The power of repetition: November 25, 1996 issue of New Thinking

November 25, 1996 New Thinking:
The power of repetition

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November 25, 1996

The power of repetition

By Gerry McGovern

Repetition makes the sea strong.

I often wondered why the Blues is such a powerful music. How out of it grew R&B, rock ‘n’ roll, soul, rap. Certainly, it is the voice of poor American blacks who, denied opportunity, sang the blues to find escape, beauty and expression.

But the Blues is a very repetitive music. It digs the same piece of earth again and again. It plays the same notes, has the same basic theme of love and despair, of rent being due and the devil knocking at the door. Many find it boring in its repetitiveness.

But it is in its very repetition that it finds much of its strength and depth. Digging the same ground gets you deeper, gets you closer to a single truth. There can be more genuine learning in exploring a single truth than in skimming a sea of them.

In the November issue of Wired (which came out in October), the cover article was about the ‘Burning Man’ festival. In the ‘Wired’ and ‘Tired’ section of the magazine, Burning Man was described as ‘Tired.’

I found it slightly laughable that Wired should put on its cover a subject which inside it considered tired.

The digital age digerati often behave like teenage rock ‘n’ rollers. They are full of energy, full of attitude, full of bombast, and very often full of crap. I love rock ‘n’ roll. I performed a bit myself and wrote rock journalism for several years. It is a totally necessary and absolutely beautiful force.

However, I never liked the rock journalism which was obsessed with this month’s fling, who behaved like little trend factories, and who felt that they had this godly right to rule on what was cool and uncool.

The digital age has a rock ‘n’ roll feeling of frantic change. Many start-up companies are like young bands, dreaming of that smash hit, their sixteen minutes of fame, and mega bucks.

Publications such as Wired are in danger of being seen as rock ‘n’ technology magazines. Stage-diving proclamations that politics is over, that politicians should roll over, because here comes the netizen, may go down well at the club, but drop like lead balloons in the serious light of day.

Just because this is an age of revolutionary change, doesn’t necessarily mean that everything must or will change. Some things always seem to remain the same. The number of royalty ruling Russia before the October Revolution, for example, was roughly equal to the number of communist apparatchiks ruling it after.

Maybe fundamental and positive change for humanity can be had in this revolutionary era. But it will not be achieved by commentators who are obsessed with what is wired or tired, cool or uncool. We need a larger picture and a longer lens.

How is a genuine society going to evolve on the Internet? One that has space and protection for children. One that has genuine room for women. One where old people can feel at home. One where the disenfranchised and downtrodden can find a voice?

There is more to humanity than the cool voices of rich, white males. For the Internet to develop genuine substance like the Blues, it needs to embrace those other voices.

It needs to find a few truths worth repeating.

Gerry McGovern

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Just because this is an age of revolutionary change, doesn’t necessarily mean that everything must or will change.