The tourism, leisure and entertainment industries have supplanted the military and industrial sectors as the foremost industry worldwide. Competing with online social media and other Internet trappings for human attention and patronage, the construction and marketing of museums, theme parks, casinos and other tourist attractions have become all-consuming whilst perpetuating a high level of abstraction and commodification of reality through diversion, fantasy, nostalgia and entertainment.
These industries are symptomatic of a rather nonchalant way of thinking about culture, insofar as the dominant criterion for a good culture is that it exists as a living culture, mutable in every conceivable way rather than fossilized for the sake of authenticity at all costs — for nothing is pure, and all things are more or less hybrids reconstructed, reconstituted, appropriated or simulated in one way or another, as tampered and altered as genetically modified organisms and foods.
Even when accompanied by some educational purposes, these hybridised forms of recreational activities are out-of-place with the roles and purviews of traditional museums, conservatories, national parks, wildlife sanctuaries and scientific expeditions that seek to understand and preserve artefacts, cultures and places of historical or natural value. There is an ongoing dilemma to the extent that competition, funding shortages, financial cutbacks, changing public tastes and waning cultural authority are not only impelling more museums, conservatories, sanctuaries and parks to adopt and experiment with new media and subjects of exhibition, but also exposing them to the danger of being revamped, co-opted, privatised, or even liquidated for alternative uses, land speculation, higher-value investment and redevelopment.
The explosion of tourism, leisure and entertainment in both the physical world and the virtual environment of online media has resulted in the global sanitization of pleasure and the perpetuation of hedonism, where certain values and ideas about human lives are rooted in or benchmarked against the perspective of youths fascinated by toys, juvenilia and pop culture, which are now instituted as the dominant resources in social and personal development.
Whilst playful participation and leisure activity are important agents of socialization that shape identity, behaviour and outlook, their effectiveness is debilitatingly compromised by the disproportionate growth of high-intensity entertainment that emphasises extreme behaviours and lurid spectacles. The imbalances between entertainment and education, and between self-satisfaction and self-improvement have become much more problematic in the technophilic fantasy overlaying the world of games and amusement — a world conspicuously designed to be as engrossing as possible to those whose individualistic worldview tends to be only as large as self-interest and self-centredness permit, and whose craving for amusement, escapism, technological excitement and adolescent anarchic antics finds few objections and restraints in the anthropocentric staging and distorted reading of landscapes and cultures, let alone of animal characters and natural history.
Anthropomorphic stories and images have become the de facto means for objectifying everything for instant gratification and sensory gluttony, entrenching the human race in a cosmology that both forgets and forbids the recognition of limits and otherness, as well as enslaving peoples in a social atmosphere and collective consciousness that see living things as cartoons, animations, animatronics and bionics, all of which betray the prolonged state of insatiable juvenile gratification.
Old age and senior folks are nowhere to be seen, and are supplanted by ‘teen age’, in which exploitation of, and atrocity to, animals, plants and the environment in the name of art, entertainment and cultural (re)production are so pervasive as to become the dominant social climate with universal acceptance.
There is no natural history, no objective past and present. There is only unnatural future, a future that continues to hold the past and present captive, a future that can neither seek a true reflection of the world nor escape from its own entrapments.
Reality is now available in, defined by and lived via a series of potent, fast acting, total recalls of fun, fantasy, romance, adventure and violence. The end of natural human beings and the spread of simulacra and synthetic beings are complete once the full artificialization of human consciousness is achieved with memory implant, artificial intelligence and virtual reality, in which both humanity and the environment are reduced to figments of the collective imagination, wantonly feeding pleasure centres and cerebral G-spots.
Being the only “mature specimen” alive, SoundEagle🦅 is ironically spared the compulsory “rendition” on account of extreme rarity, and is allowed to be preserved for novelty as well as a “living fossil” possessing cultural and biological uniqueness from a bygone era.
Submitted as a response to Weekly Writing Challenge: Dystopia!
