Roberto Macedo Alves

Do Diário de Notícias de hoje, uma citação do Provedor do Ouvinte: “Vivemos muito na sociedade do prazer, do passatempo. As pessoas consomem mais o fait-divers e o banal que as diverte”

Podia estar a falar da sociedade apresentada por Huxley no seu ADMIRÁVEL MUNDO NOVO, mas infelizmente, está a falar da nossa sociedade contemporânea. Huxley escreveu o avisoe em 1931, nós não lhe prestamos atenção…

From our local Newspaper, a quote that says “We live in a society of pleasure, of pastime. People consume the fait-divers and the banality that entertain them“

He could be talking about the society that Huxley presented in his BRAVE NEW WORLD, but unfortunately, he was talking about our contemporary society. Huxley wrote the warning in 1931, we didn’t pay attention…

Novamente Huxley. Acho que vou dedicar o resto dos posts do mês de Abril a Huxley: ontem foram as línguas mortas e o BRAVE NEW WORLD [Admirável Mundo Novo], hoje é amor e conhecimento. No meio das minhas notas sobre Huxley, encontrei a seguinte citação dele (desconheço a fonte), que coloquei no twitter, porque se aplica não só a todos aqueles que amam, mas todos aqueles que de uma forma ou outra procuram o conhecimento:

A tradução seria algo como “Apenas podemos amar aquilo que conhecemos, e não podemos conhecer completamente aquilo que não amamos. O amor é uma forma de conhecimento…” E isto não é válido apenas no domínio do conhecimento, mas também em relação a quem amamos.

E para todos nós que nos preocupamos com os saberes e a transmissão do conhecimento, esta citação devia estar gravada em pedra nas nossas memórias. Embora eu seja apenas um formador (em part-time), só o domínio do assunto proveniente do amor pelo tema que estamos a expor permitirá sermos claros e eficientes ao tentar transmitir os saberes. No fundo, o Martín Descalzo tinha razão: “aquele que aborrece quando fala, é porque não sente o que diz”.

Again I go back to Huxley as inspiration. I think I should dedicate the remainding of April posts to Huxley: yesterday was his reference to dead languages and his BRAVE NEW WORLD, today is about love and knowledge. Amist my paperwork and annotations about Huxley, I found the following quote (source unknown) that I decided to tweet about, because is relevant not only to those who love, but to those who seek knowledge:

And that is not only valid in the domain of knowledge, but also regarding those we love.

So, to all of us who worry about knowledge and teaching, this quote should be chiseled into our memories. Even if I am just a part-time adult educator, only a good grasp of what we teach, coming from the love of the subject we are explaining will allow us to be clear and efficient when trying to share our knowledge. Good old Martín Descalzo was right: “he who bores when he talks is because he doesn’t feel what he says”.

E para todos nós que nos preocupamos com os saberes e a transmissão do conhecimento, esta citação devia estar gravada em pedra nas nossas memórias. Embora eu seja apenas um formador (em part-time), só o domínio do assunto proveniente do amor pelo tema que estamos a expor permitirá sermos claros e eficientes ao tentar transmitir os saberes. No fundo, o Martín Descalzo tinha razão: “aquele que aborrece quando fala, é porque não sente o que diz”.

Neil Postman said “we live in a peek-a-boo world, where now this event, now that, pops into view for a moment, then vanishes again. It is a world without much coherence or sense; a world that does not ask us, indeed, does not permit us to do anything; a world that is, like the child’s game of peek-a-boo, entirely self-contained. But like peek-a-boo, it is also endlessly entertaining.” (Amusing Ourselves to Death, 1985)

It almost looks like he was talking about Twitter, back in 1985!!!

(image source: ProBlogger’s excellent article about growing your Twitter presence)

Some time ago, I quoted someone who compared Orwell’s vision to Huxley’s vision – and concluded that we were gleefully walking towards Huxley.

And yesterday’s post about Marvel’s ULTIMATUM event as an example of BAD entertainment, made me think about it. About entertainment, I mean. We want to be distracted, entertained! Cue Robbie Williams hanging upside down in front of thousands of people:

Movies, facebook, twitter, TV, computer games, games consoles, DVDs, comics, radio, CDs – our potential for distraction is almost infinite! And we embrace it! Gladly! We just want to be entertained!

