I cleaned up my television. As I did, I asked myself if I had ever actually used this $17.99 distraction app. Flipping through the channels, I was stunned by the sheer volume of silly, vapid shows — mindless noise. It reminded me of H.L. Mencken’s warning about the “vast and militant ignorance” spreading across the United States.
Artists, once the people we turned to when we asked the big questions about meaning and existence have been sidelined. As Terry Eagleton points out in The Meaning of Life: A Very Short Introduction, the purpose of culture has been reduced to keeping people harmlessly distracted when they aren’t working (p. 22). A few pages later, he adds, “The more the humanities were harnessed to the needs of the economy, the more they abandoned the business of investigating fundamental questions” (p. 26).
Scrolling through, I couldn’t find a single app that offered content meant to make me think rather than lull me to sleep. And as I hit delete, it all made sense. This is how we got Trump. The apps, the culture, the country— delete, delete, delete.
And then what? Eat ice cream and laugh. I hope that large scoops of ironic detachment can somehow save me.
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