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I was ready to signup for this new world and then I read:
“The imbalances between entertainment and education, and between self-satisfaction and self-improvement have become much more problematic in the technophilic fantasy overlaying the world of games and amusement — a world conspicuously designed to be as engrossing as possible to those whose individualistic worldview tends to be only as large as self-interest and self-centredness permit…”
Point well-taken. Write on, SoundEagle, Write on.
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I have given your dystopian musings some thought and finally came to the conclusion that a society that contains so much hedonistic sociological ballast will be overrun by the barbarians. When you approach the subject from a historical perspective, that is what has happened with previous bread and games societies. Usually followed by some dark age: it’s a cyclical pattern.
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[…] Facing the Noise & Music: Playgrounds for Biophobic Citizens | SoundEagle […]
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You too, my friend.
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I think that is one of the so much important information for me. And i am glad studying your article. But wanna observation on some common issues, The web site taste is perfect, the articles is truly excellent : D. Excellent process, cheers
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Isaac Asimov would be impressed. Both with setting and writing.
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Reblogged this on The Sand County and commented:
I highly recommend this essay. I find that many of the cultural activities and the desire to preserve our practices in perpetuity, which Soundeagle is writing about, is a subject which has arisen not only in my own thinking about our world, but also in my own historical-philosophical research.
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SoundEagle has been very occupied with errands and caretaking duties lately, and will attempt to return to the blogosphere as soon as possible. At the moment, only short visits are possible.
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It is ironic that we want to preserve our practices in perpetuity and yet we are producing a wasteful, destructive, synaptic culture with little memory for anything beyond the ability to seize upon temporary sensory experience as authentic. A modern/post-modern nightmare indeed. Naturally, a culture of the simulacra is a more easily policed, commodified and segmented culture. Science fiction writers have long been imagining dystopias where our senses are “managed” by remote control. Whenever I walk down the street and see virtually every person with their head down in an eye phone I can’t help but imagine this myself.
From an historian’s perspective, what I find so interesting about this subject is how the obsession with history that occupied the nineteenth century philosophers and twentieth century totalitarians has been replaced by another form of totalitarianism: the manipulation of the body as a machine. I think there is a rather logical progression from a view of history as coming to an end and a world that is completely managed for the supposed bliss of its human residents or the maximized profit of its masters (who are themselves fettered by their machines). There are countless ways of looking at this problem, but I especially like your very thought-provoking and creative exercise in using sound, music, and pleasure grounds as a field for envisioning a “freer” and more natural and biological world where a wild “floraison” is still possible.
I think a project which envisions a world without policed experiences is an important exercise in preserving our humanity and demonstrating our compassion for other life in our world.
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We can also identify the cosmetic and fitness craze as being similarly problematic and wasteful to the extent that if or when millions of fashion lovers, beauty queens, gym junkies, bodybuilders and exercise devotees could transfer some or all of their time, energy and resources that they routinely lavish on their bodies to more important, pressing and/or farsighted engagements such as gardening, weeding, growing crops, greening and/or protecting the environment, participating in communal activities and local projects to increase local or regional health and sufficiency, then they can still be physically active, healthy and simultaneously contributing to their societies and environments, instead of being largely individualistic, if not narcissistic, in their pursuit of beautiful or fit bodies to conform to some social norms, and/or to achieve fame or success in competitions through training, ingestion, injection, surgery and even gene-therapy.
Perhaps one day nobody needs to worry about beauty and fitness anymore if genetic engineering can make everybody beautiful and healthy. And then more, if not all, humans can worry about and devote themselves to other things . . . . . Wishful thinking???
SoundEagle recently appended a new paragraph to the post:
Also added another image, which concerns Transhuman, Posthuman, Neurotechnology, Neuroengineering, Neural Networks, Neuroscience, Memory Transplant, Augmentation and Reprogramming.
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Hi SoundEagle!
Thanks for stopping by. You outdid yourself on this one. It always good to read that mature specimen got saved; especially in our quick to discard others world.
Kudos! 🙂
Eliz
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A thoughtful cultural analysis on the narcissism of our times.
