BOOK: LASN, K - Culture Jam

An interesting quote about the post modern family and their realisation of reliance on technology when presented with 'real':

'The post modern family, out there in the woods trying to bond, can't adapt to real time, real trees and real conversation, because real life has become alien landscape. Mom and Dad can't navigate in it. No one really feels they belong. No one feels any sense of purpose. The spaced-out daughter is alive when she is in front of the TV, and the mopey son is alive when he is surfing the net, and Mom and Dad are alive when they're at work. Meanwhile, in real, hairy-ass nature, concrete things keep intruding on their consciousness, breaking their media trance: the rumble of the nearby creek, the prick of mosquitoes on their ankles, the subsequent sight of their blood.

Living inside the postmodern spectacle has changed people. Figuratively, most of us spend the majority of our time in some etheral place created from fantasy and want. After a while, the hypperreality of this place comes to seem normal. Garishness, volume, glitz, sleazy excess - "the libido of the ugly" - becomes second nature. 'The environment consists of what you see around you - the ambient spectacle. Occasionally, you'll bump into an outsider bearing tales of that other environment, the one you may have known.

The moment you fail to understand why the natural world might have relevance in the day-to-day lives of human beings, you become 'a lost ball in the high weeds.' Abandon nature and you abandon your sense of the divine. More than that, you lose track of who you are.'


Is this perhaps why our course leader has challenged us to the '3 peak challenge'.... I wonder?!