How We Now Spend Our Time

Upon this Empire, as upon that of Rome, calamity has at last fallen. A host of intellectual barbarians has burst in upon it, and has occupied by force the length and breadth of it. The result has been astounding. Had the invaders been barbarians only, they might have been repelled easily; but they were barbarians armed with the most powerful weapons of civilization. They were a phenomenon new to history: they showed us real knowledge in the hands of real ignorance; and the work of the combination thus far has been ruin, not reorganization. Few great movements at the beginning have been conscious of their own true tendency; but no great movement has mistaken it like modern Positivism. Seeing just too well to have the true instinct of blindness, and too ill to have the proper guidance from sight, it has tightened its clutch upon the world of thought, only to impart to it its own confusion. What lies before men now is to reduce this confusion to order, by a patient and calm employment of the intellect.
— W.H. Mallock
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It with a heavy heart that I must admit to a mistake. Some mistakes breed cynicism. This was one of those. It didn’t seem to be dangerous at the time. All that I did was, after asking an innocent question, to simply look at the most watched YouTube videos of all time.

It turns out that the most popular videos on the internet are music videos. YouTube has, in other words, replaced MTV. But the results are not pleasant.

According YouTube’s view count, as of November 11, 2012, the top ten most watched YouTube videos in the world are:

(10) Dom Omar’s pop song “Danza Kuduro,” featuring lounging and dancing girls in bikinis.

(9) Michel Teló’s on stage performance of pop song “Ai se eu te pego!”

(8) “Charlie Bit My Finger — Again!” which features a 56 second recording of a one-year-old infant biting the finger of a three-year-old infant, who subsequently offers commentary upon the same.

(7) Lady Gaga’s techno pop “Bad Romance,” featuring an S&M styled subplot involving the kidnaping, drugging, and selling into sexual slavery of an emaciated ninety-pound waif all along to the lyrics “Rah, rah, ah, ah, ah; Roma, roma, ma; Gaga, ooh la la, Want your bad romance.”

(6) A band entitled “LMFAO” performing the electro techno “dance-pop” song, “Party Rock Anthem,” featuring the lyrics, “Party rock is in the house tonight, Everybody just have a good time, And we gonna make you lose your mind, We just wanna see ya shake that.”

(5) Shakira’s pop song “Waka Waka (This Time for Africa).

If you are starting to notice a couple main themes here, the same themes continue.

The four most viewed videos on the internet are:

(4) Eminem and Rihanna’s “Love The Way You Lie” featuring, among other things, male domestic violence in the bedroom, wall punching, and mirror punching that culminates in sex along to the lyrics “Just gonna stand there and watch me burn, Well that’s alright because I like the way it hurts, Just gonna stand there and hear me cry, Well that’s alright because I love the way you lie, I love the way you lie, I love the way you lie” (Rihanna) and “If she ever tries to fuckin’ leave again, I’ma tie her to the bed and set this house on fire” (Eminem).

(3) Jennifer Lopez’s electropop “On the Floor,” which appears to be a pounding headache inducing techno version of a drug-infused bacchanalian orgy along to the lyrics “It’s a new generation of party people … Let me introduce you to my party people … I’m loose and everybody knows I get off the chain … Now pu-pu-pu-pu-pump it up and back it up like a Tonka truck … It’s getting ill, it’s getting sick on the floor …” All quite delightful, really.

(2) South Korean techno pop artist PSY’s “Gangnum Style,” which, according to Guinness World Records is the most “liked” video in YouTube history, and features an assortment of images of what appears to be the detonation of a bomb inside of a garbage dump, a horse stable, a toilet, a school playground, women dressed like adolescent young girls, a train station, and “PSY” issuing screams directed at a woman’s rear end, all along to the lyrics “Oppa is Gangnam style, Gangnam style, Oppa is Gangnam style, Gangnam style, Oppa is Gangnam style, Eh — Sexy Lady, Oppa is Gangnam style, Eh — Sexy Lady oh oh oh oh …” (and ad infinitum).

And finally, the most watched YouTube video in the modern world with over 800 million views is:

(1) Justin Bieber’s pop song, “Baby,” featuring a prepubescent boy ruining a perfectly good bowling alley and shrieking “I’ll buy you anything, I’ll buy you any ring, Cause I’m in pieces, Baby fix me” and then ever incessantly repeating the chorus, “And I was, like, baby, baby, baby, oh, Like baby, baby, baby, no, Like baby, baby, baby, oh …” This is one of the most powerful influences in modern day American culture.

Just to clarify, Justin Bieber’s “Baby” music video on YouTube runs three minutes and forty-five seconds. It’s been viewed over 800 million times.  The average book takes about six hours to read.  Yet, let’s go crazy and overestimate that the average book takes sixty hours to read.

If the reading of books had been replaced watching just this one YouTube video, then, that’s fifty million books that were not read.

Quod erat demonstrandum, we see the current state of the American mind.

