Don't you hate when somebody entirely kills a poem by missing the point or totally misinterpreting the meaning/context?
I just saw a cool dude who wrote a book about the historical perspective of societies' dealing and coping with technological overload and being inundated with new technology and information. His major premise was an epiphany he had out on a lake after dropping his phone in the water and losing it for the day, unwiring himself, removing himself from the grid, from the world. Most of us with any spiritual inclination know to leave the phone away and turn of the computer from time to time to clear our heads, or at the least to learn to put the thing on mute every once in a while. I brought my phone in my pocket into Mass today, but it was muted and I didn't even think to check it for hours and hours...
His idea was great, I totally agreed with him. I liked that his book referenced Seneca who dealt with the overload of mail and being to well informed, to much information to much knowledge, a world to large, unable to disconnect and be alone in your own head..
but then he quoted Hamlet in an interview on the Newshour I was watching..
It is the scene where the Ghost gives a revelation, and Hamlet records it on his writing tables...
Powers suggests that this is Shakespeare discussing the concept of a more productive integration of new information technology.. while there are of course wonderful uses of technology I don't believe that was quite Shakespeare's point.
Quote:
O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain!
My tables,--meet it is I set it down,
That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain;
At least I'm sure it may be so in Denmark:
(Writing)
So, uncle, there you are. Now to my word;
It is 'Adieu, adieu! remember me.'
I have sworn 't.
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Wasn't Shakespeare in fact criticizing the technocrats, dependent upon their technology and knowledge even in the face of deep, supernatural revelation? I always thought Shakespeare was presenting quite a caricature of the modern man, a man who had trivialized the supernatural or even divine and squandered wisdom with fancy? Doesn't Hamlet look silly to y'all, rushing out to grab his notebook rather than simply listening to the Ghost and absorbing the depth and wisdom of the revelation?
Thats how I always interpreted it, that Shakespeare was making fun of Hamlet's need to commit the words to his tables, and almost in a panic at that, as if hearing the words of a ghost were not impacting enough to ingrain them into memory!
when is the last time a ghost or a vision spoke to you?