I feel like the Internet needs to be disarmed in some way. There needs to be a philosophical undermining of the Internet. We take it too seriously and too literally. For a reference we go to Wikipedia, which is full of inaccuracies and misinformation. It's kind of beautiful - it's all the product of imagination; it's not reality at all.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that we need to approach the Internet with a more critical and less literal mindset.
Sufjan Stevens expresses a concern about society's serious and literal interpretation of the Internet, advocating for a philosophical reevaluation of its impact. He highlights the inaccuracies present in sources like Wikipedia, suggesting that while the Internet may be a beautiful product of human imagination, it should not be mistaken for an ultimate reality. This reflection calls for a more nuanced understanding of online information and its role in shaping perceptions.
In practice
During a lecture on digital literacy, I might quote Stevens to highlight the need for critical thinking online.
I still feel like I have a lot to learn in the realm of sound experimentation, and I think I would like things to get noisier and weirder and more distressed and more aggressive, but I don't know if that's something that would be suitable for public consumption.
I believe that music is a spiritual language. My everyday self is pretty mundane and boring, but when I'm making music it allows for me to communicate a kind of transcendence that I can't communicate otherwise.
Every time Jimmy Scott sings, it's the same but slightly different. I don't know how he does that or where he gets that from. I think it's instinct. Nothing he does is by chance; he's in complete control of what he's doing. He's just beautiful and unique.
Musicians are often asked to answer for an entire culture, or for an entire movement. It's a process of commodification. It becomes packaged and summarized in a word like 'emo' or 'grunge'... or 'folk music.' I think that's just language itself, trying to understand the mysteries of the world.
Is it freedom to be a slave to the senses, to anger, to jealousies and a hundred other petty things that must occur every day in human life?
What I propose, therefore, is very simple: it is nothing more than to think what we are doing
Beyond Good and Evil, Aphorism 153
Genuine equality between the sexes can only be realized in the process of the socialist transformation of society as a whole.
Where every man in a state has a vote, brutal laws are impossible.
Heaven walks among us ordinarily muffled in such triple or tenfold disguises that the wisest are deceived and no one suspects the days to be gods.
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