Anti-intellectualism always serves the interests of the rich and powerful!!!! Always!!!! (This is coming through in an interesting way from Orwell’s wartime writings: the biggest source of intellectual rot is the upper class.)
Max Read was saying how in the 90s/early 00s "selling out" was considered bad, and then it transformed into actually selling out is good, and finally now we've arrived at the culmination: there is nothing *but* selling out -- we can't even conceive of another way any more.
It reminds me of the Margaret Atwood jibe in Oryx and Crake about the university that changed its motto from “Ars Longa Vita Brevis” to “Our Students Graduate With Employable Skills”.
The educational system has failed the younger generations, and it is sad, but what baffles me is that people are proud of being stupid and they don’t want to make an effort for culture or art. They don’t even pretend to know online! The one place where you can pause and look shit up! If you don’t know the name of the guy from Blade Runner, you can easily google it before posting a tweet, but Musk did not because no one would notice or care. I get that the Odyssey can be considered a “hard” read, but there are study guides and tons of other mediums and formats to help you read and understand it (I read Geronimo Stilton’s comic book about the Odyssey when I was about 9. I didn’t know it was a about real book, and when I read it as an adult I realized that it was a wonderful adaptation for children). I feel for my generation, but I don’t see a will from anyone to make an effort to learn or to enjoy thoughts. Oh and also I think that the ones who read and know stuff just… aren’t on the internet or do not care to post or interact.
Yeah this makes me crazy too! It’s literally never been easier to look up something you don’t know; there are tons of adaptations of classic stories if you don’t want to start with the original. Maybe the frictionlessness is part of the problem—people have fewer excuses not to try things so they invent proud new reasons why they can’t and won’t.
I think the frictionlessness IS actually the problem. I've been thinking a lot lately about modern convenience and how it hasn't just made us intellectually lazy, but it's also made us intolerant of any single bit of friction in our day. The person we have an uncomfortable interaction with, the pedestrian we don't want to pause for.
Anyway, I randomly saw someone link to this essay and I loved it. Thank you!
I agree with both of you! Everything is getting easier and easier nowadays so when anything takes a bit of effort or uncomfortable feelings people just close themselves up and quit. If you want new friends you’ll have to put yourself in uncomfortable situations and conversations, if you want a better job you’ll have to get higher education, which is intellectually challenging! Life is hard but people are refusing to live it because they’re used to having everything tailored to the max through their phones. So people just… don’t leave their phones.
> Obviously in 2024 and beyond, the point of making things is solely to be rich and famous; and the point of being rich and famous is to be richer and more famous. This country has a fatal case of winner psychosis. It has no idea it’s even sick.
One of the tragic things about this new world is that a person can no longer find a cheap squat and pursue art for its own sake. 25 or 30 years ago you could find warehouse space or something in this little college town, now it can cost $1000 to rent a room. We may as well change the national motto to “buy low-sell high”. That college I mentioned is now more like a trade school / debt generator than it is a place to learn and stretch your wings.
This is true of every major city now. There is nowhere cheap to live in my city, even the most undesirable houses in the most socially and economically deprived areas are renting for about half the local average salary.
There's artist's studios just around the corner from my office, but I have no idea how they are paying their bills.
I’m getting hella tired of stockholder capitalism ruining everything for us, and using culture and beauty only insofar as they can be monetized. Awesome piece.
This is brilliant, and perfectly articulated a feeling I have been struggling to pin down since the internet caught wind of this announcement and churned out some of the most bizzare takes I've seen in years. I shouldn't have to hope and pray that my peers would consider enjoying these cultural cornerstones, or at least even THINK about learning the bare minimum info about them... but here we are !!
200 years ago it was expected that anybody educated would have read Marcus Aurelius--in the original Koine Greek. Unless you've done that, then, I think it's foolish to cry on about "our diminishing standards." Because the process you object to didn't just start this week. It probably goes back to the late Renaissance, when some dirty progressive suggested his students read The Prince instead of The Confessions of St Augustine.
It is just a fact that Salinger is more relevant to the modern student than anything written in a dead language might be. So drop Aurelius and bring in JD. Fine. And if the suitably wise curricula-makers want to substitute someone even more recent for "Salinger" that's fine too.
There will be some people who hear of Odysseus for the first time through Nolan, but will then go on to read, say, Rouse's translation in a copy they find in a thrift store. And isn't that how it's supposed to work?
And also: there have always been idiots. It *is* true that they have better communications now.
The original classics were not a block to informed intelligence. The trivialized versions are. I read the Odyssey in Classic Comic format when I was ten (I think I shoplifted it), went on to plunder every book of the Greek (and then Nordic) myths in the local children's' library and went on to read translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey in my teen years and learnt of the Classical Tradition at University. Where are those scholars, who rendered those translations, those analyses and informed our spirit now? My high school English teachers had us reading MacBeth for final exams, but pointed us towards Catcher in the Rye, Lord of the Flies, (and Ulysses, which was banned in Australia at the Time), and indicated that the comic strip Lil Abner was readable as a satire on north American society, without rocking the boat. Now the Business Faculties ARE the boat and it doesn't like to be rocked. WTF happened, or am I just an angry old white man?
