Stuck up a one-way street

Over the years, I have spent a lot of time listening to smart people slabbering online, and it has come to the point that I often now find myself semi-numb to the ‘mind-blowing’ stuff they have to say.

On podcasts and chat forums, men and women – experts beyond experts in their respective fields – recline, usually drinking keg-sized cans of energy juice, and talk about the big ideas of the day.

Often, they preface their discussions with noble sentiments like, ‘Open debate is what changes the world’.

But there I sit, their true audience, usually in my living room, usually eating, usually – but not always – dressed, watching on, as these psychiatrists and philosophers, scientists and writers, glide in conversation across the high skies of the mind; all, if truth be told, for the entertainment of de-facto voyeurs like myself.

It is great. I love it. It is like having a seat at a table during a Nobel Prize ceremony, but without any of the awful anxiety that every head at the table will at some point swivel in your direction, and, with a hard swallow and deep breath, you will have to look the last person who spoke dead in the eye and say, “Jesus, that’s mad, hi.”

But, from the bunker of my own living room, hidden behind a one-way screen, removed by a distance of who-knows-how-many miles from the actual people I am watching, I am safe from address, interaction and the potential humiliation that comes with being in a truly social setting.

That is what we really love about podcasts – and it is probably the same thing that we love about radio and TV, too.

It is a one way relationship, where we can take without giving, and nobody kicks up a fuss.

It is a friendship that expects nothing from us; totally passive, almost parasitical.

There we can sit, slack-jawed, partially-clothed, semiconscious, feeding on the intellectual stimuli they give us, while contributing absolutely nothing.

For the introvert, oddball, or socially awkward person, the appeal of podcasts does not have to be explained.

However, I am slightly concerned that my extensive listening has had at least one potentially detrimental effect on me.

Over the years, I have heard so many radical, controversial and/or counter-intuitive ideas, that my sensitivity to them seems to have deadened.

Years ago, when my sole source of information was my parents, teachers, peers and terrestrial TV, new, weird and challenging notions had the power to rock my world.

Now, however, I seem to be far more resilient, or, to put it less favourably, receptive, to them in general.

I’ll give you an example.

I remember hearing during school that the testing of the Large Hadron Collider – the world’s largest particle collider – could potentially tear a black hole in the atmosphere, and I genuinely did not sleep right for about a month.

However, only the other day, while eating breakfast, I heard some pessimistic scientist prophesise that a robot-reeped apocalypse is imminent in the next few years, and still I managed to finish my Cheerios.

Then, not three hours later, while eating my lunch, I heard one of his more hopeful peers predict that an AI supported utopia was on our doorstep.

I grunted a semi-consoled grunt, and then I finished my sausage sandwich.

Later on, as I sat down to my spuds, I would not have been shocked if some crackpot professor from Cork had appeared on the screen, and made a forecast estimating how long it would be – and how much it would cost – before every Irish household was able to have its very own Michael D. Higgins clone to help out around the house.

To be honest, I would probably have finished my chops, lifted my phone, and had a skim on Amazon to see if there was a prototype available yet.

It seems to me that big ideas are a bit like drugs. The more you are exposed to, the more it takes for you to feel the effects of them.

In a world awash with information, even the most powerful notions lose some of their potency.