Justin Bieber is a 16-year-old at the time of his singing “Baby.”  On August 19, 1785, an uncle wrote the following to his 15-year-old nephew:

DEAR PETER, – I received, by Mr. Mazzei, your letter of April the 20th. I am much mortified to hear that you have lost so much time; and that when you arrived in Williamsburg, you were not at all advanced from what you were when you left Monticello. Time now begins to be precious to you. Every day you lose, will retard a day your entrance on that public stage whereon you may begin to be useful to yourself. However, the way to repair the loss is to improve the future time. I trust, that with your dispositions, even the acquisition of science is a pleasing employment. I can assure you, that the possession of it is, what (next to an honest heart) will above all things render you dear to your friends, and give you fame and promotion in your own country. When your mind shall be well improved with science, nothing will be necessary to place you in the highest points of view, but to pursue the interests of your country, the interests of your friends, and your own interests also, with the purest integrity, the most chaste honor. The defect of these virtues can never be made up by all the other acquirements of body and mind …

An honest heart being the first blessing, a knowing head is the second. It is time for you now to begin to be choice in your reading; to begin to pursue a regular course in it; and not to suffer yourself to be turned to the right or left by reading any thing out of that course. I have long ago digested a plan for you, suited to the circumstances in which you will be placed. This I will detail to you, from time to time, as you advance. For the present, I advise you to begin a course of antient history, reading every thing in the original and not in translations. First read Goldsmith’s history of Greece. This will give you a digested view of that field. Then take up antient history in the detail, reading the following books, in the following order: Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophontis Hellenica, Xenophontis Anabasis, Arrian, Quintus Curtius, Diodorus Siculus, Justin. This shall form the first stage of your historical reading, and is all I need mention to you now. The next, will be of Roman history (Livy, Sullust, Caesar, Cicero’s epistles, Suetonius, Tacitus, Gibbon.). From that, we will come down to modern history. In Greek and Latin poetry, you have read or will read at school, Virgil, Terence, Horace, Anacreon, Theocritus, Homer, Euripides, Sophocles. Read also Milton’s Paradise Lost, Shakspeare, Ossian, Pope’s and Swift’s works, in order to form your style in your own language. In morality, read Epictetus, Xenophontis Memorabilia, Plato’s Socratic dialogues, Cicero’s philosophies, Antoninus, and Seneca. In order to assure a certain progress in this reading, consider what hours you have free from the school and the exercises of the school. Give about two of them, every day, to exercise; for health must not be sacrificed to learning. A strong body makes the mind strong …

Having ascribed proper hours to exercise, divide what remain, (I mean of your vacant hours) into three portions. Give the principal to History, the other two, which should be shorter, to Philosophy and Poetry. Write to me once every month or two, and let me know the progress you make. Tell me in what manner you employ every hour in the day. The plan I have proposed for you is adapted to your present situation only. When that is changed, I shall propose a corresponding change of plan. I have ordered the following books to be sent to you from London, to the care of Mr. Madison. Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon’s Hellenics, Anabasis and Memorabilia, Cicero’s works, Baretti’s Spanish and English Dictionary, Martin’s Philosophical Grammar, and Martin’s Philosophia Britannica. I will send you the following from hence. Bezout’s Mathematics, De la Lande’s Astronomy, Muschenbrock’s Physics, Quintus Curtius, Justin, a Spanish Grammar, and some Spanish books. You will observe that Martin, Bezout, De la Lande, and Muschenbrock are not in the preceding plan. They are not to be opened till you go to the University. You are now, I expect, learning French. You must push this; because the books which will be put into your hands when you advance into Mathematics, Natural philosophy, Natural history, &c. will be mostly French, these sciences being better treated by the French than the English writers. Our future connection with Spain renders that the most necessary of the modern languages, after the French. When you become a public man, you may have occasion for it, and the circumstance of your possessing that language, may give you a preference over other candidates. I have nothing further to add for the present, but husband well your time, cherish your instructors, strive to make every body your friend; and be assured that nothing will be so pleasing, as your success, to, Dear Peter,

Your’s affectionately,

Thomas Jefferson

So there we have it. 15-year-olds and anyone older have the following options to spend their time:

Option 1:

You can cultivate your habits of mind by watching short YouTube videos over and over again repeating the lyrics: Oppa is Gangnam style, Gangnam style, Oppa is Gangnam style, Gangnam style, Oppa is Gangnam style, Eh — Sexy Lady, Oppa is Gangnam style, Eh — Sexy Lady oh oh oh oh … And I was, like, baby, baby, baby, oh, Like baby, baby, baby, no, Like baby, baby, baby, oh … And this will form who you are as a person.

Option 2:

You can cultivate your habits of mind by learning languages and reading, in your spare hours, Homer, Herodotus, Thucydides, Hesiod, Pindar, Sappho, Xenophon, Arrian, Quintus Curtius, Diodorus Siculus, Plato, Aristotle, Euclid, Appolonius, Plutarch, Epictetus, Ptolemy, Plotinus, Livy, Sullust, Caesar, Cicero, Suetonius, Tacitus, Gibbon, Virgil, Terence, Horace, Anacreon, Theocritus, Euripides, Sophocles, Aeschylus, Aristophanes, Shakespeare, Milton, Ossian, Pope, Swift, and countless others. This could form who you are as a person.