I did not go to high school one the US or college, just graduate school
I arrived having read Homer, the complete works of Shakespeare, Milton, Dante and Virgil (translations as appropriate) as well Plato’s Republic, “The Prince” and Sun Tzu. Translations of Gilgamesh, The Mahabharata, Kautilya’s Arthashastra were not ignored.
The cliffs notes version of Popper, Heigel and Marx were for rounding an overview of classics
And my major was NOT in the humanities
What shocked me, even in the early 1990s (when I was in grad school) was the paucity of “humanities” programs and a belittling of “dead white men” (Shakespeare, Milton, Virgil and Plato)
To make it worse, the History of the West as seen through the eyes of Howard Zinn was something that appalled a first first generation immigrant
And then there is the bemoaning that STEM folks are not exposed to the humanities. But humanities in the US and for that matter in broader west is reduced to garbage and “post modern” 🙄🤷🏽♂️
Everything I know about The Odyssey I learned from a little Jack Russell Terrier with a big imagination. However, he had a fundamental respect for the arts and I believe remained true to the spirit of the work if not the form. Not going to read a poem though…!
I have mixed feelings about this. I agree that our culture's shift towards anti-intellectualism is a huge problem, as is the adoration of so many people who are clearly both not intelligent and intentionally uninformed.
But I also struggle with centering The Odyssey in particular. Most Western culture teaches that the ancient Greeks were some cornerstone of culture that we should all be familiar with. But you don't see the same importance placed on important works from other cultures. I personally did find the Odyssey annoying and did not find it particularly significant. But my preference generally goes towards nonfiction for my intellectual reading.
I could argue that there are a lot of other books that would be more important to read, but obviously that is subjective and not really the point. The important thing is valuing art and different perspectives. A very well educated person may not have heard of the Odyssey, I'm not sure what importance is placed on it from education that is not white European centered.
I guess my question is not what haven't you read, but what have you read? Or listened to, or studied. How are you challenging your ideas and worldview? I think there are a lot of right ways to do that, and all are valuable.
Anti-intellectualism always serves the interests of the rich and powerful!!!! Always!!!! (This is coming through in an interesting way from Orwell’s wartime writings: the biggest source of intellectual rot is the upper class.)
Max Read was saying how in the 90s/early 00s "selling out" was considered bad, and then it transformed into actually selling out is good, and finally now we've arrived at the culmination: there is nothing *but* selling out -- we can't even conceive of another way any more.
It reminds me of the Margaret Atwood jibe in Oryx and Crake about the university that changed its motto from “Ars Longa Vita Brevis” to “Our Students Graduate With Employable Skills”.
😭 I love that book
Our local technical college might as well have the motto "We Get Paid Whether You Graduate or Not"
Every year our reality is closer to the horror vision set forth in that book
The educational system has failed the younger generations, and it is sad, but what baffles me is that people are proud of being stupid and they don’t want to make an effort for culture or art. They don’t even pretend to know online! The one place where you can pause and look shit up! If you don’t know the name of the guy from Blade Runner, you can easily google it before posting a tweet, but Musk did not because no one would notice or care. I get that the Odyssey can be considered a “hard” read, but there are study guides and tons of other mediums and formats to help you read and understand it (I read Geronimo Stilton’s comic book about the Odyssey when I was about 9. I didn’t know it was a about real book, and when I read it as an adult I realized that it was a wonderful adaptation for children). I feel for my generation, but I don’t see a will from anyone to make an effort to learn or to enjoy thoughts. Oh and also I think that the ones who read and know stuff just… aren’t on the internet or do not care to post or interact.
Yeah this makes me crazy too! It’s literally never been easier to look up something you don’t know; there are tons of adaptations of classic stories if you don’t want to start with the original. Maybe the frictionlessness is part of the problem—people have fewer excuses not to try things so they invent proud new reasons why they can’t and won’t.
I think the frictionlessness IS actually the problem. I've been thinking a lot lately about modern convenience and how it hasn't just made us intellectually lazy, but it's also made us intolerant of any single bit of friction in our day. The person we have an uncomfortable interaction with, the pedestrian we don't want to pause for.
Anyway, I randomly saw someone link to this essay and I loved it. Thank you!
I agree with both of you! Everything is getting easier and easier nowadays so when anything takes a bit of effort or uncomfortable feelings people just close themselves up and quit. If you want new friends you’ll have to put yourself in uncomfortable situations and conversations, if you want a better job you’ll have to get higher education, which is intellectually challenging! Life is hard but people are refusing to live it because they’re used to having everything tailored to the max through their phones. So people just… don’t leave their phones.
> Obviously in 2024 and beyond, the point of making things is solely to be rich and famous; and the point of being rich and famous is to be richer and more famous. This country has a fatal case of winner psychosis. It has no idea it’s even sick.
So well put.
