"My concern is that we have created a world where [...] too much is accessible too soon"
I share your concern and think you've put it very succinctly in this piece. If I were to try to sum up my own position on the digital 'superstructure' we live under: T'internet is a wonderful piece of technology (I'm not a neo-luddite, despite appearances :-) -- a gigantic library accessible to every man -- text, pictures, music! Social media seem to be, to a greater or lesser extent, detrimental to the wellbeing of most adults. It seems highly addictive, steals time and focus and makes people shallow and narcissistic, so the women love it. The online lifestyle as practiced by the young is, I fear, soul-destroying. I have no children of my own, but I can tell you for a fact that my niece and nephew have grown up to be Americans, for all practical purposes. The contemporary, American online world is their whole frame of reference and it makes me very sad each time I realize what a mental prison that is.
How funny you should mention 'Cider With Rosie' and that you've propped up the bar with L. Lee! I read that wonderful childhood memoir less than a month ago (and followed through with his walking-through-Spain sequel. Leigh-Fermor next, after I've chewed through a stack of Russian WWI & bolshevik/revolution stuff ... don't ask!) but I cannot remember what put me onto it. Have you mentioned it in one of your previous pieces that I might have read? There's also a beautiful, rather impressionistic film-version (albeit uploaded in fairly low-res : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60VzhmKpYWg) that I've enjoyed.
I liked 'Cider With Rosie' because it told not only of idyllic bucolica, but also of the less ... agreeable aspects of village life. The tale of how the young men of the village slipped quietly out of the pub, one by one, when the 'prodigal son' spends his first winter evening back home in the village, boasting at the bar, paying for rounds with gold coin ... how they meet him up the road, when he's stumbling back to his parent's old house, never getting that far. How the village closes ranks and keeps schtum. The village can be ruthless. I can believe that. Warts and all as they say -- 'Cider With Rosie' is no pastoral idyll.
Then there's the time the boys planned to rape the slightly daft, Christian girl on her way home through the forest. And L.L playing doctor with that lass down by the river. And the portrayal of the Mother ... loving, silly, loyal ... And then there's Rosie. I hope every boy meets a Rosie in their life, because she closes one part of your life and opens a new one. In real life, not online. A boy and a girl, fumbling excitedly, finding out. Leave them alone!
Slad, in the Cotswolds ... it's a very beautiful landscape -- quintessentially 'English'. Don't you live round those parts?
Oh bugger, now you’ve started something - I’m going to have to go back and re-read A Time of Gifts! But, no, thank you for a very thoughtful comment. You put some flesh on the bones of what I said about Cider with Rosie, and that really helps make the point. It’s not a question of avoiding issues, but the scope and scale needs to be comprehensible.
Don't tell me how it ends! Collected a parcel containing 'A Time of Gifts' and the two others in the (posthumous) trilogy only a couple days ago. As mentioned: I need to get through a stack of Russian misery before I can treat myself.
"I know, I know, I run the risk, here, of being accused of being the old git with the rose-tinted spectacles of nostalgia. But it’s not that. My concern is that we have created a world where, because too much is accessible too soon, many young minds are not able to process many of the things, and skills, that matter. Rather, by being over-loaded and over-stimulated with ‘detached’ information, the natural reaction is incomprehension or, worse, a kind of universal fear."
"My concern is that we have created a world where [...] too much is accessible too soon"
I share your concern and think you've put it very succinctly in this piece. If I were to try to sum up my own position on the digital 'superstructure' we live under: T'internet is a wonderful piece of technology (I'm not a neo-luddite, despite appearances :-) -- a gigantic library accessible to every man -- text, pictures, music! Social media seem to be, to a greater or lesser extent, detrimental to the wellbeing of most adults. It seems highly addictive, steals time and focus and makes people shallow and narcissistic, so the women love it. The online lifestyle as practiced by the young is, I fear, soul-destroying. I have no children of my own, but I can tell you for a fact that my niece and nephew have grown up to be Americans, for all practical purposes. The contemporary, American online world is their whole frame of reference and it makes me very sad each time I realize what a mental prison that is.
How funny you should mention 'Cider With Rosie' and that you've propped up the bar with L. Lee! I read that wonderful childhood memoir less than a month ago (and followed through with his walking-through-Spain sequel. Leigh-Fermor next, after I've chewed through a stack of Russian WWI & bolshevik/revolution stuff ... don't ask!) but I cannot remember what put me onto it. Have you mentioned it in one of your previous pieces that I might have read? There's also a beautiful, rather impressionistic film-version (albeit uploaded in fairly low-res : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60VzhmKpYWg) that I've enjoyed.
I liked 'Cider With Rosie' because it told not only of idyllic bucolica, but also of the less ... agreeable aspects of village life. The tale of how the young men of the village slipped quietly out of the pub, one by one, when the 'prodigal son' spends his first winter evening back home in the village, boasting at the bar, paying for rounds with gold coin ... how they meet him up the road, when he's stumbling back to his parent's old house, never getting that far. How the village closes ranks and keeps schtum. The village can be ruthless. I can believe that. Warts and all as they say -- 'Cider With Rosie' is no pastoral idyll.
Then there's the time the boys planned to rape the slightly daft, Christian girl on her way home through the forest. And L.L playing doctor with that lass down by the river. And the portrayal of the Mother ... loving, silly, loyal ... And then there's Rosie. I hope every boy meets a Rosie in their life, because she closes one part of your life and opens a new one. In real life, not online. A boy and a girl, fumbling excitedly, finding out. Leave them alone!
Slad, in the Cotswolds ... it's a very beautiful landscape -- quintessentially 'English'. Don't you live round those parts?
Oh bugger, now you’ve started something - I’m going to have to go back and re-read A Time of Gifts! But, no, thank you for a very thoughtful comment. You put some flesh on the bones of what I said about Cider with Rosie, and that really helps make the point. It’s not a question of avoiding issues, but the scope and scale needs to be comprehensible.
Don't tell me how it ends! Collected a parcel containing 'A Time of Gifts' and the two others in the (posthumous) trilogy only a couple days ago. As mentioned: I need to get through a stack of Russian misery before I can treat myself.
Here's a Hungarian beauty for you, my friend:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOqiolytFw4
Never mind the suicide!
Memories of "galloping" around the woods with a Mac buttoned round my neck. Parent free days at Butlins. You've made me think David, thanks.x
"I know, I know, I run the risk, here, of being accused of being the old git with the rose-tinted spectacles of nostalgia. But it’s not that. My concern is that we have created a world where, because too much is accessible too soon, many young minds are not able to process many of the things, and skills, that matter. Rather, by being over-loaded and over-stimulated with ‘detached’ information, the natural reaction is incomprehension or, worse, a kind of universal fear."
That says it all. Bravo.
"... the natural reaction is incomprehension or, worse, a kind of universal fear."
I'd like to second that. The young are AFRAID. This is very bad.