Babbling Bubbleheads

This unique YouTube video, by Candy Spilner and Allan Rubin, captures some interesting aspects of epistemology, conversation, language, art and music. The video may seem pointless, even stupid — at first glance.

Look closer. Observe carefully.

It depicts the babbling bubbleheads who (having no deep understanding of the shortness and fragility of life) continue talking about nothing important — until suddenly (pop)  — life is over.

When was the last time you had a deep conversation about the meaning (and purpose) of life — with someone you love? Pop! Too late — your life is over. Babble, babble, babble … bloop! It mocks and ridicules post-modern foolishness, babbling bloggers, pontificating political pundits, promise-breaking politicians, TV talking-heads, shameless gossiping twitter-heads, and the continuing cacophony of all our careless conversations. In the babbling bubbleheads we see with penetrating perception – a reflection of ourselves.

Bubbleheads

Peggy Noonan is an honest bubblehead, because she admits that she’s a bubblehead. In a recent Wall Street Journal opinion page article, she touched briefly on the topics of “knowing”, epistemology, the “limits of knowing”, and presuppositions. However, she uses the friendlier, funnier word — to describe human knowledge limitations: Bubbleheads.

Peggy admits that people living in big cities, working for big media companies are particularly prone to the bubblehead syndrome:

Let me say of myself and almost everyone I know in the press, all the chattering classes and political strategists and inside dopesters of the Amtrak Acela Line: We live in a bubble and have around us bubble people. We are Bubbleheads. We know this and try to compensate for it by taking road trips through the continent — we’re on one now, in Minneapolis — where we talk to normal people. But we soon forget the pithy, knowing thing the garage mechanic said in the diner, and anyway we weren’t there long enough in the continent to KNOW, to absorb. We view through a prism of hyper-sophistication…And again we know this, we know this is our limit, our lack…But we also forget it… And when you forget you’re a Bubblehead you get in trouble, you misjudge things.

Green, Smart and Sophisticated

Smart and Sophisticated

Smart and Sophisticated

“People in your time,” Evelyn had interrupted flippantly, “were wise and good. Nobody wants to be wise and good in these days. We want to be smart and sophisticated. Your good old stuffy dining-rooms were like your good old stuffy consciences. Now my breakfast room is symbolic — the green and white for the joy of living, and the black for my sins.”

From page 96, in the book “Mistress Anne”, by Temple Bailey, published by The Penn Publishing Company, 1917

I Will Destroy the Wisdom of the Wise

γέγραπται γάρ· ἀπολῶ τὴν σοφίαν τῶν σοφῶν, καὶ τὴν σύνεσιν τῶν συνετῶν ἀθετήσω.

I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning will I bring to nought.

γεγραπται γαρ απολω την σοφιαν των σοφων και την συνεσιν των συνετων αθετησω.

I WILL DESTROY THE WISDOM OF THE WISE,
AND THE CLEVERNESS OF THE CLEVER, I WILL SET ASIDE.

Works of John Locke - page. 81 - Quoting the prophet Isaiah

Works of John Locke - page. 81 - Quoting the prophet Isaiah

לָכֵן, הִנְנִי יוֹסִף לְהַפְלִיא אֶת-הָעָם-הַזֶּה–הַפְלֵא וָפֶלֶא; וְאָבְדָה חָכְמַת חֲכָמָיו, וּבִינַת נְבֹנָיו תִּסְתַּתָּר