This struck me as being a pretty meaningless experiment, because he’s doing that busking in a space where people are actively trying to go elsewhere, and at rush hour, so with a high likelihood of time pressure etc. Even if people were recognising what level of playing was happening, they’d probably got significant pressure to not stop.
Mine are special, but it’s more “special needs”.
I’d take that one step further and call it ‘The Cult of Individualism’.
There’s a delicious irony in observing that it exists exactly because the whole of humanity is now one big homogenous marketplace which is being incessantly tutored by the same vested interests pedalling the same lies: all fronted by the golem of individualism, but all - paradoxically - delivering comforting uniformity.
I always look to evolutionary cues when trying to understand human behaviour and psychology. All sentient animals are egotistical - i.e. even the most primitive ideations place the thinker in the centre of being. If you have children, or pets, you’ll understand what I mean: in their ‘innocence’ they consider only themselves; selfishness has to be discouraged, altruism taught. This is all right and proper - without it, in a wild or ‘primitive’ state organisms would not survive.
But humanity thrived by learning to co-operate, by forming small packs, and then larger ones, which co-operated; first to hunt and defend the pack, and later to build, to educate, to trade - we’re the original Smart Virus…
Now we’ve become the victims of our own success - there’s so insanely many of us, and life is so easy compared to our primitive state, that we have to fill our time with trinkets and luxuries, and our minds with ludicrous notions of individualism in order to escape the knowledge that we are actually buried deep in a gigantic ocean of humanity in which we are indiscernible - plankton adrift in eternity.
All this makes us easy prey - if shoals of anchovies behaved as we do, the species would become extinct: only by co-operating do the many avoid predation that befalls the few. But humans buy the lie that is pandered constantly: so now society is a dirty word, cooperation is communism, collective good is treason - it’s all very bloody Orwellian.
We’re undone by stupidity - we may have these big ol’ brains, but we really don’t like using them, and will do almost anything to avoid thinking. It makes selling people stupid, dangerous ideas so very, very easy. If it was just hamburgers or bad art it wouldn’t matter, but those come with side orders of intolerance, fascism, ecocide, &c, &c…
tl;dr - I agree.
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When we wonder about believing we are special individuals there is a tenancy to look / label / judge others as ‘different’ or ‘other’. Its by focusing on these apparent differences we keep ourselves separate / outside / unique but also blocked and afraid. We walk in nature without seeing we are nature. Egoic individualism fails to note humanities common ground and similarities.
Racism for example is all about amplifying differences, rationalizing them and assuming superiority based on such judgements. Nationalism (racism’s crippled twin) is another example of narrow individualism -Thinking our ‘British tribe’ as special or magically unique. Brexit was sold focused on demonizing difference - posing them as a threat instead of looking at the similarities and common good. (note to cunts - Look at a map, we are part of Europe weather you like it or not)
Love thy neighbor is an impossibility if the individual deems them to be: less than / different / a threat or unworthy.
Go Humanz!
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So. Much. This.
Fear of The Other is a natural, animal instinct - in the primitive state wariness of the unknown kept you alive until friend/foe was established . No threat - no problem: there were no stupid labels attached, and no fearmongering propaganda. That’s why part of our DNA is Neanderthal - they and we looked and behaved very differently, but we interbred readily - and they weren’t merely a slightly different skin tone or belief system: they were a whole other species!
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Does that still mean that the hybrid offspring weren’t fertile ?
EDIT: Wiki says it’s messy:
A large part of the controversy stems from the vagueness of the term “species”, as it is generally used to distinguish two genetically isolated populations, but admixture between modern humans and Neanderthals is known to have occurred. However, the absence of Neanderthal-derived patrilineal Y-chromosome and matrilineal mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) in modern humans, along with the underrepresentation of Neanderthal X chromosome DNA, could imply reduced fertility or frequent sterility of some hybrid crosses, representing a partial biological reproductive barrier between the groups, and therefore species distinction. In 2014 geneticist Svante Pääbo summarised the controversy, describing such “taxonomic wars” as unresolvable, “since there is no definition of species perfectly describing the case”.
Yep, and the old notion of what defines a species has crumbled around the edges a fair bit in the last few decades. The genetic absolutist approach is handy for simplifying hugely complex ideas when labels are useful, but then so were the pre-genetic object-focussed ideas… Make a rule, and life seems to find a way around it…!
I love this comparison between 1984 and Brave New World and wholeheartedly agree Huxley’s version of Distopia is a far closer match to today’s society.
Amazing to think Brave New World was written in 1932 and the passage below was written in 1985, before the dawn of the internet and mobile phones constantly connected to an infinite distraction.
We were keeping our eye on 1984. When the year came and the prophecy didn’t, thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves. The roots of liberal democracy had held. Wherever else the terror had happened, we, at least, had not been visited by Orwellian nightmares.
But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell’s dark vision, there was another - slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley’s vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.
What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.” In 1984, Orwell added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we fear will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we desire will ruin us.
This book is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right.
Amusing Ourselves to Death Neil Postman
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They both held hands with the same octopus - but he’s a slippery cephalopod, and has others up his sleeves…
Japanman understand.
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What an enlightening, informative, well thought out post. You feeling yourself hun ?
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FFS don’t call him a hun 
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I didn’t write it unfortunately. I did pen a comparison as part of my Higher English Exam (Scottish A level equivalent) thinking I was being edgy and original.
Unbeknown to me at me at the time, Neil Postman had done an infinitely better job of it ten years previously and Roger Waters named an album after it.
Yeah, but I did ask him if he was feeling himself. Sorta knew the answer 
Apologies Mike that was a wee Glasgow joke.
Tony is a typiclly handsome Glasgow Celtic supporter and “hun” is what Glasgow Rangers supporters are universally referred to in Scotland.
Typical Rangers supporter or hun 
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Didn’t realise Bojo had family in Scotland 
He’s definitely a hun.
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I have a dim recollection of a tale of blue (?) hot dogs that the vendor described as a “hun in a bun”.
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