The Paradox of Our Age
Do we still know how to recognize value?
I started my writing career ever since I published my very first poem to the bulletin board in our apartment building. I was six. It happened at about the same time I gave my first public speech at a school reunion. The fate of my textbook was at stake.
Essays were still the principal form students could use to demonstrate knowledge in school. I wrote mine, and my sister’s. That’s how much I loved to write (back then it was in Italian, but English suits me.)
Nobody taught you ‘how to write’ like in today’s seminars. I absorbed all the lessons I could infer from reading literature and watching old cinema―complete with camera angles, scenes, cliffhangers, dialogue. And observing people and situations.
Before I could write, I read.
I didn’t know it then, but that was excellent training. I’m not surprised most of my work still involves reading and writing―there’s tremendous value in both. But do we still know how to recognize it?
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During the lazy days of summer, I read dozens of books. That’s without counting the ‘gialli’ or mystery novels I would bring to the beach. It was different then, our social life was offline. We shared our intimate thoughts only with a few people.
We had day camps, away camps, homework and family holidays to keep us occupied. The occasional boredom was that of a sultry afternoon spent indoors, alone with our thoughts… often in the company of a book.
Some things happened to us that one could tell only in retrospect―delicate as they were. Here’s a scene I came across from Crazy Salad, by Nora Ephron that has the contours of what I mean:
“It is September, just before school begins, I am eleven years old, about to enter the seventh grade, and Diana and I have not seen each other all summer…. I am walking down Walden Drive in my jeans and father’s shirt hanging out and my old red loafers with the socks falling into them and coming toward me is… I take a deep breath… a young woman. Diana. Her hair is curled and she has a waist and hips and a bust and she is wearing a straight skirt, an article of clothing I have been repeatedly told I will be unable to wear until I have the hips to hold it up. My jaw drops, and suddenly I am crying, crying hysterically, can’t catch my breath sobbing. My best friend has betrayed me. She has gone ahead without me and done it. She has shaped up.”
You can literally experience the scene―you are there on the sidewalk with Nora Ephron. You’re way down to the ‘concrete’ on the ladder of abstraction. I bet if you go back to review your favorite books, you’ll find they’re just as vivid and tangible.
Units of abstraction increased with the Internet
A scene is the smallest discrete unit in fiction, says novelist Holly Lisle. For a scientists, the atom is the smallest discrete unit of matter. The Internet has given us the smallest unit of abstraction―the pixel.
Abstraction is part of the online experience. Which is what helps people skim essays that turn into memes, rather than into meanings. Americans are reading fewer books than in the past. Most adults read as many books per year as I read per week―4.
An essay born as a “The Paradox of our Age” is indicative of the evolution of both writing and reading. Many attributed it to George Carlin, but the comedian and social critic denied he authored it. “Don’t blame me,” he said:
“One of the more embarrassing items making the internet/e-mail rounds is a sappy load of shit called ‘The Paradox of Our Time.’ The main problem I have with it is that as true as some of the expressed sentiments may be, who really gives a shit? Certainly not me.
I figured out years ago that the human species is totally fucked and has been for a long time. I also know that the sick, media-consumer culture in America continues to make this so-called problem worse.”
Carlin thought the language in the essay was pseudo-spiritual, the prose bad, the philosophy weak. “I hope I never sound like that,” he said. Those who knew him say he was always creating new material.
In May 1998, Jeff Dickson posted the “Paradox of our Time” on the Hacks-R-Us online forum. The essay has since spread far and wide, with various attributions. But you’d be able to tell from the tone of voice that it’s not Jeff Dickson, nor the Dalai Lama.
The initial essay was in fact the work of Dr Bob Moorehead. He included it in his 1995 collection of prayers, homilies, and monologues, Words Aptly Spoken (pp. 197-198.) (Moorehead, 61, resigned after 29 years as senior pastor of Overlake, an independent evangelical church in Redmond after a harassment lawsuit.)
But as things go on the Internet, once something becomes a meme, it spreads. In the aftermath of the Columbine shootings on April 20, 1999, its header included: “A Columbine High School student wrote.”
Though it’s not a remarkable piece of writing, the meme version is an example of the human need to make sense of things—we grab existing ideas that inspire us, build on them to stamp it with our footprint, and share the result as social gesture.
To describe this phenomenon, we borrow a term from jazz—we riff, or improvise (one musician borrows or builds on the musical phrase of another.) You may recognize bits and pieces from quotes you’ve seen circulate in various forms in social media.
The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings but shorter tempers, wider freeways, but narrower viewpoints. We spend more, but have less, we buy more, but enjoy less. We have bigger houses and smaller families, more conveniences, but less time. We have more degrees but less sense, more knowledge, but less judgment, more experts, yet more problems, more medicine, but less wellness.
We drink too much, smoke too much, spend too recklessly, laugh too little, drive too fast, get too angry, stay up too late, get up too tired, read too little, watch TV too much, and pray too seldom. We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often.
