood of news media commentary usually follows in lockstep with a frenzy of supporting told-you-so numbers from researchers and academics. The mirage of self-healing by the numbers has become an industry in the melting pot of western culture. A digital solution to a digital problem.
Adolescent girls use social media networks more than boys, intensifying their expectations concerning friendship, social networks, lifestyle, and appearance. In social media, the most banal activities can seem like something when shared; the events and minutiae of other peoples lives, the parts they wish to expose, is out there for all to see; snippy comments come too easily; popularity in measured in ‘likes’, not by actual friendships; and the blurring of selfies between fantasy and reality, all create a hodge-podge of unattainable expectations.
Selfies are never good enough compared to the polished perfection of algorithmically altered Instagram Girls. An app called Lensa AI (Artificial Intelligence promising to even further mask our real selves online), can transform a collection of selfies into a wide spectrum of facial Avatars, with names like ‘Fantasy’, ’Stylish’, ‘Iridescent’ ‘Anime’, and ‘Cosmic’. With ‘freakish accuracy’, some of them borrow from multiple sources to make use of someone else’s facial features. As the rift between fact and online fantasy grows, so does the anxiety of being exposed.
Parallels might be drawn to a similar rift, an Imposter Syndrome, that sometimes continues into adult life and is also more common among women than men. Individuals typically have a degraded expectation of their achievements that will inevitably be revealed, a fear of ultimately being exposed as a ‘know-nothing’ despite their continuing success and support. They believe the façade of their accomplishments will be finally unmasked as a fraud.
The internet fuels a self-obsession to perform for others: an appearance we only half look like, writing things we haven’t written, interrupting a fun moment to show others how much fun we’re having, mining our personal lives for laughs.
So, at what point did merely disgruntled teens become a recognized mental health issue? There’s no easy answer.
Enter the Neo (Ned Ludd) Luddites.
Almost two centuries later an emergent luddite movement is recognizing that no technology is sacred unto itself, and is worthwhile only as much as it benefits society. Without surveys or numbers to illustrate anything, they recognized the downside of digital technology. Neo-Ned Luddite members confront the rhetoric of digital capitalism and the excesses of big tech companies, shunning smart phones, social media and the popularity of ‘likes’. As a demonstration of self-liberation, a Neo-Ned group in Brooklyn, New York regularly gathers together in a park to socialize in person (as opposed to texting), as well as to read, sketch, and listen to the wind with eyes closed. Flip phones are tolerated for safety, but their use is frowned upon. They perceive ‘a tangible problem with mental health and screen use.’
“I couldn’t NOT post a good picture (of myself) if I had one.” Said Logan Lane, founder of the Brooklyn group. “And I had this online personality of ‘I don’t care,’ but I actually did. I was definitely still watching everything”. Burned out by it all, she deleted her Instagram app and chucked her phone in a box.
There will be no holding back the Digital Revolution. Without restraints the one-percenters will win.
What goes around comes around.
Odds & Ends From No Joke
Embrace Your Laziness
The rhetoric of evangelical industrialism has instilled in our culture the belief that the ‘right to work’ will lead to a better life. The french theorist Frédéric Lordon suggests that employers promise work as ‘a source of immediate joy’, rather than responding to worker resistance with a show of force - apparently trying to appeal to a shorter attention span. Recent demonstrations in France against raising the retirement age were very much about opposing ’the dogma of work’, that ran contrary to a lifestyle preferred by the French populous; not an early retirement of leisure but one of volunteer work and ‘a certain type of laziness’.
Creative Intelligence
Selfies are self-obsessed images to perform for others. The appeal of portraiture is that it is not objective, but a version of someone else’s creative intelligence.
COP27 Cigar Smoking Update
A few issues ago No Joke reported on COP26 (2021):
‘… During the period leading up to and during the Glasgow summit on Climate change (COP26) there were 182 non-commercial flights into Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Prestwick, about double the total for the previous six days. Of those flights, 76 were private jets arriving in and around Glasgow. The jet engines for aircraft are much worse than any other form of transport for CO2 emissions - greenhouse gases.’
At COP27 held in Egypt this past November (2022) more that 400 private jets arrived to attend the proceedings.
That’s it for this issue. Hope you liked it, and please share it with you pals and others n’er do wants. Nothing thrills us more than your feedback! We’ll be back …
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