My posts have taken a negative turn towards complaints and grievances recently, and that's probably due to the fact that I wake up every day knowing that I gave up almost all of the gains I've ever made in the stock market in the last 10 calendar months, or possibly because MJ and I have yet to achieve our goal this year, a year that's quickly becoming quite frustrating...Also I echo the thoughts of one of MJ's managers, "I don't like when people make complaints that they don't have a solution for." I'm guilty of the same thing.
The word "vapid" means, according to the dictionary, offering nothing that is stimulating or challenging....which is what Celebrity Jeopardy epitomized last night for me: a show that featured celebrities (nothing against Candace Wu, Ike Barinholz, and Jalen Rose personally, they just embody the typical celebrity nowadays) who are only famous as entertainers, answering clues that have been dumbed down for a national TV audience (not just the syndicated show, this one was on a major TV network, which still means something even in our current era of streaming networks) to have mostly clues about celebrities, actors, movies, and mostly the entertainment business. Our general society has an appetite for those sorts of things, unlike anything that really matters like science, improving the world.....our society just is in a constant hedonistic state (a hedonic treadmill if you will), like eating junk food constantly without any real nutritional values (in this case, stimulating or challenging content). And that's me included! I engage in all the fun stuff without wanting to worry about the hard stuff......life has just become a constant search for the next thrill, the next thing, without challenging myself. I cringe whenever a TV show category and/or a movie category comes on knowing most shows are just mindless entertainment and will pass by and end in a few years and not be remembered nor have any impact on society, but I nevertheless engage because we relate to those things, they're the fun stuff, they're the candies/ ice cream of life. We crave them.
What brought this on? I was listening to the "Go Fact Yourself" podcast (an interesting but catchy name) with Brandon Blackwell and Amy Schneider, 2 trivia legends, and Brandon's self-selected specialty category was the Period Table of Elements, an excellent scientific category that I envy him for memorizing every element (there are 118 elements, and they're already seeking to create No. 119 and No. 120!) The podcast brought on a special guest who had literally written the book on the Table of Elements, a professor of UCLA......and I'd never heard of him. Our society just doesn't know many scientists anymore, nor do we reward their findings with fame/ recognition. For example, name a famous scientist in our modern era. Maybe Neil DeGrasse Tyson? Maybe Bill Gates, Tim Berners-Lee, who's still alive today? Anthony Fauci (more of a celebrity who benefited from the pandemic). I don't really know any of the Nobel Prize winners for physics, chemistry, etc. Science seemed to be much cooler in the 20th century and before, with revolutionary inventions and legendary scientists the Curies, Einstein, Stephen Hawking, Carl Sagan, Edison, etc. Now we just know characters from the Big Bang Theory. Maybe it's because scientific innovations have slowed down? Mankind has everything it needs, the rest is just convenience, coming up with faster internet and faster smartphones? Maybe, but it definitely has something to do with the celebrity culture of worshipping people great in sports, music, entertainemtnt, etc. In an ideal world, more people would read the autobiography of Richard Feynman (Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman!) than "Bossypants" by Tina Fey, or more people would show up to a science convention or space camp than an NFL football game.......but no. Our society is content with the vapidness of our culture, and the money follows the eyeballs/ selection of the general public. Now I kind of get why my parents were disappointed at me for not choosing science as a profession since they were both chemists/ research scientists.
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