Weltanschaung

The Philosopher’s Stone

zenothestoic@protonmail.ch

Tag: Internet

  • Sea of Words

    Sea of Words

    Can you count the stars in the sky, the grains of sand on a beach. Can you hear a voice in the infinite Sea of Words unleashed by an age of digits and silicon.

    It is your right to be heard, and mine. In times gone by we stood on a box at Hyde Park Corner. Do they still stand there I wonder, are they listened to, admired.

    Caxton it was or Johannes Gutenberg, who set the taps running. Who began that drip which some hundreds of years later became a raging, stormed tossed ocean of opinion and doggerel, marketing and hype, nonsense and bigotry. And in places, but oh so rare, so hidden and covered by the surrounding detritus, the occasional light. Voice of reason. Beacon in a dark world.

    Is the broadsheet still read? Published even? And if it is, does it have anything to say above the endless noise and wailing, the digital storm which surrounds us. Invades our homes, our lives.

    Is the Times still read? The New Yorker, the Economist, the Daily Telegraph. Does the Wall Street Journal survive, the curious pink Financial Times.

    And if they do, is it still printed I wonder. Is there still that smell of paper and ink, do those presses still roll throughout the night. Do the delivery trucks rush the morning press to the newsstands in the early hours.

    They say the internet is a great leveler. That it gives a voice to all. But do you want to listen. And if you do, can you find that voice you want to hear.

    WordPress and Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Medium even, that offspring of the commercial genii who brought Twitter spluttering to life.

    Choice is important they say but survival perhaps more so. Who will save you from drowning in the Sea of Words.

    For the most part survival means to switch off. To power down, to close Google for good and cease to participate in the digital storm threatening to engulf us all.

    For there are no effective filters it seems. No magic search which commands “show me what I want to hear”. Bring me a voice of culture and sanity I want to listen to.

    The flood gates have been opened, some say for good not ill. Take care lest you drown in a sea of inanity, irrelevance and banality. Do not slip and fall into this swollen river, this angry tide, this fast moving and ever changing flood of words.

    Dip your toes in the raging flood if you will, but do not be surprised if your feet never touch firm ground again. If meaning becomes forever lost in a storm of noise and fury.

  • The Internet Ain’t All Bad

    The Internet Ain’t All Bad

    While there are indeed vast swathes of Kardashians, footballers wives and people who live in Chigwell you should avoid like the plague on the internet,  I would argue that the technology has immeasurably enriched our lives rather than debased it.

    I am sitting on a wintry Saturday afternoon in London. And I have been “surfing the net” – if that is the correct phrase. I have avoided Kim Kardashian’s website (much as I’m sure I would enjoy it). I have not been shopping for useless baubles. Nor have I frequented chat lines (lewd or otherwise) or Facebook.

    I have been reading poetry, not Keats or John Donne for a change but real live poets. and I have rather enjoyed it.

    They say that if you want to write seriously these days you must engage with your potential audience and what better way to do that but via the internet. The reach you have is truly staggering.  I have been reading “stuff” from all over the world. Some of it has been mind numbingly awful but there have been some wonderful surprises, such as a beautiful piece written by a prisoner incarcerated in some hell hole in the US.

    The net has given that young woman wings. And I am glad for her; she deserves to be heard whatever it is she has done.

    There are things I want to say and there are things I want to hear. There is no finer place to say them and to listen than the net. Did you know that there is research into how depression might be cured by microbes in the soil for instance? Well that certainly explains why I have always been a fan of Voltaire’s Candide: no wonder he returned to cultivate his garden.

    There is real purpose, real use here if you use and don’t abuse it.

    It is a power for the good. At least if we use it as such. It is an instrument of much needed revolution (peaceful, I hasten to add).

    If you want to change the world, where better to start than here?

    In many senses I have often felt my life’s work to be in vain. I would like to have done something bigger, better and above all more useful and fulfilling.  Whilst I have never had the desire to become Mother Teresa (even though in this transgender age I’m sure that would be eminently possible) there are things I would like to say about making the world a better place.  There are people’s lives I would like to cheer up. There are thoughts I would like to spread, even though those thoughts may be too eccentric for many tastes.

    The pen is mightier than the sword, especially now the quill pen has been supercharged and become a computer keyboard. Imagine what David could have achieved if he had a laptop and the net!  He could have taken on every tyrant in the ancient world after he had  done for Goliath.

    And that is what we should be doing. Tackling tyranny and abuse. Shaming the aggressors. Giving the meek a helping hand on their way to inheriting the world. And by the way I am a big fan of that Gillette ad. Good on ’em.

    Verbally speaking you can now kick the shit out of the school bully and Donald Trump. You can rail against the horrid abuses you see all around you. You can name and shame. You can topple regimes – pity the Arab spring was such a farce.

    Of course sometimes you will need anonymity but with skill, this too is available. Seek and ye shall find.

    So, mock it if you will but we don’t have to use the internet for porn or Instagram.

    We can and should use it as an instrument of reform and change.

  • The Internet – Saviour or Satan?

    The Internet – Saviour or Satan?

    Is the internet a curse or a blessing? Used carefully, it is a huge blessing.  Misused it is a sad waste of life.

    It is not without its dangers, especially for those, like myself, with a propensity for silence and isolation in a noisy and unsatisfactory world.

    I am not talking about the pedestrian and utilitarian aspects of on-line purchasing and information.  Unless you are one of the small business being crucified by Amazon et al, the sheer convenience of the internet is an unparalleled joy.

    Nor am I talking about Social Media – at least not in the sense of the trashy mundanity of B List Celebs and viral Twatter posts.

    I am talking about the more cerebral ramifications of this extraordinary technology and what is has done for our science, art and culture. And indeed what it has done for our minds and our search for knowledge.

    Take art: visual, pictorial art. I was meaning to go to the Tate today and may go tomorrow but in the meantime I can see the exquisite beauty of Singer Sargent on the gallery’s website. I can gaze in wonder at the beauty of Ophelia .

    I can do a great deal more from my Ivory Tower now that I have the telescope (or it it the microscope?) of the internet.

    I have a fascination in religion and philosophy – I mean to go and visit a Mosque in London. And I will certainly get round to it. I want to get close and meaningful with a real live Muslim – I want to chat as friends, to understand what drives them so passionately and why they still believe in the god of their ancestors in a way that eludes so many lapsed christian.  And I will get round to it, I promise.

    In the meantime I have read some verses from the Quran online, I have learnt that their “tafsir” works in much the same way as the Judaic “midrash” or the diverse biblical interpretations of the Christians such as St Augustine.

    I can read of Confucius and the Buddha, I can study the Tao te Ching or read the Epic of Gilgamesh.

    But more, far more. I can take my thirst for knowledge as far as I want to go, I can reach CERN in Geneva, I can study the science of consciousness with Giulio Tononi, the latest thoughts of Roger Penrose or the latest on Artificial Intelligence.

    I can even participate in scientific research from the comfort of my own quiet book-lined study.

    The internet is among the top few wonders of the modern world.