Lofty Beings
In the pages of Everyday Feminism, creative colossus Katherine Garcia is attempting to justify her suboptimal life choices and their suboptimal consequences:
I am – and always have been – a daydreamer. There is proof of this in my school records, which contain copious notes from teachers, commenting on the disproportionate amount of time I spent looking out the window, compared to the amount of time I spent paying attention to their lectures. And to this day, I dread anything that gets in the way of my daydreaming.
Hey, I didn’t say she was doing it well. But in short, Ms Garcia regards work outside of her creative endeavours as “very distracting,” chiefly because,
it doesn’t allow me to zone out like I need to in order to reach the level of mental creativity so necessary to my well-being.
A delicate flower in a cruel world.
My creativity has been criticised because it’s viewed as unnecessary, distracting, disrupting, and a waste of time.
Well, in part I suppose that depends on whether or not that creativity and extensive daydreaming – all that zoning out – pays the bills.
I know from experience that it’s damn near impossible to think straight, let alone get anything done, while worrying about how you’re going to pay your bills on an empty stomach.
Ah. Apparently, “society” is deterring life’s daydreamers from “pursuing creative fields – like fine art, film-making, writing, music, and dance.” And there’s an inexcusable “failure to acknowledge the contributions made by creative people in all sectors of society,” which makes said daydreamers feel guilty and inadequate, which is terribly oppressive.
Coming from a low-income family, it seemed more beneficial to pursue a career in business – something that would bring more immediate rewards that I could then transfer over to my family.
Not a trivial point. In financial terms, the lifetime return on an arts degree is very often negative and there’s something to be said for practicality, especially if your background is a modest one. Social mobility presupposes a certain realism, a pragmatism, and making choices accordingly – say, with regard to the costs and benefits of tertiary education, which is for most an expensive one-time opportunity. Perhaps now is a good time to glance at Ms Garcia’s biography:
Katherine Garcia… is a recent college graduate with a BA in Radio, TV and Film, and soon-to-be graduate school student pursuing a Masters in Women and Gender Studies.
As I was saying, pragmatism. Ms Garcia, however, is determined to find fault elsewhere:
Creative work is… something that society infantilises and dismisses as hobbies or something only children do – not as a way to make a living. When this happens, it causes creative work to be severely undervalued to the point that we begin to charge less for our work or even work for free!
The term “severely undervalued” sounds just a wee bit question-begging. A thing is generally worth whatever someone is prepared to pay for it.
This means we are unconsciously contributing to the harmful assumption of the starving artist and exploiting our own work. It’s what allows others to do the same and keeps this oppressive cycle operating.
Note the slyly catch-all term “creative work.” So far as I can make out, the creative people who earn a living in, say, visual effects departments or smartphone design aren’t generally regarded as infantile hobbyists. It does matter what kind of creative work a person is indulging in, along with the skill with which they do it and whether there’s a market for those skills and their results. To bundle all kinds of creativity together, and all levels of expertise, as if no distinctions should be made, as if all were equally valuable, is both woolly and disingenuous. And as for an “oppressive cycle,” I’m inclined to suggest that getting into further debt for a grad school degree in Women and Gender Studies is possibly not an ideal way to help one’s family economically, or indeed oneself.
However, these are prosaic matters and pale beside the grandeur and importance of being a creative person, and thereby hovering on higher moral planes:
Creatives, we are multi-dimensional creatures. Let’s not let our abilities be defined, limited and constrained. Let them flourish like the enlightening work we do… The work we do is important and it is empowering, particularly when it is bringing awareness to social justice issues. Much of creative work does exactly this while other sectors of society refuse to acknowledge the social ills we endure and even erases them.
You see, Ms Garcia, by virtue of being a creative person, is a thinker of profound and important thoughts, a bringer of wisdom, a multi-dimensional creature, one whose oppression is being erased and belittled by society. Possibly on account of her enlightening radicalism.
Lordy, a button. I wonder what it does.
“That she survives despite her not contributing to society means that those of us in mining, farming, fishing, forestry, oil and gas, and other primary extractors are so good at what we do that we can afford to support society’s dead weight.”
I am increasingly of the opinion that we cannot afford to support such corrosively malicious parasites.
“What is it with progressives and passive voice?”
