Information Overload: We live in challenging times ...

individual

|

INTERPERSONAL : SCIENCES

humanistic ----------------------------------------------- mechanistic

SOCIOLOGY : POLITICAL

|

group

"Perhaps of no time is this truer than of to-day, when the mass of cheap books and papers and cinema pictures fill up every minute of leisure and leave no time for individual thought. The average man becomes incapable of knowing an original thought, or of feeling a genuine emotion. His own experience is translated into novel or cinema-language; his emotions are second-hand effects modified and devitalized by the fancies and romances of other men's minds.

The average brain like a photographic plate, covered with layer upon layer of rapid and perishable impressions; originality and reasoning power are stunted, and finally killed. Machinery likewise has destroyed the labourer's pleasure in work; he has no opportunity for the expression of his original and personal gifts. To this numbing effect of routine, with its discouragement of individuality, and hence the impossibility of joyous interest in work, can be traced ...

... the undercurrent of discontent, envy and hatred, which, uncorrected, lead along defiantly recognized channels to social upheaval ...

... and revolution."

 

Savill, A. (1923) Music, Health and Character, London: John Lane The Bodley Head. pp.181-182.