Bellow goes on to expound upon how various accoutrements of modernity impinge on the artistic process. I think his concerns are valid and not limited to art. I’ll be frank: I have not researched this topic as well as I ought to, but this is just the student newspaper after all. So I offer this to you as a suggestion, a possibility.
Yes, this is the standard trope of preceding generations, but I think we’d be wise to take heed: With the advent of mass, global communication we are exposed to a staggering volume of information. Reports from around the world are collected on news aggregators and blogs; video comes in streaming live from across the planet and is viewable 24/7 on YouTube; Wikipedia seems to hold the answer to every question imaginable. Certainly there are plenty of distractions on the web. In many ways the “information superhighway” has become a conscious parody of itself. However, my issue is not with this catnip of modernity.
My first concern, and it is not a new concern, is that this new possibility for such an impressive breadth of knowledge can come at the cost of depth of knowledge. I do not think I am aligning myself with the hopeless luddites of generations past when I voice this opinion, and I am not condemning my generation (nor those in its proximity) — I am merely suggesting that we take care to make sure as students, and as learners in the larger sense, to not be satisfied with bits of esoteric minutiae. Expertise is achieved through hours upon hours of focused concentration. Clearly you can come to be good at something while slugging through it, flipping through Facebook and YouTube, but it will surely come at a much slower rate.
Our attention is pulled in so many directions at once, and many of these directions have taken on a moral character that condemns those who do not adhere to its tenets. You are expected to be conscious of where your shoelaces come from, under what conditions the potatoes in your mashed potatoes were grown, under what conditions they were mashed, where your bottled water comes from, what kind of car you drive. Seemingly every decision has taken on a moral character and the attention to morality that is necessary to live properly in such an atmosphere becomes exhausting. It becomes the end. Bellow speaks to this eloquently later in the interview I have previously quoted: “We are called upon to make innumerable judgments. We can be consumed simply by the necessity to discriminate between multitudes of propositions... It seems at times that we are on trial seven days a week answering the questions, giving a clear account of ourselves. But when does one live? How does one live if it is necessary to render ceaseless judgments?”
I think the goals of most social and environmental action groups are laudable, but I would caution them to avoid assuming a heavy-handed morality. There are too many things we are told it is necessary to care about these days. Please, inform us but do not moralize — the information overload of the internet era would render even the most stalwart Friend of Humanity ineffectual if he were receptive to each and every call for action.
I think our generation is particularly vulnerable because we are entering maturity as the “big bang” of mass communication is still expanding the universe of readily available information. I think we have become familiar enough with the technology of modernity to possess an impressive dexterity but I think our generation, in general, is still too enamored with its new toys to use them responsibly. The benign danger of too much distraction confronts us on one side and the oppressive danger of the too-wide scope of moral issues on the other. Again, I do not mean to condemn. I only mean to say: Just be careful out there.