This is Water
There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water?”David Foster Wallace (2005)
It’s the perfect description of a Zeitgeist … the water in which we swim.
We can’t see it. We can’t hear it. We can kinda sorta feel it, if we focus really hard, but only kinda sorta. All the same, because it’s part of a social system and not a physical system, WE create it. Not in a conscious fashion. We can’t set out to create a Zeitgeist.
It’s like a stadium crowd holding up cards for the TV audience. They can’t see the picture they’re making … they have no idea what it looks like or what their role in its making might be. But they’re told/asked to do it. So they do.
THIS is a Zeitgeist.
What’s the matter, Ben? You got a problem holding this card up over your head? It’s for the troops. You support the troops, don’t you? Don’t you?
Yes, I support the troops. And yes, I have a problem with this.
Why? Because I don’t trust the State and the Oligarchy to use the common knowledge of “support for the troops” – the crowd watching the crowd express a public act of allegiance to the military, so that everyone knows that everyone knows that yes, it is right and proper to support the troops – for the right reasons.
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