Take a look at this passage which is pretty famous from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_and_Loathing_in_Las_Vegas#The_.22wave_speech.22
So if you haven’t seen the movie Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, you probably should. I will say that you need to be ready for absurd drug use and a lot of non-sensical discussion and dialog between the main characters “The Duke” and “Dr. Gonzo”. For the most part, FLILV is an adaptation of Thompson’s real experiences in Las Vegas during the hippie era. While I think that the excessive drug use in the story is quite entertaining and at times hilarious, the main theme of the story is relatively similar to other iconoclastic American literature. In my opinion, FLILV is the modern Great Gatsby and Thompson would probably agree if he were here today to compare his book with other similar stories out there (Thompson shot himself in the head in 2005 while on the phone with his wife).
Why am I writing about such a controversial novel and film? Well I think that the “wave speech” as it is called, is probably the most accurate explanation of the hippie era and the advent of mass materialism in America.
If you don’t know the background of FLILV, the two main characters are in search of the true American dream. And despite searching the “riches” of Vegas, they find the true American dream in a diner. The wikipedia article above explains the circumstances and to me this portion of the story is more of a downer than anything else the two experience during the stint in LV.
How does this pertain to what I usually write about? Well you’ll see if you read the wave speech that Thompson is showing the chaos of American culture. For example: “There was madness in any direction, at any hour…[t]here was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning…”
I find this section of the speech the most pertinent to social interaction because Thompson shows that society is so focused on the idea of moving in a specific direction, but we have no understanding of what American Dream will be most satisfying to us. Thompson’s story ends in disappointment - he finds the American Dream in shambles: A waitress with nothing to live for. I highly recommend watching the movie at least to see this specific scene.
Here’s where my theory comes in: Thompson’s characterization of the American Dream leads me to believe that social interaction is severely flawed and viewed as grim. The main warrant is that people are so fixated on attaining the “American Dream” but at the same time they have no idea of what the “American Dream” is or whether it will bring them happiness or not. Materialism has quite a bit to do with this because people horde objects to give them the perception they are “living high” or experiencing the Dream. As a society, we are moving in the direction of limiting our social interaction in order to make time for us to acquire more things and achieve what we perceive as success — whether it be money or a big house, yadda yadda…the American Exceptionalism that most people believe in.
I actually think that people will be better served by achieving social success. The fact that fewer and fewer people are meeting each other for social reasons is troubling. As a society we’re becoming more closed. We use cell phones over face-to-face interaction and we use chat and social networks as ways to hide our true personas because we’d rather hide than build our own confidence personally to allow us to enter social situations. I think the piece that was missing from Thompson’s characterization of American society and the direction it’s heading is the solution to the problem. For the most part, people need to understand that the true root of happiness is connecting with other people. Humans are notoriously good at avoiding social situations because it introduces ego, personality, and conflict into situations — the most common form of social interaction is confrontation which is also people’s second most feared act (behind public speaking) because of fear of humiliation or rejection. In societies where people are forced to meet face-to-face — a Kibutz for example — people are generally more utilitarian and happier.
If you get a chance, read Thompson’s book or check out the film. While it is a tough story to handle, there is no question its an eye-opener.
Tragedy has been a major theme of our literature since ancient times — in fact it is probably the most antiquated form of fiction in human history. Contemporarily, we watch MTV soap operas and other forms of “reality tragedy” in order to fend off our desire to see the most dire conditions. We have transcended the age-old method of showing tragedy through plays and literature into real situations and books with people’s trials and tribulations are lining The New York Times’ bestseller list.
We are all obsessed with hardship. But why? Doesn’t it make us depressed or feel as though there isn’t anything to live for? In fact, it does the complete opposite. It’s almost as if society is using other people’s tragedies as a coping mechanism for their own problems and issues. In my opinion, the reasons for this obsession is dependent on the viewer’s situation.
For most people, the desire is a result of wanting to believe that individuals have the capacity to bring themselves out of hardship. For the millions of people that live without health care, get addicted to drugs, contemplate suicide, etcetera, there are a small percentage that do correct their situation and find a way to rise to the top. While the number is small, the fact that people do find ways to resolve their problems transforms hope into a human virtue rather than just another form of denial. An example of this transformation occured with the release of A Million Little Pieces. The Oprah scandal that followed the release of this novel devastated most people and the majority of the population that fell in love with the book felt cheated by falsity of Frey’s story. Frey instilled hope in the eyes of his millions of readers and the realization that his biography was merely a story caused the readers to proclaim Frey a “liar”.
I don’t believe that people admonished Frey because they felt like lying about a story was bad, I believe that people were furious because they had given so much power to hope and Frey shattered that hope. I still think its a great story. However, for most, Frey’s dishonesty scared people — it caused them to question whether hope was a virtue or a form of denial (sorry, I know its awkward to use a negative retort to prove a claim).
