Modern communication and the scourge of envy

The advent of the internet has heralded a new age in human communication. 

Suddenly after years of relative silence, technology has enabled every man, woman & child to be heard, in their own voice, on their own terms.


Every would-be journalist, artist, tutor, feature columnist, social commentator, radical extremist, technical expert, suicidal teen, Samaritan, composer, chef & comedian have themselves a vehicle with which they can spread their knowledge, art, hate, advice, techniques, recipes and wisdom to anybody who cares to listen, in a language they choose, at their own speed, and in whichever format & at whatever rate their frantic minds can spew it out. The whole spectrum of mentalities and intellects now has a soapbox.

Of all of the digital behemoths, Facebook was the first to truly empower the dispossessed; enabling the dullest, most isolated person on earth to suddenly find themselves with thousands of ‘friends’ who would be assured on cue to at least glance at any picture they’d uploaded, or fleetingly digest any status update they cared to create, with the tantalising but profoundly banal option of leaving their own mutually masturbatory opinion in a comments box beneath it.

On receipt of this affirmation the originator could fawn over, and self-molest at, the sudden recognition they were receiving and feel vindicated in the ‘publification’ of the minutiae of his own paltry existence, refresh, and ready himself for another hit, by simply generating another pointless update for them to bash one out over later.

With Facebook, narcissism had a voice and it began to shout louder and louder every single day.

The truly self-important; those who felt the draw of the status update too agonisingly addictive to update with anything of purely a revelatory nature (as this would involve having something interesting to say), found themselves updating their statuses more than once a day. As time progressed, the banality of the status update became largely irrelevant, as long as it received more and more ‘likes’, or, the zeitgeist of all self-affirming critiques; a typed comment.

Failure to achieve response would be felt like a rusty shank to the heart and the desperation of being unpopular and unsuccessful again would fuel further update frenzies until one harvested the volume of recognition that validated his futile existence.

‘I have a headache’, ‘I just cooked cheese on toast’ and ‘I just got to work’ were (and quite probably still are) amongst the more common broadcasts you could receive on a daily basis, posted without the faintest hint of irony and, even more unfathomably, were deemed acceptable monologue from the respondents whose profoundly depressing existences seemed to be less interesting enough to give it the virtual thumbs-up. In the absence of anything worthwhile to say, one would often see the regurgitation of the words of others/a pictorial link/a photo of a cat wearing a grapefruit….just so long as it got that oh-so-needed feedback.

Addiction to recognition and micron-thin validation spread like a cancer amongst the bored and un-preened egos of the masses and gave birth to the mystifyingly popular cult of twitter….

Twitter itself probably facilitated the first pandemic of rampant guilt-free (and apparently consequence-free) opinion in the history of human communication. Roughly 140 characters of pure egocentric monologue could be generated in the bowels of your mind and without so much as a wipe of your exit-hole, defecated instantly onto the millions who were there just waiting to lap it up. Tic-Tac please……

What an unfettered feast for the unheard!

Such an oratological orgy of self indulgence proved too much to resist for many, so with most addicts tinged with the ever increasing suspicion that Facebook statuses had started to become a parody of themselves and that their audience was numbing to their hyper-real, sanguine, utterly individualistic point of view(!) they quickly switched to a double pronged attack to reignite the flames of belonging. Seemingly, the ability to loudly vomit your darkest prejudices into the bowl of modern popular culture without a single mechanism in place able, or even wanting to shut you up, proved to be the ultimate narcissism quencher…despite the glaring paradox that your followers had only joined Twitter to do exactly the same thing!

At the same time, Internet Forums (Fora!) provided people with similar interests from all over the world a vehicle within which they could further explore and expand their understanding of their topic, and potentially advance and evolve their chosen discipline at rates previously unheard of.

The cutting out of traditional trial and error experienced by generations of humans before, by simply exchanging information, became the vogue, and then the norm. The instant gratification provided by bypassing centuries of learning enabled enthusiasts to achieve previously unthinkable levels of competence in profoundly short timescales was the tantalising and irresistible carrot that all scholars now suddenly chased. People started sharing information, good and bad, from all corners of the globe and general understanding levels increased exponentially overnight. 

Mysteries and myths were debunked, new skills were developed en-masse and suddenly the overall level of expertise of even the most basic level thinkers was catapulted to previously unimaginable levels. The history of lengthy apprenticeships seemed like an antiquated quirk when presented with the multitudinous avenues of information of all levels and depth which could be accessed instantly from anywhere with a plug.

Tutorial blogs became a natural extension of this phenomenon and suddenly, critically valuable information cropped up everywhere. (An awful lot of shite appeared too – see my blog as a great example) Notes, video tutorials, photo case histories and endless discussion were all on tap and the tap was flowing. FAST. 

Anyone with half a brain could now wade through information and find good advice in a flash. Search hard enough online and you will find a blog somewhere explaining how to do something of which you have no knowledge or experience, and in many cases, assuming the author is able to express themselves clearly, it will enable you to achieve something which would previously have been a mystery to you. 

As long as you conduct even a moderate amount of research, and ensure that you consider more than one opinion on the topic, you can probably become proficient to a basic level in pretty much anything you like, within a fraction of the time it would have taken only 20 years ago.

However, sharing of information is not a new thing, far from it. Informative books have existed in many guises for hundreds of years. More recently, since the first smoky wisps of the technological revolution of the late 70’s and early 80’s became a blaze in the 90’s and onwards, instructional videos began to dribble and then pour into the mainstream on every conceivable topic.

