Turn Down or What?
Or say goodbye to having a life worth living
Some four years ago we were blessed with the captivating and rich Turn Down for What by the great Lil Jon. Since then it seems as if our cultural climate has begged to answer the question with a resounding NOTHING.
Our lack of “turning down” has become a means of driving ourselves towards a cliff with no brakes installed in this car of culture. And the only thing we seem to be gaining faster than velocity is a denial of just how close we are to the end of the road and what happens when it runs out.
Outlook Not So Good
A primary method for our never turning down is sheer busyness. Specifically in relation to information. Overexposure to data. Having the opinion that every opinion is worthy of attention. More, that every one is worth considering.
Yet the production of information only speeds up as more people are around to produce it and our mechanisms for dissemination lower in cost and rise in ease.
This keeps us in a perennial state of being behind the information eight ball. And, fittingly enough, the elusive eight ball we never seem to catch up to is the one in which, when shook vigorously enough, should promptly produce an answer for any and all questions that may come our way.
Shouldn’t we at least ask if such an outcome is possible, still more desirable?
Outrageous
For all but the most brilliant of folk, the breadth of our information ingestion is inversely proportionate to the depth of our understanding it at most any point along the continuum. In other words, the more you attempt to lasso, the less tight your cinch will end up being.
With that in mind it’s no wonder we have produced such an outrage culture. We’re obsessed with being pissed off at someone or something. And it’s easy to find ourselves in such a position when we have the slightest of information at our disposal about any one topic.
Highlights and headlines are all we need in order to hang our imagination and assumptions on the subject matter at hand. Having all of these ingredients in place we now have all we need to form a mob and begin policing anyone who dare differ from our illusory grasp of the situation and its corresponding data. At the risk of stating the obvious, our proclivity towards outrage porn is nothing short of outrageous.
This disease has infected both sides of the aisle, too.* Micromanaging other’s affairs via bullying tactics is simultaneously the best approach for enforcing conservative and progressive values.
Funny that. To think we had nothing in common.
We must note, too, that enforcing values and instilling them are more dissimilar then simply having different values to begin with.
(*While this phenomenon is well beyond being only political in the former sense, it does tend to break down along similar lines.)
Cutting the cord
How do we install brakes in this speeding car that is hell-bent on our own destruction via distraction? Simple. Just jump out of the car before you meet the cliff.
Unplug. Unwind. Unknow.
Forfeit your voice. Lose your opinion. Forsake your modernistic birthright of having an audience.
Road rash will be a bitch, but it’s a hell of a lot better than trying to survive the inevitable result gravity will have on those free falling in their American- made, hunk-of-metal casket.
Who cares which politician said the wrong thing this week. Who cares what color Kylie’s hair is. Who cares which bachelor contestant decided to play the seductive angle and which is being a goodie-goodie. Who cares what non-sense Trump tweeted today. Who cares which celebrity bleached their asshole in preparation for awards season?
Who cares?
The unfortunate answer is far too many of us.
Masterful Choices
Yet simply because others choose to live in a belligerently shallow and compulsively lame state of existence doesn’t obligate me to concede my own grasp on reality. Nor you yours.
As the good book says, choose this day whom you will serve. Your options consist of:
- The masses and their outrage
- The media and their bleeds lead profit models
- Yourself
Only the latter option provides sanity in a world swirling with fabricated chaos. And it’s the only way you can actually contribute to our progress by making a dent in real problems found in the real world.
It’s time to turn down the volume on all the noise in your life so you can turn up the meaningful signal. This is incredibly important since the quality your output is very much related to the quality of your various inputs.
As prominent philosopher Big Sean (no relation with Lil Jon) said:
Fuck your two cents if it ain’t going towards the bill
Know what’s going on. Have an opinion. Speak up for truth and justice and beauty. But only so far as it affects the metaphorical bottomline of your fellow human beings and their flourishing, the things for which we should tell Lil John and everyone else to turn down.
About the author
Hi there, my name is John. I love having conversations. My posts are an attempt to start some. Please join in the conversation via commenting or sharing.
Also, I’ve begun committing to donating a dollar to the Against Malaria Foundation for every recommend my posts receive. This isn’t a gimmick. It’s a quantifiable method for encouraging me and reminding me to give to things I care about.
Thanks for reading!
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