…ignorance is an act of will, a choice that one makes over and over again, especially when information overwhelms and knowledge has become synonymous with impotence… ignorance [is] a massive cultural trend, an example of doubling, of psychic numbing, that characterizes the end of the millennium. If we can’t act on knowledge, then we can’t survive without ignorance. So we cultivate the ignorance, go to great lengths to celebrate it, even. The faux-dumb aesthetic that dominates TV and Hollywood must be about this. Fed on a media diet of really bad news, we live in a perpetual state of repressed panic. We are paralysed by bad knowledge, from which the only escape is playing dumb. Ignorance becomes empowering because it enables people to live.

From Ruth Ozeki’s My Year Of Meat via Ran Prieur

i didn’t hang around to watch the other guys, but I thought your anecdotes and examples were excellent, interesting, and very clear.

yes, it was a very tough gig. one very experienced media interviewee advised me to never do a panel gig. i think something like that advice would apply here. never be part of a conversation where someone doesn’t want to listen. unless you are feeling very relaxed, even ’sportingly adversarial’, and feel like engaging in crappy banter.

looks like a career in televsion in between stints in the garden for you!

dave a

the more time i spend in the garden, the louder i hear the background hiss waiting for me. still, wouldn’t be without it. and i’ll make a special estherorama star filter :)

now i understand why you are too much the big man to respond to my emails!

xxx e

what was with that freak? tough gig indeed!