From: Van oost Kenneth (kennethvanoost@belgacom.net)
Date: Sun 22 Dec 2002 - 15:00:55 GMT
----- Original Message -----
From: Ray Recchia
Very good. Reminds me of a snippet I posted on February 14 ot this year from E.O. Wilson. Reading it got me doing some thinking. As a small town attorney I live in the world of the narrative. I see hundreds of people each year and become deeply involved in their personal worlds. In the U.S. legal system judges are limited to making decisions on the basis of the singular narrative in front of them at one particular time.
I think that such narratives are compelling to us at least partially because of our tribal nature. Knowing who is having sex with who is extremely important for survival in tribal hierarchies. Which of the following is really more important to me? The current state of the U.S. economy or who Jennifer Lopez is sleeping with? The answer is obviously the current state of the U.S. economy. I have a genetic predisposition though to be interested in the sex lives of high status males and females, and my mind is predisposed to be able to take that information and store it away. This is why celebrities are so important in marketing. Yes these individuals are thrown in our faces on a constant basis, but the reason that is being done is because of our susceptibility.
Hi Ray, Grant,
Maybe it is a case of susceptibility, but let me remind you of the fact that people,
not all, luckily, live by the standards set out by those high status males and females.
People do want a 9 to 5 job to get home by 6 to see their favorite show !
And IMO, those people aren 't really interested in the US its economy, they are just
interested if Clive or whatever they may call such figures will get out of his coma, or
that he is really the father of the little Anthony...
Such people live in a dreamworld, a fantasy that has nothing to do with what really
goes on in the real outside world.
Their social intercourse, by absence of anything else, consist out of knowing Lopez
have slept with this guy or not.
On a larger scale this is the battle between what is actually known as the higher
culture and the lower culture. The former is the thing where people like Nietzsche
and Heidegger were concerned about, the latter are the urban legends, the myths and
the mythology of the surburbs.
Of course, claiming that thus this will be related to intellect for the higher ranks
and to questions of tribal hierarchies for the others, would be, nowadays not be
political correct, but in the whole such things escape scientific measurement.
Although it can be said, that precisely such a measurement is made by producers
of such programs. Line after line, and with each new character added such programs
give people something to hold on_ to make them believe they count.
It is a picture, a reflection of what might be.
Personal, it makes me smile ! The allusion that people might take characters
and situations of/ in TV-shows for real makes we wonder that, maybe indeed
' intellect ' by the very fact that it is there in both cases, works on different
templates after all.
Kenneth
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