Do you ever feel a sense of despair at how boring and clone-like some people are? You probably experienced this with some dull family/extended-family members or old friends, as you sit alone sober in the kitchen at parties or get-togethers. Booze is a good antidote for this, as it stupefies the intellect, but not everyone drinks alcohol.
I’m no intellectual snob, but I’ve often felt a bit like the late British historian and TV broadcaster, Kenneth Clarke, sitting at a table with TV celebs the Kardashian’s, as they celebrate Kim’s latest rear-end implants, although that is something Kenneth’s late sleazy son, Alan, would’ve relished! (Kenneth Clarke, not to be confused with the Tory politician who shares the same name, was a refined, classy gentleman who narrated a TV series during the late 1960s called Civilization. He sounded snobbish but he wasn’t a snob. If he saw what passes for civilization today, he’d be spinning in his grave!)
But back to Normies: It’s difficult and irritating being surrounded by many people who seem to not care about any important issues in life, as well as having nothing interesting to say. They are void of any intellectual curiosity about world affairs or spirituality; or angry that what passes for art, architecture, music and literature have become so satanically vulgar and/or banal. Paradoxically, I used to envy such people; as the old saying goes, “Ignorance is bliss.”
Most thinking people have all seen the hive-mind types staring blankly into their iPhones. Although I’m critical of such boring folk, I’m no raconteur extraordinaire myself nor do I possess a giant intellect; and if I arrive at a social get-together, I’m not expecting to be greeted by a room full of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn types or, for some laughs, a comic genius.
I’m also not critical of the pleasant, brief superficial chats we have each day with our neighbors, friends and family. Such warm exchanges about the weather or idle gossip are what make us human. But the extent of apathy in recent times is quite appalling, especially when it morphs into acedia, the vice of extreme indifference.
But regarding superficial babble, in a restaurant, it’s worse. I’ve often sat over a meal with my partner as she rolled her eyes when so-called adults at the opposite table chat aloud about trivia, as their political leaders fiddle while their country burns.
What I’m referring to is apathy and the constant banal drivel that seems to go on forever by those adults with intellectual empty lives. Think of the mundane odd balls, Hamm and Clov, in Samuel Beckett’s play Endgame. The repetition of their dialogue of every-day monotonous expressions going on and on and on with nothing meaningful to express.
Shallow Lotus Eaters, usually middle-class Boomers and Millennials from suburbia and the metropolis, don’t seem to read great books, go to the theatre, attend debates, have quality musical interests, or anything else to stimulate the intellect. As for Gen-Z: They might not read hard-copy books, but there seems to be some positive movement with them filling the pews at Mass in recent times. Could this be AI fatigue, or a craving for something spiritual? Time will tell.
The worst offenders in all generation categories unwittingly bore you about the banal trivialities of their holiday abroad or some other tedious domestic activities, with the odd bit of gossip thrown in for good measure.
The holiday chat usually consists of what time they boarded their flight and how long they spent in airport queues, to places they visited with non-event yarns less interesting than watching a TV propaganda report in the guise of ‘news’.
Their exotic knowledge of place names, restaurant prices compared to prices ‘back home’ and distances to and from continental places is the stuff of a Mastermind-specialist-subject contestant. To quote Jean Paul Sartre: “Hell is other people.” To be fair to ‘other people’, they are not all ‘Hellish’.
Speaking of Hell: The concept of this scenario was captured quite well in the early-1970s in a TV episode of Night Gallery, called ‘Hell’s Bells’. In the episode, an ageing hippy crashes in his car, dies, and goes to Hell’s waiting room. In the room there’s a poster on the wall listing all the things one can’t do there: no smoking, standing, littering, talking, etc.
Suddenly, the door to his destination opens and he steps inside another room with lots of “square” music albums that he doesn’t like. He then notices an older man in the room, and he starts talking to him but this man, too, is not the type of person the hippy finds interesting, dully discussing such topics as crop rotation.
Next to appear are an elderly husband and wife, dressed in Hawaiian shirts, promising to begin showing him their 8,500-strong collection of vacation slides from their recent trip to Tijuana. And when the devil appears in the room, he’s a pudgy boring little man dressed in red and with horns on his head and a fork in his hand.
At this point, the hippy would rather the excitement of fire and brimstone as depicted in Bruegel’s paintings of Hell, as the devil says, “Hell is never what you expect it to be. But for you, this is it.” And with that, he disappears, leaving the ageing hippie to collapse and writhe around the ground with the knowledge that this is how he will spend eternity.
Hell and eternity aside, we live in a world of groupthink, compliant colonised minds. During the Lockdowns, if such people were told by a ‘bought’ scientist to obey a public order, they would not hesitate. Those with empty lives only believe in things that they like, usually spoken by those in authority who mirror their ideological preferences.
The psychologist Stanley Milgram said that some 80% of people do not have the psychological and moral resources to defy an authority’s order, no matter how legitimate the order, while only 20% have critical capacity. I believe that the 2020-plus Lockdown years have proven Milgram to be right. The good news is people are now awakening, due to information on social media, and the internet (a double-edged sword for both good and bad).
As for the psychology behind this sizable dull herd: There are certain traits one notices in the behavior that manifests from the banality of their existence. For instance, they tend to find offence in the most innocuous remarks. Why? Because disconnected from God, they’ve become atomized with no meaningful face-to-face close friendships except for those they communicate with on the internet while they’re forever scrolling. They need to be stimulated in any way possible to fill the void of their tedious boredom and emptiness within them.
The writer and retired doctor, Theodore Dalrymple, said:
The way to be a bore, said Voltaire, is to say everything, and probably we have all met people who are unable to tell a story without including the most irrelevant, circumstantial, or dull detail. Generally, such people cannot be derailed: All attempts to do so fail, and they return to their narrative rails as a dog to its vomit.
However, to repeat the optimistic good news: There seems to be a great awakening, and the metaphorical colonised minds of the human worker bees are no longer impervious to the deafening incessant din of buzzing emanating from the hive. What we are witnessing is Logos rising. God might grant us freedom of the will, but ultimately, He is in charge of human history and will intervene if He sees fit.