conformity – Stepping Stones

So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, by Jon Ronson – Notes & Themes + Related Media

Thematically organised book notes (enhanced extracts) from Jon Ronson’s seminal book on modern (online) public shaming, supplemented by references to relevant media.

So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed: A Micro Book Review

The book So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson (2015) is a seminal examination of the modern form of public shaming – namely, online shaming – which been made increasingly prominent by the expansion and intensification of social media culture.
Although the text is a little lightweight for my preferences, the writing is effective and revealing of its topic. Ronson’s documentary style approach that blends some philosophy into investigative interview is quite fitting here, particularly in introducing the world of online shaming. Shamed seems especially valuable in that it appears to be the first popular work to explore and assess the nature of online shaming in its social and personal effects.
Since the book is based on a broad variety of personal insights that are revealing of human nature and cultural conditions, I imagine that most would find interest in its content even if not particularly engaged with social media (ironically, it so happened that I only signed up to ~~Twitter~~ 𝕏 a few months after having read this book).

The Book Notes

The notes featured in this post are composed from my extracted highlights of the book and consist largely of my paraphrases of the original text. However, I have also altered, elaborated, and added to Ronson’s details and points to represent what I considered to be the essential significance of each passage. Thus, instead of creating a notes summary of the book I’ve compiled its most substantial information such to enhance the reception of its significance.

Introverts and Socialising – Insights & Themes (Enhanced Extracts)

A compilation of extracts from a variety of articles to reveal the nature of introverts in relation to the conditions of socialising and their experiences with it. Organized by ten themes, this series of concise passages aims to provide much needed perspective on an obscured topic, and a source that may serve as a useful reference.

The nature of introversion and the conditions of socialising.

Last year I discovered and read the book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, by Susan Cain (2012). Having not explored the topic of introversion and extraversion personality types, I gained much perspective on these concepts through the author’s research and insights. Being an introvert herself, Cain clarifies not just what it means to be of introverted nature but to be so in a world conditioned by extraverted traits, behaviours, and ideals.

Since then, this general perspective of introversion vis-à-vis extraverted culture has remained at the back of my mind in relation to my routine social experiences. Recently, I decided to further explore not the general topic, but rather discussion of introverted nature in the context of the social experiences of introverts. In other words, I sought information that was more personally relevant to being introverted in an extraverted social world; and essentially, to identify, clarify, and examine the conditions, effects, and factors of this inter-personality relationship.

The Nature of Will and the Sophistry of “Free Will” | Essay

An eight-part essay on will and ‘free will’.

*“I am not a **“free” number**: I am a **WILLFUL MAN!**”*
(Image from *The Prisoner*, 1967-1968 TV Series)

I

Over the last century, general discourse concerning the topic of ‘free will’ has become increasingly more pronounced in Western culture—a trend that reflects the rapid development of societal complexity during this period: for especially since the postmodern era, the organisational phenomena of bureaucracy, specialisation, and compartmentalisation have intensified the diffusion not only of responsibility but also of knowledge. Concomitantly, scientific theory has supplanted philosophy as the locus of epistemology, producing theoretical phenomena such as relativity and quantum mechanics and instilling them into the foundation of Western ideology. Effectively, such theories have undermined not just traditional knowledge and wisdom but the very basis for their acquisition, i.e. the subjective perception of an objective reality. In concert, postmodern developments have thus created a culture of disintegrating knowledge and implicit indeterminacy, wherein matters both philosophical and practical are deemed – tacitly more so than explicitly – to be fundamentally uncertain. Crucially, this ideological domination includes the dimension of institutional contradiction; as in, for example, the periodical turnover of scientific axioms, many of which are treated as dogma until they have been deemed falsified and replaced by new axiomatic ‘truths’.
Within this culture of impenetrable systemisation and philosophical confusion, the question of free will has arisen to prominence: For at least the last half-century, Western culture has been affirming an inherent inability to determine anything at all, let alone an ideology that is clear, consistent, and stable. Adversely, it has instilled a societal paradigm of reactionary measures against the flux of indeterminable existence, which thus represents the postmodern ideology of Western culture—an ideological inversion of Ideology.

The Nature and Development of Understanding

An essay on Understanding (or, understanding for an Understanding of UNDERSTANDING)

Understanding—is of most importance to understand.

I

For the proper philosophical discussion about any particular thing, the identification of the thing itself is more important than the word used to refer to it: A word is merely a tool used to approximate the meaning of a concept, thus enabling an expedient means to refer to that concept in conversation or writing. In a way, this conventional approximation of conceptual meaning highlights the purpose of Philosophy, which I define here as the unmotivated, uncompromised expression of the innate need to Understand. And, Understanding is perhaps the most important concept to philosophise about—which I define here as the pure and thorough attempt to clarify the essence and significance of a thing. Thus for this essay, a cluster of related ‘things’ I consider worthy of discussion are most closely approximated by the word ‘understanding’, with each of these things representing a particular aspect of that concept, thereby being a different sense of its meaning. Hence, I will use the word ‘understanding’ in multiple senses, supported by my definition of each one; and by which I attempt to describe these particular aspects of Mind and Life.

“Leopold!”: Conductor, Orchestra, & Audience

A discussion of the role of the Conductor in both music and society, beginning with my casual impressions (complimented with satirical examples); and followed by critical insights from a socio-musicologist, as well from conductors and composers themselves.

Although I have yet to acquaint myself with orchestral performance, which does interest me; the passive familiarity I have with it has nevertheless left me with a particular impression—specifically, regarding the role of the Conductor, which appears to be strikingly suspect. Upon casual contemplation, I had formed some substantial thoughts about it, from which I felt the subject would be would worthwhile to investigate one day. And due to this question of the Conductor being brought up by someone in a group conversation, that day eventually arrived.

RETROverdose (on Strangely Familiar Things) | Stranger Things & Retromania

An article on Stranger Things (SPOILER: it’s duffing long!)

Retromania: from the 2000s onward, pop culture has lacked the creative, future-oriented, dynamic energy of the previous decades: rather than opening the future, it inaugurated the ‘Re’ era, i.e. dominated by the ‘re-’ prefix – such as in revivals, reissues, remakes, re-enactments – thus representing endless retrospection.
The post-millennium ushered in an era of unoriginality that feeds on its own history, trades in references, and quickly begun to rework material from a past that is increasingly immediate—thus has pop culture turned into an endless act of regurgitation.

What does this have to do with Stranger Things? With the debut of this series in 2016, pop culture has seen a particular development of retromania: from the mania of retro, i.e. the cultural pervasiveness of it; to the intensification of retro, i.e. the artifactual over-dosage of it.

And hence: Retroverdose (on strangely familiar things)…