It’s a form of obfuscation. And they cannot give it up because without lies the left would have no voice at all.
lost a post…
Thanks C_Miner (up thread) – a good contribution and not at all a rant
Meanwhile, it’s Whiteness History Month at Portland Community College
I’m not surprised that they can fill a whole month of hating on whitey. Maybe prospective students to a slightly better post-secondary school such as Harvard can go there to get these ‘requirements’ out of the way.
“I’m not surprised that they can fill a whole month of hating on whitey”
They’re trying to compensate for the fact that we can fill a four-year degree program with the good things that whitey has done for the world. Plus a masters program. And a doctoral program. They can’t STAND that.
“Let’s not let our abilities be defined, limited and constrained. Let them flourish like the enlightening work we do…”
This reminds me of the 60/70’s acid users.
At Ace, runaway italics occasion a trip to a mythical “barrel”. Not sure what David’s punishment is.
“Hurricane style”? Oh dear.
OT, but this guy is not in the running for SJW of the year. (the action starts at 3:30).
h/t Ace o’ Spades
I note her Twitterbio contains the hashtag #BeautifulBrilliantBisexual.
Well, love, two ou…errr, one out of three ain’t bad.
My dad is a very creative type. Has done lots of wonderful drawings and watercolors.
He channeled that right into a very successful career in advertising.
I believe this little twit spelled “shiftless” wrong.
At Ace, runaway italics occasion a trip to a mythical “barrel”. Not sure what David’s punishment is.
[ Cracks knuckles, reaches for butter dish. ]
It’s a dumpster fire of pretension and cultivated neurosis.
I’d never heard of Everyday Feminism but what a discovery. It’s like having every kind of bad argument in one place.
I’d never heard of Everyday Feminism but what a discovery. It’s like having every kind of bad argument in one place.
It isn’t so much a political publication as a mental litter tray from which it’s hard to look away. And it’s perhaps significant that many contributors refer to mental illness almost as a fashion statement, a credential, an in-group identifier. The density of begged questions and factual error is quite extraordinary, though I suppose the site has value as a cautionary reminder of how identitarian narcissism rots a person’s mind.
It isn’t so much a political publication as a mental litter tray from which it’s hard to look away.
From the link, about the author: “Alex-Quan Pham is a Contributing Writer for Everyday Feminism. They are a Vietnamese femme.”
“It” desires to abolish the evil colonial nation-state which the USA, because white people are bad and took this country away from the indigenous folks. “It” pursues these desires as a Vietnamese person who grew up in California and works in the Bronx according to LinkedIn. As opposed to say, Hanoi.
Aaaaand, I think we’re done here.
“It” desires to abolish the evil colonial nation-state which the USA, because white people are bad and took this country away from the indigenous folks.
Ah – so that explains why Saigon was renamed Lyndon B. Johnson City.
This sort of self service is just…
It’s not that she is probably a rent l-seeker – which is a word I don’t like but I think we’ll applies. It’s that she wants us to applaud even if what she produces is crap (which it may well be as nobody seems to want to independently fund it) and then expects our wallets as well to reward her uniqueness as if we owe it to her in gratitude for the risk and effort she put in.
I don’t mind putting money in the hats and cases of performers on the street- sometimes they are good enough to watch and listen to. And sometimes it’s worth rewarding the risks of children even if they aren’t that good as they may become it one day and if not, it’s my choice. The author is neither yet demands where the others offer.
In related news:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/mar/31/stanford-students-demand-nonwhite-transgender-univ/
Part of the demand is also a call to hire “at least 10 tenure-track ethnic studies professors.” Really a transparent ploy to get at least some of the advocates of the changes some employment when they graduate, but at least it shows that they have started to think about their future, so who says their education was in vain?
I don’t mind putting money in the hats and cases of performers on the street- sometimes they are good enough to watch and listen to.
Which reminds me – just added my bit to the violin case that David left lying about.
“WE DEMAND the administration immediately accept the aforementioned demands…
Or what ? (Foot stomping and ululation ensues)
The demand was one of several issued by the group on Tuesday because the university “has failed to address issues of faculty/administrative diversity and curricular, extracurricular, and residential life equality.”
Because Stanford is the only university in San Fransisco, California, or the US, and if the inequality of being a student at one of the allegedly top 1% of schools sucks so bad, they cannot go anywhere else.
Hedgehog,
Really a transparent ploy to get at least some of the advocates of the changes some employment when they graduate…
Exactly… and all too predictable. They think they’re being “progressive” and “revolutionary”, but they haven’t changed their tune in decades.