If you wanted to learn how to knit, but found magazine stills too difficult to follow, there was a video out there showing you how. Want to fix a car? No problem, there was a VHS out there for you. But, in relative terms, it was expensive and very hit and miss as to the quality of the information within these videos. And this was assuming you knew where to find them. And then you had to go with only a handful of opinions if you didn’t want to break the bank….

But then along came online photo & video hosting and everything changed forever. Now, suddenly, everyone is an expert on everything.

However, it’s not all positive for everybody.

A notable casualty of the information tsunami is the esoteric arts. Bonsai is a particularly good example of this. One of the founding theories and clichés of Bonsai is that patience is key. Patience is golden, patience is the only way to achieve anything in bonsai. In fact go to any online Bonsai source and you will be endlessly told that patience is the only way. In itself, this very maxim is a contradiction in terms as the art of bonsai is the pursuit of miniaturising and ageing trees faster than they would age in nature, using specialised techniques, refined specialist horticultural practices and understanding of the habits of each species. And shortcuts. Lots and lots of shortcuts.

By shortcuts I mean growing sacrifice branches to increase taper and girth, to give the illusion of an age much greater than exists. Specific pruning patterns to increase ramification depth to again deepen the illusion of age and so on…

These shortcuts may take a long time in human terms, but in the grand scheme of things we can achieve end results in a fraction of the time it would take in nature to do the same. This is one of the founding concepts of Bonsai. And we now have the basic knowledge made available to us in bite sized chunks, broken down in excruciating detail whenever we need it. This too has had its own consequences on the egos of those who have fought their modest ambitions and results over the years before free sharing of information.

Ask a question on a forum, and on the whole you will receive incredibly helpful and in depth answers. Most intellectually astute people will assume that you are intelligent enough to decide what you are capable of and just give you what they know. You will also encounter people however, who will tell you that something is too advanced, too complicated. You find they berate or mock you for discussing in depth practices, the science behind it, or obscure technique. You might find they openly insult you for exchanging ideas without making the faintest contribution themselves to the discussion. Rather than take a risk, they will make a snide comment to hide their own fears.

However, it’s rare that you will hear this from anyone who grew up with the information deluge. These rare emissions seem to emanate from those who did not grow up with this mountain of expertise and experience at their fingertips; those who had to do it the hard way. Those who had to go through years of mistake after mistake because the lessons were not readily available, at their fingertips. Those who couldn’t just click a button to learn a technique; that had to attend countless meetings, seminars and shows to gradually and systematically piece together working ideas over painfully long periods.

There seems to be an inherent bitterness in a small number of forum users who are unable to come to terms with the fact that their lifetime’s experience and stature has now been superseded in the space of a single technological revolution, and that their fears and bad experiences are not being acknowledged, as if it somehow diminishes their own validity

In my experience, the very best and most respected artists, tutors and knowledgeable people in any area of expertise are those who will encourage you to have a go, to experience and make your own mistakes, to come to your own conclusions and to build upon and share your lessons learned. They are often selfless and giving, a fountain of proven information and rarely publically condescending or rude. (There are one or two arrogant exceptions, as with anything) Conversely the most bitter people, due to their lack of bravery, skill or intelligence, will make the most negative comments. Like any bully, they fear what they themselves don’t understand or are too afraid to try, and can only feel comfortable or worthy of themselves if they publically put down those around them.

Often they will display sycophantic traits, outwardly and openly over-praising the more accomplished artists, basking in the reflective glory of these artists achievements to patch over the scabs of their own failures. They will rarely display their own opinions but will sanctimoniously regurgitate the teachings of others without a trace of reasoning. They will instantly dismiss any new theory if it falls outside their comfort zone. It’s a sad fact that these casualties of pre-technology feel so disadvantaged and bitter about their own achievements that they act in this way. Perversely, the same information is available to them, but they just cannot seem to get over the fact that it took them years to learn what can be found in seconds nowadays.

Envy has always been ugly, but in the 20 or so years that I have researched, admired and more recently, grown and developed Bonsai, I have become less and less inclined to sympathise with small minded people. It can in some cases completely spoil the community feel of a forum. It can make the newer user of a forum feel stupid or inadequate when asking completely reasonable questions or discussing techniques, however valid or invalid. You could be forgiven for thinking that I’m not a fan of the internet, forums and social media, but you’d be wrong. I think that it’s one of the most important advances of the human race. We can now find somewhere instantly. We can now discover anything about anything in just a few moments. We are on a position to exchange our collective knowledge to solidify and then develop ourselves into a better, more enlightened species. We have the opportunity to shine. Experience still is irreplaceable. All the knowledge in the world won’t make you an expert. Being able to apply it is what sets you apart. But the learning process is much faster now, and experience is now gathered at a ferocious rate, both practically and existentially.

The conclusion I have come to is that progress is progressing faster than ever. Intellectual and experiential growth is expanding exponentially and will continue to do so until we are one fully integrated conscious. People are people and they will be who they will be, in the same way that trees will always be trees. We may not be able to accelerate the growth rates of species under our care in the same way that our understanding is accelerating, but we can still revel in the beauty of our pooled knowledge, and appreciate the possibilities of this and other wonderful art forms…. and we can, as a deeply developed civilised society of human beings, treat one another with respect, humility and love.


nb - I do, of course, see the irony in standing on my soapbox on this blog in spite of everything I've said.... ..........but I gotta be heard somehow DAMMIT!!


til next time.... ;o)