For others, tragedy is a litmus test for innate human good. People are reduced under tragedy — they feel helpless and we see their true character. Idealists have a strong affinity for tragedy because it shows that humans are capable of being altruistic and generally good to each other. Anger and rage are common forms of masking pain and suffering, but under the condition of having “lost everything”, people are seen for who they truly are. I think that under tragic conditions, people are once again reduced to the state of tabula rasa. I recommend reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabula_rasa to learn more about the origination of the term and the theory. Locke is a major advocate of tabula rasa and he argues that people are empty minds when they are born or “blank slates” and that impressions are how people acquire their character. Human behavior, according to Locke, is a function of their environment and upbringing. A few theorists behind tabula rasa have also argued that negative impressions have more of an affect on people than position impressions — i.e. sexual or physical abuse. I want to make clear that substantive knowledge is different than psychological behavior: our ability to communicate in language is a substantive skill, but our ability to talk about our emotions is not substantive.
In the case of tragedy, humans can be reduced back to their tabula rasa form. While their substantive abilities, language, motor function, etcetera are in tact, their psychological behavior is completely altered. The warrant for this argument is that people who are subjugated to tragic conditions have almost nothing to gain from being ingenuine. When I talk of “tragic conditions”, I’m referring to people who have lost almost everything — they feel as though society is purposely pushing them down and that instead of continuing to fight, they have chosen to give up. Humans decide to act in their own interest when they have something personally to gain by doing so — in the event that they feel as though they have lost, they are reduced to the sympathetic beings that search for ways out of their situation by asking for help from others and simultaneously supporting others in similar situations. To the viewer, this is attractive because it shows the ideal human. This case is prevalent in the end of Shakespeare’s Othello and contemporarily in Celebrity Rehabilitation with Dr. Drew.
How does this apply to connection building? It has quite a bit to do with connection building. In fact, most human interaction is a result of tragedy. When people decide to find friends or build new connections for social reasons, they generally seek people with similar tragic situations or people who are willing to talk about their tragic situations. Interest in the tragedies of other people is the reason why we read books or novels — have you ever heard of a novel/memoir that did not deal with some level or hardship or conflict? As people are more willing to reveal their history and the hardship they’ve had to undergo, the stronger the connection between the two confessors becomes. It is through the act of conversing about our tragedies that we actually begin to understand people’s behavior patterns. The fact that people who watch tragedy reality shows or read fictitious stories about tragedy become close to the characters in those stories without actually meeting them makes this all the more true.
So do I think hope is a human virtue or a form of denial? If you know me, you know the answer to that question.
I posted a diagram a few days ago showing some primitive circuits and I was going to use the diagram to show the evolution of information exchange on the internet. Information exchange really began when people started using the internet back in the late 1980s and up until the release of Yahoo’s directories. Gathering information was mainly done by searching and the activity of learning new information was an individual task. Socializing information on the internet hadn’t existed.
For this comparison, I’ll use the diagram to show what I mean by the evolution of information exchange. Column A will be used to show the complexity of online connections and Column B will be used to show the information flow across those connections.
1a accepts that connections between people exist, but clearly shows in 1b that information isn’t being shared between those connections. This disconnect is probably the main reason why social networks became popular. While Zuckerberg, Abrams, and Anderson might not have thought of this as the main reason for why their networks all flourished, it was clear that people were yearning for an easier way to exchange information. Google was a great way to find what you were looking for, but for the most part, people like having information pushed to them. An example is: “David uploaded 4 photos of himself skiing” or “Michael attached an article from the New York Times”. People are also more likely to take a look at information that is pushed to them because it is more trusted than randomly perusing content silos. In the early 2000s, information flow across the internet transformed towards 2b where information intersected other information and as in 2a, connections between people had substance on the internet — people became much more than just a buddy on your AIM contact list, thus the dot in 2a.
Now, where does information flow go from here? People are beginning to realize that having information pushed to them from their friends is good, but its not ideal. For the most part, friends have an agenda or simply don’t like the same things as their friends do. While funny videos are great, the real question is whether information flow is the most efficient through the social graph (your friends).
I really don’t think so. People have very specific preferences and as I described before, psychographic projections are multi-dimensional. The act of sharing items with friends is beginning to decline because people don’t really always like what their friends like. In fact, most people are embarassed to admit what they really like to read or like to watch. If we look at 3a, we can see that people are connected to a stream (the horizontal line) and from this horizontal line, they are connected to other people and to information. I call this the “line of preference”. From the line of preference, information flows to the right people based on their preferences, not by who they’re connected to. As metadata becomes more detailed, the flow of information can become more efficient, targeted, and relevant. 3b shows the information still intersects other information, but the distribtion of that information is more relevant to the people.
I know the correlation to the diagram is relatively absurd, but in academia, people have a tendency to do absurd things.
