Dirty Secret
Readers may recall our various, quite lengthy discussions regarding the desperately bohemian Laurie Penny and her enthusiasm for supposedly radical lifestyles, which often entail parasitism and tend to have ruinous effects on those born without means:
Laurie is following the standard trajectory of her type. Her status and career would have been much less likely without the very same bourgeois values she claims to despise and urges others to reject. If instead of a stable, rather comfortable middle-class upbringing she’d been raised in keeping with her own professed values – say, by a welfare-dependent single parent with multiple transient partners and no stability or commitment – I somehow doubt she’d have been able to spend time at Wadham College finding herself politically and playing “riot girl.” And I doubt she’d now be able to flit around the world while tweeting about how oppressed she is.
Likewise, her self-imagined role as a wordsmith revolutionary would be much harder to sustain without a great many other people cultivating those same bourgeois values and keeping things ticking over. A fact that Laurie counts on, despite her pretence. In effect, we, the bourgeois rubes whose values she rails against, are her safety net. The fact that few of us are credulous enough to take her at her words and follow her advice is what allows her to mouth it in relative comfort and security, knowing that the destruction of capitalism, marriage and the family unit (and all that would go with it), which she claims to want, won’t happen just yet.
Well, a self-styled bohemian type seems to agree:
I’m a Boho, and square society should indulge and appreciate Boho contributions, IMHO. But I also think that Boho values are RUINOUS for everyday people. Seriously: for 5% of us, living the Boho way is excellent, but for most people Boho values and life-techniques will wreck them. That’s where I differ hugely from my fellow Bohos: I WANT square society to prosper, to be proud, to do a good square job, etc. Bohemia (which I love and am committed to) is dependent on a vigorous, healthy conventional society. It ain’t the reverse! Don’t let me down, squares.
At least the honesty is refreshing.
What bottle rockets?
I’d forgotten that thread. It was one of the better ones, inasmuch as it allowed us to establish our younger year “freak” bona fides from the safety our now extraordinarily staid, bourgeois lives. Just imagine several harumpfs, after each one of our comments:
Roommate…flat…harumpf…cereal…stains…harumpf…Kitchner…hrumpf…Monty…vomit…hurumpf…Roarke’s Drift, what…jolly good…harumpf ad infinitum.
SF’s problem is homeless people shitting on the sidewalks augmented maybe a little by their dogs shitting on the sidewalks, too. And neither of them picks up after the other or after themselves. The mayor’s Clintonian phrasing can’t change that.
. . . augmented maybe a little by their dogs . . .
Oh, you are free to argue with the numbers. Of course those numbers aren’t going to care what your ideological opinion is, they’re just going to remain.
We do understand you’re merely doing that ideology bit and its inevitable failure, where left wing ideology, right wing ideology, all ideology just fails . . . .
And reality will remain as the ideology continues to fail.
The numbers you cite, Hal, are numbers of people and numbers of dogs, from which you extrapolate activity without support. By the same logic, as many women (slightly more, actually) pee standing up as do men, since the are as many women (slightly more, actually) as men in the world.
And your defensive repetition of the word “ideology” is telling, not convincing.
Why are you so defensive about this? Did you support the policies that brought it about? Are you now embarrassed by that? Or are you just really proud of SF and trying to minimize the damage to its reputation? Seriously, I’m just curious. My “ideology” leads me to declare that water is wet. Your “ideology” says it’s not. But why?
the same Boho conceit is at the heart of The Good Life.
Quite. As noted previously,
And as Lancastrian Oik pointed out in the comments,
Disdaining bourgeois values is so much easier to do if you can coast along on the accumulated advantages of those same bourgeois values. To encourage young people from modest backgrounds to embrace anti-bourgeois posturing, and with it a rejection of wealth-generating habits, is somewhere between foolish and spiteful.
“These real-socialism-hasn’t-been-tried-yet articles basically write themselves. It’s like colouring by numbers.”
. . . are numbers of people and numbers of dogs, from which you extrapolate activity without support. . .
. . . and noting the reality that we’re talking about the same activity here . . .
As opposed to . . .
. . . as many women (slightly more, actually) pee standing up as do men, since the [sic] are as many . . .
. . . where actually—as far as I know from general descriptions, discussions, reading, all that reality Stuff, y’know—they don’t.
Really. Really, really, really, Don’t Do Ideology.
As you’ve just provided another reminder of, doing ideology instead of reality just gets you proven irrelevant.