Ah the fitness fetish of the middle classes-jogging, power walking, straining away at expensive and pointless instruments of “exercise”. Why don’t they just do some actual work?
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Very insightful. Have you ever read Yuga:an anatony of our fate by marty glass? A good read, I think you might enjoy.
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Thank you for your comment and compliment. SoundEagle is not familiar with the book that you just mentioned, and will endeavour to check it out.
Another multidisciplinary post in the “Facing the Noise and Music” series is https://soundeagle.wordpress.com/2013/02/20/facing-the-noise-music-grey-barriers-and-green-frontiers-of-sound-society-and-environment/, which caters to those who have a deeper passion or concern for science, history, anthropology, sociology, musicology, philosophy and environmental studies. It would be interesting or revealing to know which perspective(s) of the ISEA model you have prevailed in.
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Thanks, I will check that out. You seem nice and thoughtful. Good skies on your multifasceted flight.
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[…] SoundEagle falls into a deep coma and awakes in a future where cultures and institutions have seemingly been restructured as vehicles of liberation rather than restraint. […]
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[…] Facing the Noise & Music: Playgrounds for Biophobic Citizens […]
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Very interesting read. Though I wonder if this is truly the future, or just an unmasked version of the now. Trans-humanistic tendencies have only enhanced the velocity in which we find that crossroads between entertainment and education. Edutainment, the wave of the future!
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There are ongoing and new issues (apart from benefits) in entertainment and education as well as edutainment, and some of these issues are going to be even more pronounced and/or intractable further along the trajectory.
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Challenged with “dystopia” you plunged write in.
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[…] 🎧 Facing the Noise & Music: Playgrounds for Biophobic Citizens 🏗🌁🗼🏭 (soundeagle.wordpress.com) […]
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[…] Playgrounds for Biophobic Citizens 🌁 […]
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This was a very intriguing read. You’re very intelligent and I look forward to more of your work. ✌🏽
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[…] Playgrounds for Biophobic Citizens 🌁 […]
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[…] Playgrounds for Biophobic Citizens 🌁 […]
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[…] https://soundeagle.wordpress.com/2013/03/02/facing-the-noise-music-playgrounds-for-biophobic-citizen… B. M. Wells 2 March 2013 at 1:03 AM Edit I was ready to signup for this new world and then I read: […]
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Very interesting. Did you ever see the movie from the 1970s, “Logan’s Run?” Everyone had fun and, in essence, were killed off at the age of the 30. Yet, when Logan escaped the bubble city, he came upon an old man. A living fossil as you say. Your futuristic story reminded me of that movie.
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❄ ❄ ❆❅❆❅ ❆ ❄ ❄ Greetings from SoundEagle🦅 with chocolate-coated snowflakes for Keith! Happy New Year to you! ✨🎉🎊🎄☃️🌟. Thank you for your visit and comment. SoundEagle🦅 watched the 1977 television series of Logan’s Run starring Gregory Harrison as Logan 5 and Heather Menzies as Jessica 6. It lasted only one season totalling 14 episodes.
Given your penchant for connecting this post with the TV series, SoundEagle🦅 is rewarding you with the following:
Please enjoy the music to your heart’s content! Needless to say, the arrangement typifies the disco era of the 1970s. SoundEagle🦅 also happens to possess the LP record, and wonders whether this musical genre is ever your cup of tea.
Yours sincerely,
ჱܓSoundEagle🦅
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The military-industrial complex is alive and well in the US. It’s where most of our taxes go. A focus on aggressive life-ending technology, rather than areas that would improve life, like the preservation of the natural world, education, arts, healthcare, community, and yes, entertainment and leisure. I think you hit the nail on the head when attributing technology with the frenetic pace and demand for instant gratification experienced in our civilization. Ultimately these aren’t healthy for anyone or for the planet. I hope in the future that the pendulum will swing in the other direction and people will start reclaiming a slower, gentler life.
