A great essay…and one that deserved more attention than it seems to have got (judging by the paucity of comment). “I suppose the question is how and why did all this âtherapeuticâ dross and surfeit of celebrity stuff get inside our cultural head? I am a creature of the Western Enlightenment and so its ideals are â broadly speaking â my ideals….its embrace of Reason; its Christian (former) moral compass etc. So the puzzle is why do we fall so far short of these ideals in our cultural reality? Is part of it a kind of enervated boredom induced by excessive ease and leisure?”.. (https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/all-the-pretty-celebrities) ….”Perhaps the sanest thing is to note the gap between Ideals and Realities whilst cheerfully â or at least stoically – accepting this appetite for cultural vapidity as a necessary counter and by-product of Western manâs better angels…..his amazing technological ingenuity. As sociologist Danielle Lindemann notes in her True Story: What Reality TV Says About Us: âreality TV reflects how regressive we truly are.â Well our technological communications wizardry has given us a dose of who âwe truly areâ in spades.”
Jeremy Dyer
1 month ago
Thereâs a huge pile of things in todayâs world that weâd all be a lot better off for ignoring – Elon Musk, Gary Lineker, social media, climate âscienceâ, to name a few. Zibby sounds like another, and in her case rather easy to accomplish. A closed world most of us donât need to concern ourselves about, and wouldnât if it hadnât happened to pop up on my screen. Hence the lack of comments. The author should turn his undoubted talents to something more relevant.
lorna belkin
1 month ago
Interesting piece about an utter shallow bore. Can’t imagine most UnHerd readers give a damn.
Well, in contrast, apparently, to what Zibby pushes, here is one of my books. It has nothing to do with self-help, current moral panics or the concerns of unhappy left-leaning women. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/213578895-fortuna-at-the-rudder
A great essay…and one that deserved more attention than it seems to have got (judging by the paucity of comment).
“I suppose the question is how and why did all this âtherapeuticâ dross and surfeit of celebrity stuff get inside our cultural head? I am a creature of the Western Enlightenment and so its ideals are â broadly speaking â my ideals….its embrace of Reason; its Christian (former) moral compass etc. So the puzzle is why do we fall so far short of these ideals in our cultural reality? Is part of it a kind of enervated boredom induced by excessive ease and leisure?”.. (https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/all-the-pretty-celebrities) ….”Perhaps the sanest thing is to note the gap between Ideals and Realities whilst cheerfully â or at least stoically – accepting this appetite for cultural vapidity as a necessary counter and by-product of Western manâs better angels…..his amazing technological ingenuity. As sociologist Danielle Lindemann notes in her True Story: What Reality TV Says About Us: âreality TV reflects how regressive we truly are.â Well our technological communications wizardry has given us a dose of who âwe truly areâ in spades.”
Thereâs a huge pile of things in todayâs world that weâd all be a lot better off for ignoring – Elon Musk, Gary Lineker, social media, climate âscienceâ, to name a few. Zibby sounds like another, and in her case rather easy to accomplish. A closed world most of us donât need to concern ourselves about, and wouldnât if it hadnât happened to pop up on my screen. Hence the lack of comments. The author should turn his undoubted talents to something more relevant.
Interesting piece about an utter shallow bore. Can’t imagine most UnHerd readers give a damn.