Arts The Shame
posted by on November 20 at 12:24 PM
My dream letter has come true!
Mr. Mudede,Halfway through your article titled Miseducation I was prepared to forgive you for being mistaken or ignorant. Now that I’m through, however, all I can express is disgust at what you seem to understand and endorse. Though if your ideas are any reflection on The Stranger’s general readership, at least they will not propagate but simply fester in minds already rotting… which is a small consolation.
There are a lot of things wrong with your article, but the founding idea from which all the rest spring is your animosity toward the individual person. I find it hard to believe that someone could actually endorse anti-individualism, which is why I say you only seem to understand what you’re writing about. What does anyone have left in the end if not himself? What do you, personally, have left? What does anyone have a right to if not himself? What is so damned horrifying about entertainment for kids which endorses doing things you like, even if other people don’t like them too? I don’t feel bad for those 200 kids, I feel bad for your kid, who is bound to grow up feeling guilty for doing what he wants because he thinks another guy’s wants are more important.
Shame on you for endorsing Karl Marx, shame on you endorsing a large-scale theft of private property that doesn’t belong to you, and shame on you for endorsing anti-individualism, as though there is anything better in the world than living for one’s self.
James Newport
Let me repeat:
The individual that High School Musical worships is the most nihilistic human being history has ever produced. Because this type of person has no content or history and because s/he absorbs everything s/he encounters into the nothingness of consumer comforts, this person is a perfect onion, a vegetable of pure layers. This thing that dances and sings and expresses its emptiness without thought or worry, this thing that is so stupid that it doesn’t even know how to be bored—this thing is killing our planet.
Good letter.
Not sure I'd have worded it the same way, but I agree with the letter, Charles.
Your love of authoritarianism is troubling. And, I don't think your position is coherent at all.
All philosophy that promotes communal constructs over individual rights to self-determination are merely a means to support the powerful in their desires to oppress and exalt their own desires; in other words, you merely support individualism for the powerful, and nobody else.
There's no such thing as "community" on the same ontological plain as "individual." It is a trick of langauge, and nothing more, that allows you your philosophy.
But, I still like you. :-)
Even though I may disagree with some of what Charles says, he's far more right on the whole than the poor teenage Randroid who wrote this letter.
What you expect when you espouse Marxism?
Its an infantile philosophy.
You can have your crystal palace. I will have none of it.
The movie of the Amanda Knox story (with Cate Blanchett) should definitely have her justifying herself with Ayn Rand quotes.
I think we can all agree that High School Musical IS killing our planet, though, right?
I didn't know Charles liked Karl Marx Rove.
This is shocking!
i'm on charles' side here - Marx wasn't a Marxist.
i'm so fucking sick of Ayn Rand i could shit.
Charles' piece is brilliant. Alas, randian individualism in its various forms, especially free market fundamentalism is so ascendant right now that I can't see Charles' writing being received fairly by most---especially psuedo-progressive urbanite yupsters.
Timothy, you scare me. As does James Newport.
Ayn Rand should be dug up and then interred in a tar pit.
I count myself within the 99% of the population who thinks that both Marxism and Ayn Rand's brand of fundamentalist capitalism are absolute bullshit. No serious person believes either philosophy has anything to offer humanity.
"No serious person..."
Yes, yes no serious person believes in that bullshit. But no serious person would ever say that something is entirely without value either.
Any philosophy has something to offer humanity even if it's simply an example of bad philosophy.
I think Rand was a self-absorbed nerd in the same vein as Nietzsche. She was a wallflower and a recluse. I think she was merely trying to express the way she thought humanity was going rather than the way way she wanted it to go, much as I believe Freddy did. I think Atlas Shrugged, gods help me, was more of a warning than a road map. That book nearly killed my love of reading (a la South Park), so full disclosure: I never got past page 30. I think that was enough to get the gist of it.
As to Marx, well I see him as a man of the people even if he did sponge off his rich friends for most of his life. He saw the suffering of the working class and tried to come up with a way of thinking about life that balanced the scales a bit between them and the people with all the money. It seems to me he thought it wasn't fair that so many work so hard for so little while a few hardly work and get so much in return.
Do you see? They both offered something to humanity: a view of the self-absorbed rich and a new way to think about the people who do the heavy lifting.
Ayn Rand is a cartoon of herself.
Her view of individualism will never be realized, and any system that tried to implement it would be self-correcting. Why? Because she'd give power to individuals (democratic pluralism, anyone?) and on the whole, very few individuals are as extreme as her characters are.
This fear of Ayn Rand, as though she would somehow impose her view of the individual upon each individual is hysterical nonsense.
Now, Marxism? That's scary shit, as it will impose upon every one the idealized view of a few powerful people. It does precisely what those who fear Ayn Rand fear the most.
Want an example? Our own Charles, just like Ayn, think that there's an objectively correct view of things like architecture. But, only one of them would mandate that buildings be built to this standard. Guess which?
The nice thing about such meaningless philosophies is that just because people like charles think it doesn't mean i am what they need me to be.
they need to objectify everyone into their predefined narrative in order for their world to make sense. all i need to is look back and say "No" and it all falls to pieces.
Hence why charles and his decrees about taste and architecture are not The Only Way. Because free willed individuals say "No" and do their own thing.
anti individualism? Community doesn't exist? Only individualistic-non-hegemonic societies succeed?? Eegad? Trajan in Rome, Augustus, Marcus Aurelias, and Tiberius would hanker a dispute that non-authoritarian socieities can't work...we could probably throw in Persia under Darius too-even China during the Qing and the Ming-while not great for all could be seen as golden eras. Right? They were pretty authoritarian. Wasn't there, but the books seem to point to it, well, wasn't there in my present manifestation-I was a tape worm in a concubines gut-but wasn't doing much but just hangin'
And why are all the youngin's into Rand so much these days? It is scary? Who ever thought that crappy book, with the crappy philosophy-maybe that is harsh-the infantile philosophy that uber materialism-captialism-makes right-what happens when the best of the best get old? Slower? Not so great? out to pasture in the Nazi sort of definition of it-I think-and who the hell wants to live in Colorado all their live long days? No ocean? No Surfing? Fuck that-give me Tiberius, a toga, and an orgy over that-you can keep your individuality-or that definition of it.
FG
Wow.. so THIS is what intelligent discourse looks like - It had been so long since my last exposure, I thought it had ceased to exist online. Thanks for restoring my faith in humanity. Bravo, people! (Now that's an invitation to post idiocy if I've ever seen one - flame one another - I COMMAND THEE)
My only problem with Mudede is the emails he keeps sending me regarding a suspense fund of TEN MILLION DOLLARS in a Nigerian Bank Account.
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