About triviality

jporter jp4321 at soho.ios.com
Wed Jul 5 23:06:07 CDT 1995


Your recognition of the link between complexity and triviality is quite
illuminating. The monstrous proportion of seemingly trivial effects,
iterated to the nth degree, is indeed paradoxical. And the electronic media
is in harmony with every dust bin and waste basket; all the detritus of
every nook and cranny of our prefabricated and anonymous culture...and it
forgets nothing. Feedback is instantaneous. The images of events become
their effects.

In an era where the meaning of history was unavoidable, Nietzsche could
admit that God (myth) had ceased to live. In our era, where nothing is
forgotten, and each year the weight of our cultural identities accelerates
geometrically, Baudrillard can say, (in translation for me, unfortunately)
that history is no longer being made. Everything exists now.

Dumb and Dumber. Pet Detective. Jim Carrey is a Pynchon character come to
life. A parody of a parody. High Trivia. A culture so exhausted with the
work of feeding and sustaining its archives there is no time or energy left
to sort it all out.






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