To encourage young people from modest backgrounds to embrace anti-bourgeois posturing, and with it a rejection of wealth-generating habits, is somewhere between foolish and spiteful.
David, just read your Laurie Penny ‘Lifestyle Advice’ post. Consider your tip jar hit.
David, just read your Laurie Penny ‘Lifestyle Advice’ post. Consider your tip jar hit.
Tipping much appreciated.
Regarding the outpourings of Laurie and her peers, including the equally ludicrous Madeleine Schwartz, I suppose you could think of it as follows. If you heard your next-door neighbours repeatedly and emphatically telling their teenage daughter that marriage and stable coupledom were to be avoided, indeed destroyed, and that instead she should get into polyamory and single-motherhood, and embrace chronic dependence on state welfare as a “liberating” ideal, then you might deduce, quite quickly, that those parents were unfit. And yet this is Laurie’s edgy and feminist recipe for a satisfying life.
Really. Really, really, really, Don’t Do Ideology.
The prophecy of the day . . . and the next day, and the . . .
I so hesitate to ask this but as it keeps coming up…WTF is wrong with “ideology”? I first noticed this decades ago when supposedly high-minded people would say that they don’t vote the party (or ideology), they vote the man (or woman or whatever). Seems to me this is how we got deeper (it was always there) into political personality cults. I understand not trusting a political party to adhere to an ideology, and thus not voting the party. But to throw out ideology as some sort of bad thing, why? To be clear (because God knows this will get mucked up), opposing a specific ideology I understand. But opposing the idea of ideas has always sounded absurdly stupid to me.
I distrust people with an ideology. Any ideology.
They try to make facts fit the ideology, because to make ideology fit the facts is to not have an ideology. Ideology isn’t about having ideas, it’s having a specific world view that everything has to fit into.
They will ignore bad behaviour, provided the person adheres to the correct ideology. They get into endless arguments about “true” ****ism. They will do stupid things in order to stay “true” ***ists. They’re no much on compromise.
That is not to say you shouldn’t have principles. But principles differ in two ways 1) you can break them and change them without loss of face, if the facts or situation changes, 2) you can accept variance, partial solutions and compromise.
@WTP
WTF is wrong with “ideology”?
If, by “ideology,” one means a set of core individual beliefs or a core philosophy to which one has come through reasoned examination of evidence, then the answer is “nothing,” provided one is willing to continue to examine those beliefs as additional evidence appears.
The problem with “ideologues” is that their core beliefs are derived not from reasoned examination of evidence but from whatever happens to be personally or politically expedient at a given moment. That is, ideology is an off-the-rack suit, selected because it’s in style this year and all the cool kids are wearing it. This leads to absurdities like arguing that Trump is a “Nazi,” because he deported an elderly immigrant who was . . . an actual German concentration camp guard or claiming that border control policies have nothing to do with the murder of an Iowa farm girl by an illegal alien.
All of which dovetails with you point about personality cults. There are “positive” cults, like the one Hillary advanced and “negative” ones as we see with the Never Trump “conservative” class. The vast majority of our problems result from voting for persons without regard to their beliefs or pronouncements about their platforms.
The problem with “ideologues”
Yeah. I get that. When someone says “I don’t like ideologues” I understand where they’re coming from. I don’t do hard-core, absolutism. But that’s not what ideology is. From Webster:
Nothing wrong there. It’s a structure, a meta form, an abstraction describing a domain. Compare:
This is a problem. Again, what are words for?
“Tipping much appreciated”? No “May Cuddles the pickled ‘egg’ never invade your bathroom when the plumber needs to get in”? or some such?
The only two options are obsequiousness or seduction. No mention of working diligently, making life easier for your business team, or making yourself valuable to the organization.
Telling, I think.
“Under capitalism, we’re forced to submit to the boss. Terrified of getting on his bad side, we bow and scrape, flatter and flirt, or worse — just to get that raise or make sure we don’t get fired.
“Telling, I think.” Indeed, he could just change “capitalism” to “socialism”, and “boss” to either “state” or “party”, and see if he gets a different conclusion, but that would require he have some knowledge of history and the capability of minimal introspection.
“Telling, I think.” Indeed, he could just change “capitalism” to “socialism”, and “boss” to either “state” or “party”, and see if he gets a different conclusion, but that would require he have some knowledge of history and the capability of minimal introspection.
Except under capitalism you can work for someone else or, God forbid, start your own company and work for yourself. Which actually means you work for your customers…just like your boss does. Not to mention that under extreme forms of socialism (#ThatsNotRealSocialism) you can’t even leave the country if you don’t like the boss/government. How do people not understand these things? It’s not that hard.