We don’t need a government conditioning us since childhood to crave entertainment, to buy stuff to discard later, to pursue pleasures and fear old age… our contemporary world is already doing it to us. With no complaints from us!

As Tyler Durden said: “We are the middle children of history, with no purpose or place. We have no great war, or great depression. The great war is a spiritual war. The great depression is our lives. We were raised by television to believe that we’d be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars — but we won’t. And we’re learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed-off.”

However, not all of us are very pissed off. Some are just content with our mind-numbing activities. Why would we need soma (the drug people in the Brave New World were taking to get oblivion), when we have TV?

“LENINA felt herself entitled, after this day of queerness and horror, to a complete and absolute holiday. As soon as they got back to the rest-house, she swallowed six half-gramme tablets of soma, lay down on her bed, and within ten minutes had embarked for lunar eternity. It would be eighteen hours at the least before she was in time again.”

This post today was a semi-confused rambling, but I am slightly tired. However, I feel like blogging for a while about how Huxley was right… just to vent small warnings about what can happen to us. Actually, about what is already happening to us, the middle children of history.

I like many kinds of comics: from Bandes Desineés to Manga to the glorious works of Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman and Scott McCloud and Jeff Smith and many many others. But in the deepest recesses of my heart I remain (at least a little bit) a Marvel Zombie.

And as a faithful Marvel Zombie, for example, I’ve been buying the Amazing Spider-Man issues since 1990 or something. I bought (and enjoyed, most of the time) the Clone Saga and other atrocious events, more or less entertaining, but always with a childlike glee.

And for example, I was reading excited the beginning of the Ultimate Universe, enjoying the first issues of the Ultimates and Ultimate Spider-Man, and suprisingly due to the entertainment quality of the stories, I quickly began to care about these alternate versions of the Marvel heroes I grew up with. It was sometimes better than the old, regular Marvel Universe. Not bad for escapism.

Then, I read some time ago that the ultimate universe was going to end. And the teaser ran with Biblical references and the promise of big stuff happening, with Magneto involved. It looked exciting. Until I began to read the issues. Ew.

So, as a beginning, a big tidal wave just washes out New York City… something I already saw in THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW. Can I say this was unoriginal, in the least?

Europe flash freezes, which also happened on the DAY AFTER TOMORROW. And at least, the movie had some sort of environmental warning message. In this comic, it was totally pointless, it was just Magneto’s whim. To punish the humans and mutants for de death of Pietro and Wanda, or whatever.

Then, lots of characters die pointless, disgusting, boring deaths. The body count was so high I just stopped caring, even if Jeph Loeb was butchering lots of characters I liked. One of the most gruesome scenes has the blob eating the entrails of the Wasp (what for?) then, giant man bites his head off (“it was only personal”) and goes to explode, with suicide bomber Jamie Madroxes (Jamie Madri?) crawling all over him. Like that. Yes, it sounds pretty stupid. And it is! Did I mention it was also boring?

And Magneto forcing Jamie Madrox to replicate over and over and over is not original either. We all saw that in the AGE OF APOCALYPSE, and that was not so long ago. Ah, and in AoA, Madrox also lost his mind and died in the end. That was another totally original idea, Mr. Loeb!

After reading the third issue of that series, I just felt like that character from Huxley’s BRAVE NEW WORLD, John the Savage, after watching a boring, action-packed, plotless “feely” film. He was so shocked, he told Lenina, his date what he thought about that “entertainment” experience:

“I don’t think you ought to see things like that,” he said, making haste to transfer from Lenina herself to the surrounding circumstances the blame for any past or possible future lapse from perfection.

“Things like what, John?”

“Like this horrible film.”

“Horrible?” Lenina was genuinely astonished. “But I thought it was lovely.”

“It was base,” he said indignantly, “it was ignoble.”

And that’s a nice way to sum up what ULTIMATUM was about. It was base. It was ignoble. It was certainly a sad, disgusting, pointless, unworthy ending for the Ultimate Universe. I just don’t care how it ends. I think I will ignore this last event happened.