I find it rewarding to watch like with Nikki so that we can talk about the stuff but it's still not like sitting and talking yeah well yeah yeah I mean like 90% in my relationship with my daughter it follows us like watching some kind of screen but like it like but it's also talking about it. There is just an anemone that comes from from the that complete solitary individualist nature even if you're what I mean. We might as well at least get better at doing the stuff that is compatible with living in our society, he says.
We dive into David Foster Wallace’s sprawling 1993 essay “E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction.” How do TV and new forms of media keep their hold on us when we know at some level that they’re reinforcing our loneliness and passivity? That’s easy, Wallace says, post-modern cool. Flatter me, let me think we’re all in the joke together, give me “an ironic permission-slip to do what I do best whenever I feel confused and guilty: assume, inside, a sort of fetal position, a pose of passive reception to comfort, escape, reassurance.” But in the years since this essay, the TV landscape has completely transformed. Has it transcended its function as a surrogate companion for lonely people, or has it just found new ways to keep us isolated and passive?
Plus, we talk about the recent new SPSP guidelines and Jon Haidt’s recent essay on why he’s resigning from the organization. (Sorry, Jon!)
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