Wednesday, December 26, 2012

Winter, 1963 - 1964: Too Much Information

Anais Nin in this diary entry speaks of biographers and asks, "What race of men feeds on other's lives?" She is concerned with the letters that writers of her era wrote each other, filled with secrets and sacred trusts, that if they fell in the wrong hands, could make public what had been personal and intimate.

Anais speaks of historians in much the same way: "Many lies will be told, many inventions, distortions, in spite of documentation, as are told in fiction."

In today's world, with all the various avenues of social media, people are free to feed on their own lives, share too much information with anyone who will listen, tell lies, invent, distort, turn themselves into someone they want to be or wish they were, someone they think is better than themselves, someone they think others will find fascinating, interesting, a rock star.

What would Anais Nin think of all the boorish details that people today provide the world, the me, me, me focus that makes average people feel like celebrities?

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