The Post-Idea World

An anonymous reader sends this quote from an opinion piece in the NY Times: "If our ideas seem smaller nowadays, it's not because we are dumber than our forebears but because we just don't care as much about ideas as they did. In effect, we are living in an increasingly post-idea world — a world in which big, thought-provoking ideas that can't instantly be monetized are of so little intrinsic value that fewer people are generating them and fewer outlets are disseminating them, the Internet notwithstanding. Bold ideas are almost passé. ... There is the eclipse of the public intellectual in the general media by the pundit who substitutes outrageousness for thoughtfulness, and the concomitant decline of the essay in general-interest magazines. And there is the rise of an increasingly visual culture, especially among the young — a form in which ideas are more difficult to express. But these factors, which began decades ago, were more likely harbingers of an approaching post-idea world than the chief causes of it."

Comments

More like the post-idea media

[SirGarlon]

TFA to me says more about the media failing their role as societal and intellectual catalysts, than about a shortage of ideas as such. There are big ideas out there, you just don't hear about them from the media.

At the risk of opening up a political flame war, even the political parties here in the U.S. have big ideas built into their platforms. What level of service and what level of taxation do we really want from our government? How do we distribute the costs of government? Why is illegal immigration a problem and how do we address it? What are the costs of dealing with global warming, and what are the costs of not dealing with it?

It's just that no one is having an intelligent discussion about these topics. They prefer to stake out a position on blind faith and then denounce everyone who disagrees. Seems to me more like a lack of discussion than a shortage of societal challenges or of ideas to deal with those challenges.