We’ve learned how to make a living, but not a life. We’ve added years to life not life to years. We’ve been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet a new neighbor. We conquered outer space but not inner space. We’ve done larger things, but not better things.
We’ve cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul. We’ve conquered the atom, but not our prejudice. We write more, but learn less. We plan more, but accomplish less. We’ve learned to rush, but not to wait. We build more computers to hold more information, to produce more copies than ever, but we communicate less and less.
These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion, big men and small character, steep profits and shallow relationships. These are the days of two incomes but more divorce, fancier houses, but broken homes. These are days of quick trips, disposable diapers, throwaway morality, one night stands, overweight bodies, and pills that do everything from cheer, to quiet, to kill. It is a time when there is much in the showroom window and nothing in the stockroom. A time when technology can bring this letter to you, and a time when you can choose either to share this insight, or to just hit delete.
Remember, spend some time with your loved ones, because they are not going to be around forever. Remember, say a kind word to someone who looks up to you in awe, because that little person soon will grow up and leave your side. Remember, to give a warm hug to the one next to you, because that is the only treasure you can give with your heart and it doesn’t cost a cent.
Remember, to say, I love you to your partner and your loved ones, but most of all mean it. A kiss and an embrace will mend hurt when it comes from deep inside of you. Remember to hold hands and cherish the moment for someday that person will not be there again. Give time to love, give time to speak, and give time to share the precious thoughts in your mind.
Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.
If we compare Dr Moorehead’s version (via Snopes) to the essay above we can see how the changes turned it into a meme. Where did he (and the Internet) find inspiration to riff? Likely in the work of others who came before.
Increasingly, what we find online is mostly drivel masquerading as wisdom. But the impulse is still valid.
We can take what we already know, and apply it as a metaphor to the new.
So if we want to start from a stronger position, it helps to upgrade what we know. For a classic example of paradox, look no further that the structure of Charles Dicken’s opening to A Tale of Two Cities.
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.”
The backdrop of Dickens’ story was the French Revolution. Even revolutions don’t start in one day. They’re the product of many actors and occurrences, including chance. We compose our way to the next level of expression through invention.
We don’t need to reach all the way back to the classics to find purpuseful writing that means something. Take for the example this short dialogue from Tony Kushner’s Angels in America.
ROY: I’m dying, Joe. Cancer.
JOE: Oh my God.
ROY: Please. Let me finish.
Few people know this and I’m telling you only because… I’m not afraid of death. What can death bring that I haven’t faced? I’ve lived; life is the worst. (Gently mocking himself) Listen to me, I’m a philosopher.
Joe. You must do this. You must must must. Love; that’s a trap. Responsibility; that’s a trap too. Like a father to a son I tell you this: Life is full of horror; nobody escapes, nobody; save yourself. Whatever pulls on you, whatever needs from you, threatens you. Don’t be afraid; people are so afraid; don’t be afraid to live in the raw wind, naked, alone… Learn at least this: What you are capable of. Let nothing stand in your way.
The work won numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the Tony Award for Best Play, and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Play. And for good reason. It’s a remarkable piece of writing. The repetition makes it seem real.
There’s always work behind writing that reaches deep. It’s inescapable. Tor Nørretranders introduced a concept that can help us understand how to determine whether something we create has value.
Nørretranders is Denmark’s leading science writer. “Exformation” (his concept) is the information that is discarded by a physical system. Thought it’s difficult to try to define a system in terms of something that it no longer contains (ironically.)
To extrapolate from what Nørretranders says, the two sources of most value (The User Illusion) could be:
The quantity of information you discard to produce something (“I studied 30 reports and read 40 books to write this short article”)
The measurable time you spent to produce a thing (“it took me ten years to find the question for this book”)
When one or both of these forms of work are present, he implies, the outcome has more value.
To make his argument that consciousness represents only an infinitesimal fraction of our ability to process information, Nørretranders draws on psychology, evolutionary biology, information theory, and other disciplines (the book needs a strong editor.)
In this cross-disciplinary sense, each generation stands on the shoulders of its previous one.
The metaphor of “dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants” (Latin: nanos gigantum humeris insidentes) expresses the meaning of “discovering truth by building on previous discoveries.”
Its most familiar expression in English is found in a 1676 letter of Isaac Newton:
If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.
In modern times, Stephen Hawkins’ On the Shoulders of Giants is a curated collection of the “momentous discoveries that changed our perception of the world with this first-ever compilation of seven classic works on physics and astronomy.”
It shows how each scientist built upon the work of his predecessors. Hawkins’ selection of the writings is helpful guidance. Skilled curators point us to valuable work. Ephorn and Kushner are but two modern examples of vivid writing.
We have plenty of excellent material, but it’s become harder to discover; though we have more ways to read, we read less; we’re all connected, yet our culture highlights and prompts individual credit rather than collective contribution.
Do we still know how to recognize value?
I loved reading this article. In the end, though I am left with the question "What is value"?