“Under capitalism, we’re forced to submit to the boss. Terrified of getting on his bad side, we bow and scrape, flatter and flirt, or worse — just to get that raise or make sure we don’t get fired.
Perhaps he’s confusing “capitalism” with “journalism”.
How do people not understand these things?
Don’t want to.
How do people not understand these things? It’s not that hard.
Considering that he also wrote this with a straight face…
…evidently it is quite hard as he appears to have no conception of what US “liberal” or “progressive” policies are if he thinks they are for cutting either taxes or regulation.
Apparently classes in history, economics, and politics are not required to become “professor” of political science at Brooklyn College.
Thanks. I wasn’t aware of where that quote originated. I presumed it was a whiny, ignorant millennial. A professor of political science. At a publicly funded college. Of course. Though I would not question whether he had courses in economics as such is what I would expect from an economics student educated in the last 30-40 years. Bah, same goes for politics and history I suppose. We need to demand that public funding of higher education be cut to just the hard sciences. “Political” science ain’t one of them. How we let them attach “science” to their BS is one of my numerous pet peeves….A bit OT but I recall the very first time I saw that phrase. Believe it or not it was in my 2nd or 3rd grade reader. A story about some little boy, and as I recall it was a little black boy, on his bicycle greets his father coming home from work and the story actually said his father was a “political scientist”. I remember asking my parents to explain to me what those words meant. I don’t recall how they tried to explain it to me but I do recall not understanding WTF they were trying to tell me. I think the reader book was called “From Bicycles to Boomerangs”. Could be wrong on that though. I definitely recall that I hated that reader and one used later called “From Elephants to Eskimos”.
At least the honesty is refreshing.
Parasite realises it needs a host to survive.
The new reader is called “From Bafflegab to Bullshit.”
…is what I would expect from an economics student educated in the last 30-40 years. Bah, same goes for politics and history I suppose.
True enough, I guess, seeing as how, as has been pointed out, you can get a degree in German without have read Goethe, and English without Shakespeare. Of course the economic brilliance of economics degreed She Guevara up in New York speaks to this as well.
The first time I saw “political science” was my first year of college (first iteration) a bit over 40 years ago when liberal arts colleges actually had core requirements, and after filling in the math, English, foreign language, and science required blocks, had to find a “humanities” elective, and it was the only thing that fit my schedule (which required nothing before 1000 or later than 1500). As it was a survey course, other than the profs love of Eugene Debs and Lincoln Steffens, it was actually a fairly balanced overview of political systems.
However, as it, as you point out, resembles actual science as much as Bernie Sanders resembles Patton, it was the last class of it’s breed I took.
A couple of days ago Farnsworth [I think] submitted a collection of tweets about a bridezilla charging her “guests” $1500/head to attend her wedding. If you, like me, didn’t get to the tweets before they were locked down, here, courtesy of a link from Naked Capitalism, is the whole story from the sweet, shy, and unmarried lady herself.
https://www.mamamia.com.au/wedding-horror-story-bride-rant/
WTP, I think you are missing the importance of “integrated” in that definition.
That “integrated” means that *everything* more or less becomes covered. So that every decision becomes determined by the ideology in question.
Most of the world don’t think *everything* can be “integrated”. We live in a world of greys, not black and white.
And while I distrust ideology, “visionary theorizing” scares the shit out of me!
That original thread, and another around the same time, was what first got me thinking about writing a book…which coincidentally was set in part among the Burning Man subculture.
To encourage young people from modest backgrounds to embrace anti-bourgeois posturing, and with it a rejection of wealth-generating habits, is somewhere between foolish and spiteful.
It’s not the message I was supposed to take away from Fight Club, but the “You have been lied to. You’re not going to grow up to be a rock star/astronaut/real estate mogul/CEO” quote is still good advice for most young men.
Find something you’re good at and can make a living doing, work hard at it and manage your money sensibly. (see also Peterson, Jordan B.). Pursuing your dreams turns out to be really bad life advice.
Pursuing your dreams turns out to be really bad life advice.
For one thing, the things that seem fantastically important to teenagers aren’t often the things that are important to people in their 30s, 40s, 50s, etc. I.e., the bulk of their lives.
And while I distrust ideology, “visionary theorizing” scares the shit out of me!
They do a lot of that in San Francisco 🙂
See, this is why I was initially timid about going there…
That “integrated” means that *everything* more or less becomes covered. So that every decision becomes determined by the ideology in question.
