> tala/all
>
> So far the responses have all seem to accept the underlying premise that
> everyday life in the postmodern world can be defined within the phrase
> of 'existential boredom' as if in some sense this is an adequate
> description of what everyday life is currently like. Really ? Where is
> the evidence for this ?
>
> I beg to differ - everyday life in the present, the postmodern if you
> wish - is chaotic, heterogenuous and liquid - life in the hear and now
> substantially different in that it where it used to be fixed,
> disciplined and very structured (and consequently full of life long
> repetition) has changed to being self-disciplinary, increasingly
> unstructured and lacking definition. This may be existentially
> terrifying but it's certainly not boring....
>
> (Zygmunt Bauman supplied the underlying propsition if anyones interested).
>
Dear Zygmunt,
you certainly have a point here, but of course there are reservations
(a) apart from creating heterogenity, post-modern thinking often brings
you to the point of absurdity. If you think from the perspective that
nothing has a fixed meaning, and everything is in a flux, then why bother
think in the first place - it won't take you anywhere, as you are forever
running along the Moebius strip. This can very well lead to
a very oppressive kind of dullness, I think.
(b) is not the lack of definition, and consequently the increased freedom
of being, often just another name for (a different kind of) oppression? To
name
one example, what seems as unlimited pluralism on the internet
is often, in fact, masked unitarianism: the universal IP protocol forces
all websites to function alike. But there are also numerous political
examples
available e.g. in ''Empire'' by Antionio Negri and other neo-marxist
writing: the notion ''freedom is slavery'' from Orwell rings very true in
view of some new political developments.
(c) the processes of mediated communication have led to the situation
where identity has been ''externalized''. We are more and more a black
box in the input-output scheme of daily electronic communication.
With ubiqitous computing underway, it will be harder and harder to
imagine yourself outside of the input-output loop. It would not surprise
me if many people felt literally hollowed out - another definition of
boredom, perhaps.
(d) you need not go any further than contact ads on the internet to
see how many people are into SM, desperately seeking to be told
what to do. It would be very hard not to suspect that this has something
to with the void at the heart of boredom ! We are also piercing
and tatooing ourselves in greater numbers, which clearly speaks of
the need to come back in touch with some primitive and exciting
sensation ...to relieve us of boredom.
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