Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
Good nutrition for thinking minds. Good writing to describe exactly what’s goin’ on.
I mean, the good things goin’ on. Not this Obama stuff, which we will, mark my words, survive just fine. The liberation of our culture from the monolith media —
In the age of mass media, the press was able to define the sphere of legitimate debate with relative ease because the people on the receiving end were atomized — connected “up” to Big Media but not across to each other. And now that authority is eroding…Take a sheet of paper and make a big circle in the middle. In the center of that circle draw a smaller one to create a doughnut shape. Label the doughnut hole “sphere of consensus.” Call the middle region “sphere of legitimate debate,” and the outer region “sphere of deviance.”…Now you have a way to understand why it’s so unproductive to argue with journalists about the deep politics of their work. They don’t know about this freakin’ diagram!
There’s a little bit of Yin-and-Yang stuff involved with this. When we’re all connected to a common intellectual hub but not to each other, like spokes on a bicycle wheel, it really doesn’t matter what the hub is or what the hub tells us to do. The communication arrangement strongly compels us to think with the OFC, the Orbito-Frontal Cortex, that part of the brain that is responsible for “rapping one’s own knuckles.” Think of it as your “don’t go outside the lines” cortex. There is no because when the OFC is at work. When you shout “No!” at a baby, you’re stimulating the baby’s OFC.
It’s a survival mechanism. If you touch a hot stove, and wait for pain to register then think about the prospect of removing your hand through conventional means, you will be much more badly burned. The OFC has its place; with that lobe telling you to remove your hand, you’ve got a decent shot at recoiling before you sustain any physical damage at all. That would not be possible otherwise. To preserve our ability to procreate and survive, we have to route some experiences through this special “because-free” zone.
Well, when people are communicating with a common nucleus but not with each other, they’re strongly motivated to think with the OFC. And when you introduce some limited means by which they can communicate with each other — just a few minutes over the fence that divides their lawns, or at the water cooler at work — they tend to persuade each other to do cognitive thinking with the OFC. No cause-and-effect, just don’t-do-that, like back in kindergarten. All protocol. No real weighing of costs vs. benefits of available options.
I found out about the article from Kate at Small Dead Animals, and Alice the Camel…they, in turn, make the point that this is probably why the press reacts so vituperatively to blogs. The blog is disorganized, and yet, strangely, at the same time organized. It provides a reliable and sustained means by which thinking consumers of news can talk to each other about what it is they have seen. It erodes the revenue base of advertising, to a certain extent, and that’s turning out to be damaging enough to the Old Guard. But it also erodes that spoke-hub atomization authority.
It gets people thinking with the cerebral cortex, the way the Good Lord intended when He built it. That part of the brain you use for cause-and-effect thinking, inferential thinking, process-of-elimination, all that good stuff. The traditional knuckle-rapping is demoted to just an occasional, meaningless staccato within a symphony of more honest deliberation.
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Good stuff Morgan, love the last sentence.
Though…
“Not this Obama stuff, which we will, mark my words, survive just fine.”
…”survive” made need defining. Like, ‘still alive but broke’…?
- tim | 01/30/2009 @ 10:47It doesn’t mean surviving whole. In my view, the nation hasn’t been in possession of a decent reflection of its original principles since 1932.
I know you’re an atheist, small-tee, but I can’t help thinking if I was The Lord this might be exactly what I’d be doing: Put the blogs in, do 1932/33 all over again, and see how things shake out this time.
With radio being such a novelty 76 years ago, one could plausibly argue the “atomization” was at an all-time high back then…and in the last four years, suffered unprecedented damage. So I’m hopeful. We’ll be in debt up to our asses, but much wiser. Perhaps when it’s over now, we’ll have learned the lesson for good.
- mkfreeberg | 01/30/2009 @ 10:54