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.)
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”.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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 can see how presenting sections of The Odyssey to business students can be a lesson in how mule headed stubbornness (combined with a bit of trickery I admit) will eventually get you what you want, but is this what business students need? There is enough rampant individualism loose in NorthAmerican society without encouraging it beyond its limits - which a full reading of the Odyssey imposes. As you say - a dismal failure of the education system. William Gibson delineates it in his Bridge Trilogy, Blue Ant, and Jackpot Trilogies. A philosopher who escaped relatively unscathed from the corrupted US education system. Angry oldies can't place all the blame on the Z generation, but it is galling.
Fun fact: in Emily Wilson's introduction to *The Iliad,* she says "Homer" is actually pretty close to the old Greek word for "hostage."
It's almost like the teller of the tale of Troy was a kind of a person, rather than a specific person. I thought that was cool. Put a different image in my head.
I'm curious whether oral storytelling is making a comeback with the rise of audiobooks. I hope so.
I once read The Oddessy (Graves translation) to a girlfriend little by little at bedtime. Hadn't thought about that in years until just now. Might do it again for my wife (not the same woman).
The Odyssey got the epic treatment twice in the last month: once from those who had never heard of it and once again from those who had read about (what they believed to be) the wrong translation (Emily Wilson’s). I feel like even winning here is losing - if talking about the Odyssey is merely a reason to show off your high-culture credentials, you aren’t much better than the rube who heard about it from Nolan’s announcement. An ignoramus who tweets admiringly about the aesthetic qualities of the original is a fundamentally better person than the pedant who spends hours trolling anyone who prefers Wilson to Fagles.
My parents had a copy of the Odyssey with the N.C. Wyeth illustrations that I loved to look at even before I could read (except the Old Man of the Sea, which I avoided because it grossed me out.) A few years later, I read the fun fantasy parts. More recently, I plowed through the more realistic episodes at the beginning and end and was massively disillusioned to discover that Odysseus tortured the suitors to death. (Is Nolan going to include that part?) I haven’t been able to look at it since.
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.)
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"
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
loved this one. yes.
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 can see how presenting sections of The Odyssey to business students can be a lesson in how mule headed stubbornness (combined with a bit of trickery I admit) will eventually get you what you want, but is this what business students need? There is enough rampant individualism loose in NorthAmerican society without encouraging it beyond its limits - which a full reading of the Odyssey imposes. As you say - a dismal failure of the education system. William Gibson delineates it in his Bridge Trilogy, Blue Ant, and Jackpot Trilogies. A philosopher who escaped relatively unscathed from the corrupted US education system. Angry oldies can't place all the blame on the Z generation, but it is galling.
Fun fact: in Emily Wilson's introduction to *The Iliad,* she says "Homer" is actually pretty close to the old Greek word for "hostage."
It's almost like the teller of the tale of Troy was a kind of a person, rather than a specific person. I thought that was cool. Put a different image in my head.
I'm curious whether oral storytelling is making a comeback with the rise of audiobooks. I hope so.
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 once read The Oddessy (Graves translation) to a girlfriend little by little at bedtime. Hadn't thought about that in years until just now. Might do it again for my wife (not the same woman).
everything you said i was hyperventilating at yes to everything and all shout it from the hilltops
The Odyssey got the epic treatment twice in the last month: once from those who had never heard of it and once again from those who had read about (what they believed to be) the wrong translation (Emily Wilson’s). I feel like even winning here is losing - if talking about the Odyssey is merely a reason to show off your high-culture credentials, you aren’t much better than the rube who heard about it from Nolan’s announcement. An ignoramus who tweets admiringly about the aesthetic qualities of the original is a fundamentally better person than the pedant who spends hours trolling anyone who prefers Wilson to Fagles.
My parents had a copy of the Odyssey with the N.C. Wyeth illustrations that I loved to look at even before I could read (except the Old Man of the Sea, which I avoided because it grossed me out.) A few years later, I read the fun fantasy parts. More recently, I plowed through the more realistic episodes at the beginning and end and was massively disillusioned to discover that Odysseus tortured the suitors to death. (Is Nolan going to include that part?) I haven’t been able to look at it since.