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A special acknowledgement is due to you for reading and commenting so astutely on the issues presented in 🎧 Facing the Noise & Music: Playgrounds for Biophobic Citizens 🏗🌁🗼🏭, one of the posts belonging to Facing the Noise & Music category.
Given the severity and seemingly inexorable nature of such issues plus overpopulation and overconsumption, perhaps the human species has already arrived at the precipice of inhumanity saddled with unending conflicts, follies, avarices and transgressions, now causing the sixth extinction on Earth and bringing the Anthropocene to an accelerated dystopian finale, as we are well on the way to imperilling our very own survival, not to mention that the three largest global trades on Earth are those pertaining to weapons, drugs and gambling.
Longing for a better future with
ჱܓSoundEagle🦅
💝LOVE💖 & 🎆HOPE🎇
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OOOOH! That is indeed a Dystopian tale! I very much hope that never happens but I acknowledge that the world is dramatically changing. Great writing.
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Used my laptop this time… Post loaded fine. 🙂
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[…] via 🎧 Facing the Noise & Music: Playgrounds for Biophobic Citizens 🏗🌁🗼🏭 […]
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Reblogged this on Vijayagiri views.
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Sadly, what you describe as a fictional dystopia is becoming a reality.
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Quote: “Old age and senior folks are nowhere to be seen, and are supplanted by ‘teen age’, in which exploitation of, and atrocity to, animals, plants and the environment in the name of art, entertainment and cultural (re)production are so pervasive as to become the dominant social climate with universal acceptance.”
An excellent expose of these times. I think, based mostly on observation, that the species as a whole has come to a dead end, refusing to grow up any longer. This is much more than a bump on the road of evolution – it is the sign of the end for homo sapiens. I think that was inevitable in any case as the species as a whole has always considered its natural environment as its enemy and dealt with it accordingly. Now that technology has made it possible to throw a veneer over reality and to exist in a civilization bubble having less and less natural connection to the environment, the species has fallen into its own coma from which it will never awaken. When its life-support systems collapse, so will civilization and that will be that.
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This hyperfocus on entertainment seems to me an attempt to escape reality. We all, of course, need rest and recuperation from time to time. Our society, however, is consumed w/ it. Not a moment is left unfilled w/ distraction. We teach our children to crave constant sights and sounds. But inspiration (and God, Himself) are often found in solitude. Thank you for raising such a profound issue, SoundEagle. Your posts and pages are always thought provoking.
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[…] Playgrounds for Biophobic Citizens 🌁 […]
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great isight and post SoundEagle❣️🌷
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You have made some truly profound observations here, SoundEagle. I fear that we are moving irrevocably in this direction. The old are being shunted aside, along their values (values which anchored mankind for eons). Instead, we are consumed w/ a culture that worships youth, materialism, technology, and change for its own sake. Whether we recognize it or not, this is self-destructive.
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An interesting imagined future, SoundEagle. As alternative potential futures, I have explored a distant one in my novella ‘The Methuselah Strain’ and a much closer one (10 years hence) in my latest novel, ‘An Excess Of…’ Both envisage to some extent the preponderance of hedonistic activity, though this is much more evident in the shorter work. For anyone interested, both can be found here: https://stuartaken.net/my-published-work/science-fiction/
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You have a wealth of thoughts, information and reflections in your good post and I could say a lot about almost every one of the sentences, but that’s beyond the scope. I try different.
Culture is of course a phenomenon that is subject to constant influences and changes accordingly. Evaluating them is always dependent on the current level of education, information, sensitivity and more.
But, at least from my point of view, all cultures have always had a philosophical concept that focuses on 3 questions: #1 Where do I come from? #2 Who am I (or what am I here for)? And, #3 Where will I go at the end. Religions as well as natural sciences try to offer models for this. But all of this presupposes the willingness of the individual to find out about it and to reflect on it.
Now we live in a time of the capitalist world order that draws full attention to #2. This point is the only one that makes big money. However, the fact that #1 and #3 are largely excluded leads to “uprooting2” and a lack of prospects at the same time. What remains is a disoriented crowd, which is therefore only looking for its identity in material values. (Where else should she be able to find them?) And because that can never work, a permanent feeling of lack remains, which one tries to compensate with more and more consumption, fun and an exaggerated ego.