I have this fantasy (yeah, among various others) that all the “creative people” would be told one day that the state would — at no cost to the ‘artist’ — fully support them, thus freeing them the shackles of jobs, responsibilities, having to get up in the morning and so on. They could henceforth do what they want. However, the state will only do this for the best ten, and the choice would be made via a sort of gladiatorial combat.
“We who are about to die preforming satirical mime salute you!” they would shout from the sandy arena and we could sit back and watch them claw and gouge at each other until we have ten left standing in more or less one piece. I know, it is a creative Hunger Games but as an annual spectacle it would beat the Grand National. It could be televised as “Creativity’s Got Red Blood” and viewing figures would be huge, I bet.
“The exit’s over there, kid. No refunds, though. Sorry. Policy.”
“The unknown is a scary place to be….” and “…multi-dimensional creatures…”.
Woo.
Maybe she should seek tenure at Miskatonic University.
Lancastrian Oik:
Maybe she should seek tenure at Miskatonic University.
Hey, Miskatonic students and faculty are known for their achievements. They’re not necessarily good achievements, but they are attention getters. Is she really in a class with Dr. Herb West or engineer Frank H. Pabodie?
People like this are not merely unemployable but anti-employable, in that their presence in any workforce will lower the productivity of the other employees.
I make complex machinery, from scratch, with my bare hands. I do it by typing, and the machinery is virtual, but it has the dual properties of not having existed in the world before I came along, and doing something tangible. It is not clear to me how recycling (other people’s) tired Leftist tropes can be construed as creative, unless it’s meant to be some sort of bricolage. If so it’s more down the macaroni painting end of things than the Joseph Cornell end.
“Alex-Quan Pham is a Contributing Writer for Everyday Feminism. They are a Vietnamese femme. They are tender and dangerous. They love mangos. They have places to be and people to scare. ” I like that “people to scare” thing. “Oh, I am so special and non-conformist that I SCARE the white settler patriarchy! They’re all SCARED of me!” No. It’s more that no one cares about you one way or the other, Alex-Quan.
Social mobility presupposes a certain realism, a pragmatism, and making choices accordingly
Anyone from a low income family who gets into debt to do a degree in gender studies needs a serious reality check.
Anyone from a low income family who gets into debt to do a degree in gender studies needs a serious reality check.
Spending money you don’t have on a degree of no discernible value, and which will saddle you and your family with further debt, does seem shockingly irresponsible. And yet Ms Garcia seems to expect to be “compensated” for her (unspecified) “enlightening work” – and her suboptimal life choices – regardless of whether that work and those choices have any market value. She rails against the alleged “myths” and “lies” with which “society” oppresses “creatives” like herself – for instance, the “myth” that would-be artists who prioritise daydreaming over chores and humdrum responsibilities often spend time mooching off friends and being dependent on others.
But it seems to me that the more pernicious myth, the one that Ms Garcia appears determined to overlook, is the self-flattering conceit that by virtue of calling herself “a creative” and invoking “social justice,” she’s playing “a significant role in society,” irrespective of the particulars of what she does (or doesn’t do because she’s so busy daydreaming and thinking highly of herself). The conceit that by virtue of how she imagines herself, and flatters herself, she is therefore somehow entitled.
Nothing, it seems, is ever her fault, a consequence of her choices. And hence the socialist blather.
Prof. John Carey notes that all intellectuals have to wrestle with the secret knowledge that they are no use.
We await news of someone suitably radical smashing down the door of one of Ms Sarandon’s three New York properties, say, that Greenwich Village penthouse, the one worth $1.75 million.
When things “you know, explode.”
All my ammo will have reached its best-before-date before this much promised revolution kicks off, or I will have reached decrepitude. These revolutionaries ain’t what they used to be.
The Times had an April Fool story today about student campaigning to change the name of Imperial to Gaia University. The story only really became totally over the top when it referred to a university administrator apparently pushing back against the motion – a truly preposterous idea.
All my ammo will have reached its best-before-date before this much promised revolution kicks off…
Hmm, I don’t know. I wouldn’t be quite so sure. As someone who remembers 1968, I don’t like the look of things.
What is the best-before-date on that ammo?
Because I’m reminded of an example I have from Moldbug about how fast things can go wrong. Approximately year 405 – the collection is dated then, but particular poems may have been written earlier – the Roman poet Prudentius wrote:
In 410, the Visigoths marched into Rome and sacked the city for three days. So much for Prudentius.