OK, so if we restrict the meaning of the word in the context of definition 1b, using the word “integrated” in a strict sense, everything being integrated, yes. But that seems rather narrow to me. More generally, I still say this idea that one can claim that one does not have an ideology is a cop out. Just because ideologues take things to restrictive extremes does not demerit ideology as a general concept. I still will take ideology over “vote for the man” in most every instance. And I would argue somewhat similarly regarding “visionary theorizing”, though I do agree in modern context it is a unsettling.
Pursuing your dreams turns out to be really bad life advice.
I was thinking about this as information on this weekend’s gamer shooting in Jacksonville came out. I may be wrong but here’s a thought. Story is the shooter was very focused, all business, not personality to speak of. I wonder if this isn’t some result of too much focus on a goal (he was a previous champion in this “sport”) causing one’s whole world to come crashing down at the first hint of failure in pursuing one’s “dream”.
Tiresome and irrelevant as always, Hal.
I was thinking about this as information on this weekend’s gamer shooting in Jacksonville came out.
As a lapsed gamer myself, I have some grave concerns about esports. There’s nothing wrong with the concept (it’s no different than, say, those World Scrabble Tournaments) but the community around most competitive esports attracts the worst gamer stereotype: borderline autistic, anti-social, low amygdala threshold, childish and crude. Unlike most other sports, esports do not involve interacting with other human beings except via a virtual avatar – that you’re usually trying to murder to death as fast and as hard as possible. Esports don’t have the kind of honor culture that’s built up around traditional sports: fair play, sportsmanship, fraternity.
Add to that that most video games are not designed for competitive play – there are always going to be bugs, loopholes, poorly designed levels or corner cases that are exploitable for a cheap win – and you have a dumpster fire waiting to happen.
Story is the shooter was very focused, all business, not personality to speak of.
Video games do not teach kids to be violent; that is a long debunked myth.
An uncomfortable truth is that first-person shooters do teach coolness under fire, tactical thinking and the ability to perceive human beings as target objects, something that normally requires fairly intense military training. FPSes won’t turn your kid into a mass shooter, but if he ends up going that way they’ll make him better at it.
WTP | August 27, 2018 at 16:57:
Again, what are words for?
Orwell, “Politics and the English Language”: ‘The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies “something not desirable”. The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another. … Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different. … Other words used in variable meanings, in most cases more or less dishonestly, are: class, totalitarian, science, progressive, reactionary, bourgeois, equality.’
A couple of days ago Farnsworth [I think] submitted a collection of tweets about a bridezilla charging her “guests” $1500/head to attend her wedding.
How long ago was that alleged wedding? Because one of the Facebook pictures says the bride is going to be out of the country “these next two months”, which in the post are October and November, implying the wedding should have taken place in late September, or almost a year ago. Why is it only coming out now?
Why is it only coming out now?
It seemed a tad over-the-top even for a classic “bridezilla” story. That said, I am personally aware of bride’s family throwing a huge wedding and then sending a bill for half the cost to the groom’s parents, without clearing things in advance.
As you’ve just provided another reminder of, doing ideology instead of reality just gets you proven irrelevant.
Tiresome and irrelevant as always, Hal.
Ehn, I was content with the original phrasing, but there are indeed times when an enhanced version can work better.
Therefore: As you’ve just provided another reminder of, doing ideology instead of reality just gets you proven tiresome and irrelevant as always.
Maybe it just sat there till somebody noticed it?
I’m not sure the concept of “over-the-top” is readily grasped by today’s yourh. True or not, it was funny.
Or even by today’s youTh.
The mention of polical “science” reminds me that news of social “science”‘s replication crisis has made it to the papers, yea even the Grauniad
But, on average, the sizes of the effects recorded were about 75% as big in the replication studies, despite these using sample sizes that were on average five times as big.
“Despite”?
I’ve long been a fan of the Reacher books, and it sounds like I was right in giving the movie a hard pass. The Reacher of the books is certainly a footloose drifter, but it’s a case of a veteran not really being happy trying to fit in to civilian society, not a boho vs. squares thing.
You’re not wrong, and that’s hardly the movie’s only shortcoming when compared to the novels. Let’s just say that believing Tom Cruise is a 6’5″ 230-pound former military police officer was a bit too much of a stretch for me.
Yeah, same here. That was the main source of my “uhm … no” when it came out. Cruise producing as well as starring also gave it the distinctly fetid whiff of a vanity project.
What Bohemians create:
What ‘bohemians’ create:
But which future to choose?