Influencers then take over the part that the advertising doesn’t manage and tell us where we have to go on vacation and which handbags and sun glasses we need to buy to be cool.
Since this is not a permanent solution either, we create a metaverse in which we can revive the game again. But by the time Tom and Jane look around, the strategically important areas have already been occupied by the big players.
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Dear Friedrich Zettl 狐胡
This constitutes a substantial, thoughtful and reasoned response that you have indulged SoundEagle🦅, who would like to reciprocate by quoting the following passages from a special post entitled “SoundEagle🦅 in Best Moment Award from Moment Matters🕰”:
ჱܓSoundEagle🦅
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Wow! That’s a reply 🙂 Basically agreeing. What does it mean to me? Paint more an forget about cheap infotainment and such.
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“…a future where cultures and institutions have seemingly been restructured as vehicles of liberation rather than restraint.” Thanks. I am going to toy with this phrase for a while. Like variations on a theme, this is a great verbal beat to build some melody, harmony, timbre, dynamics, texture, and form on.
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Dear Joe
What a musically rich metaphor you have conjured up! Two months and one week have passed. How far along are you in building your variations on a theme based on the “great verbal beat” that you have identified here?
Should you need some sonic inspirations for your variations on a theme, then please enjoy two of the 35 arrangements of “Tammy”, a popular tune nominated for the 1957 Oscar for Best Original Song after making its debut in the 1957 romantic comedy film Tammy and the Bachelor, starring Debbie Reynolds. Each of the 35 arrangements in the project was performed as a separate musical genre. The process can be likened to the formal technique of theme and variations used by many classical and later composers, except that each variation of the theme is in an entirely different musical genre. The project was more or less completed in November 2004. As shown in the sleeve note below, the resulting 35 variations were recorded onto two compact discs for instant playback.
The CD sleeve note showing SoundEagle🦅’s 35 Variations on Tammy
Please note that in sticking to one of the rigorous parameters of the project, SoundEagle🦅 had purposely used only the first four lines of the tune (corresponding to the first 16 bars of the melody) as the source material for those variations.
The first 16 bars of Tammy
Which do you prefer, the Caribbean version of “Tammy” or the hard rock version of “Tammy”?
ჱܓSoundEagle🦅
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The set-up of this story (a person who awakens in a very different future) reminds me of HG Wells’ “When The Sleeper Wakes”, although your story develops in a totally different direction.
You don’t define “biophobic” within the story, so I assume it means “phobia of life”?
I find interesting how this future world as well as its history consists of changeable ingredients and has no objective past. That reminds me of the world in “1984”.
The future world that you portray seems to be a very hedonistic world that values pleasure and escapism above all. I think that these tendencies are already present in our world, although they are not as openly and unashamedly expressed in our world. i.e. In our world working and the earning of money are still seen as important and honourable pursuits that endow a person with respectability and status quo, whereas someone who just seeks pleasure and escapism is not be seen as a respectable and serious citizen in our society.
“where certain values and ideas about human lives are rooted in or benchmarked against the perspective of youths” Again, I think that this tendency is also already present in our world, whereby it is the young who are celebrated and pandered to, in particular in the areas of fashion, music and entertainment while older people and old age in general are shunned and scorned. Just look at the preponderance of cosmetic surgery and people denying their real age and trying to artificially overcome the effects of ageing. But in our world this tendency is not as blatant and as out-in-open as in the future world that you portray.
It is sad to read of further exploitation and denigration of animals in your future, as one would hope that in the future there would be a shift in collective consciousness and the sacredness of all life, human and animal, would be recognised.
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[…] Playgrounds for Biophobic Citizens 🌁 […]
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[…] Playgrounds for Biophobic Citizens 🌁 […]
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[…] Playgrounds for Biophobic Citizens 🌁 […]
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