(Admin, can you perhaps restore the linebreaks in that poem?)
Done.
Comments are behaving strangely here. I have seen 6 or so comments appear here three times only to find them gone a few hours later. They come and go.
Early this morning David’s 4/1 comment from 8:04 was the last comment. Three or four hours later it was gone, and my comment from 3/31 was the last, with several others above it from the same time. Now they are gone again. This is what I saw on my second visit, about 9:30 AM Pacific Time:
http://www.imagebam.com/image/4f43ef475348139
Not a big deal of course, but probably not intentional either.
It’s perhaps worth noting that the retweets of Ms Garcia’s article – by self-styled “activists,” “poets,” “witches” and “mad wordsmith scientists” – are unanimously approving. None of those doing the retweeting have remarked on anything dubious or self-flattering in the article. Apparently, Ms Garcia’s worldview and immense sense of presumption are not at all controversial.
It’s perhaps worth noting that the retweets of Ms Garcia’s article – by self-styled “activists,” “poets,” “witches” and “mad wordsmith scientists” – are unanimously approving.
Indeed, and as this tweet (parody or not) sums up, one must “…STAND UP! BE HERD!”
I agree with C_Miner. I am a software developer. I conjure logic and structure out of anarchy and chaos. Unbeknownst to a large number of folks I encounter, this is a supreme act of creativity and requires as much art as it does science.
I actually contribute to society. My creations still function in the oil industry, the electrical regulation industry, and now the sector of the economy that provides health care. I have been told that my solutions and ideas have been innovative and uniquely suited to specific problems.
I work hard and resent these folks who seem to think that I should value their desire to take value (my taxes mostly) and produce nothing that has any tangible result in return. And to top it off, I am ridiculed by these same folks who somehow think that my acts lack any creative spark.
In the real world, the value proposition involves a negotiation between the consumer and producer. The producer does not dictate a price and can sell only items that have value to the consumer.
To be fair, I have been paid for advice, where the only tangible result was the fruit of my cognitive abilities. But even here, the consumer was looking for quantifiable expertise that was outside of their experience.
As with C_Miner’s response, this is a bit of a rant.
In the real world, the value proposition involves a negotiation between the consumer and producer. The producer does not dictate a price and can sell only items that have value to the consumer.
And hence the pretension and resentment. How dare the public not appreciate her “enlightening work” and self-imagined brilliance? She’s a “multi-dimensional creature,” a creative Brahmin, goddammit.
“mad wordsmith scientists”? W T F? These so-called creatives lurve to feel important and make up impressive titles for themselves, huh? Probably took some time to make that phrase up. Should have been practicing their coffee and cream artistry instead.
These so-called creatives lurve to feel important and make up impressive titles for themselves, huh?
I just got in from a lunch where we migrated to some nearby coffeeshopIsh which had a surreally detailed list of Stuff. I commented to associates of being reminded of the tactical differences between, on one hand, the Associate Lefthand Alternate Assistant Janitor For Washbasins, and on an other hand, King.
Microagression has reached a new level of absurdity.
(I thought it might be parody, until I scrolled down their Twitter feed. Oh dear lord.)
Instead of choosing something that would help out her family she wasted money on a degree in gender studies. And this is society’s fault?
Instead of choosing something that would help out her family she wasted money on a degree in gender studies. And this is society’s fault?
By making bad choices and being self-indulgent with other people’s money, a debt she seems unlikely to repay any time soon, Ms Garcia is somehow the victim of dark forces, an “oppressive cycle.” The level of unrealism and mental contortion is quite impressive, and practically a default among writers for Everyday Feminism.
All I can guess is that these ladies graduate with their gender, race, or LGBT degrees and then have nowhere else to go for desperately needed affirmation but to Everyday Feminism. That’s why all these articles read like rehashed college papers written to please teacher.
Sad, really. Can you imagine spending days, no doubt, writing a 1600-word essay explaining why you cut your hair?
http://everydayfeminism.com/2015/08/white-feminist-with-dreadlocks/
Can you imagine spending days, no doubt, writing a 1600-word essay explaining why you cut your hair?
But they want us to know how fascinating they are.
But they want us to know how fascinating they are.
Well, it is quite an emotion-filled journey—from the heights of pride to the depths of white shame where she ultimately finds the path to enlightenment, virtue, and beatification—so there’s the “can’t look away from the wreckage” kind of fascination. Then again, that seems to be the template for every essay over there.