One of the tragic things about this new world is that a person can no longer find a cheap squat and pursue art for its own sake. 25 or 30 years ago you could find warehouse space or something in this little college town, now it can cost $1000 to rent a room. We may as well change the national motto to “buy low-sell high”. That college I mentioned is now more like a trade school / debt generator than it is a place to learn and stretch your wings.
This is true of every major city now. There is nowhere cheap to live in my city, even the most undesirable houses in the most socially and economically deprived areas are renting for about half the local average salary.
There's artist's studios just around the corner from my office, but I have no idea how they are paying their bills.
loved this one. yes.
I highly recommend EPIC. It's a musical based on the Odyssey. All the songs are on Spotify.
omg that sounds AMAZING, I’ll check it out!
I’m getting hella tired of stockholder capitalism ruining everything for us, and using culture and beauty only insofar as they can be monetized. Awesome piece.
This is brilliant, and perfectly articulated a feeling I have been struggling to pin down since the internet caught wind of this announcement and churned out some of the most bizzare takes I've seen in years. I shouldn't have to hope and pray that my peers would consider enjoying these cultural cornerstones, or at least even THINK about learning the bare minimum info about them... but here we are !!
“Elon Musk, perhaps the dumbest bitch on earth,”
Honestly, nothing else needed to be said.
I once saw him referred to as "an idiot's idea of what a genius is"
200 years ago it was expected that anybody educated would have read Marcus Aurelius--in the original Koine Greek. Unless you've done that, then, I think it's foolish to cry on about "our diminishing standards." Because the process you object to didn't just start this week. It probably goes back to the late Renaissance, when some dirty progressive suggested his students read The Prince instead of The Confessions of St Augustine.
It is just a fact that Salinger is more relevant to the modern student than anything written in a dead language might be. So drop Aurelius and bring in JD. Fine. And if the suitably wise curricula-makers want to substitute someone even more recent for "Salinger" that's fine too.
There will be some people who hear of Odysseus for the first time through Nolan, but will then go on to read, say, Rouse's translation in a copy they find in a thrift store. And isn't that how it's supposed to work?
And also: there have always been idiots. It *is* true that they have better communications now.
The original classics were not a block to informed intelligence. The trivialized versions are. I read the Odyssey in Classic Comic format when I was ten (I think I shoplifted it), went on to plunder every book of the Greek (and then Nordic) myths in the local children's' library and went on to read translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey in my teen years and learnt of the Classical Tradition at University. Where are those scholars, who rendered those translations, those analyses and informed our spirit now? My high school English teachers had us reading MacBeth for final exams, but pointed us towards Catcher in the Rye, Lord of the Flies, (and Ulysses, which was banned in Australia at the Time), and indicated that the comic strip Lil Abner was readable as a satire on north American society, without rocking the boat. Now the Business Faculties ARE the boat and it doesn't like to be rocked. WTF happened, or am I just an angry old white man?
What value can culture have from shaping our souls for those who deny we have souls?
What value can we have from souls who deny culture? Soullessness has just defined itself.
I did not go to high school one the US or college, just graduate school
I arrived having read Homer, the complete works of Shakespeare, Milton, Dante and Virgil (translations as appropriate) as well Plato’s Republic, “The Prince” and Sun Tzu. Translations of Gilgamesh, The Mahabharata, Kautilya’s Arthashastra were not ignored.
The cliffs notes version of Popper, Heigel and Marx were for rounding an overview of classics
And my major was NOT in the humanities
What shocked me, even in the early 1990s (when I was in grad school) was the paucity of “humanities” programs and a belittling of “dead white men” (Shakespeare, Milton, Virgil and Plato)
To make it worse, the History of the West as seen through the eyes of Howard Zinn was something that appalled a first first generation immigrant
And then there is the bemoaning that STEM folks are not exposed to the humanities. But humanities in the US and for that matter in broader west is reduced to garbage and “post modern” 🙄🤷🏽♂️
Oh well, I am just old and cranky
Everything I know about The Odyssey I learned from a little Jack Russell Terrier with a big imagination. However, he had a fundamental respect for the arts and I believe remained true to the spirit of the work if not the form. Not going to read a poem though…!
I have mixed feelings about this. I agree that our culture's shift towards anti-intellectualism is a huge problem, as is the adoration of so many people who are clearly both not intelligent and intentionally uninformed.
But I also struggle with centering The Odyssey in particular. Most Western culture teaches that the ancient Greeks were some cornerstone of culture that we should all be familiar with. But you don't see the same importance placed on important works from other cultures. I personally did find the Odyssey annoying and did not find it particularly significant. But my preference generally goes towards nonfiction for my intellectual reading.
I could argue that there are a lot of other books that would be more important to read, but obviously that is subjective and not really the point. The important thing is valuing art and different perspectives. A very well educated person may not have heard of the Odyssey, I'm not sure what importance is placed on it from education that is not white European centered.
I guess my question is not what haven't you read, but what have you read? Or listened to, or studied. How are you challenging your ideas and worldview? I think there are a lot of right ways to do that, and all are valuable.