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But this field is not so super. Again: Frank Kogan's former roomie Elizabeth once reported that when she dressed for a date, and asked "Well? What do you think?" his verdict was *always* "Not slutty enough." Superword has spoke,ilx is thee superpost.
― Don Allred, Tuesday, 14 January 2003 02:21 (twenty-one years ago) link
three weeks pass...
Ben Williams emailed me this comment:
"In that thread where I brought up Hebdige, and you mentioned the Protestant Ethic, I didn't get the bit about the Protestant Ethic at all. I understand the Protestant Ethic to mean the virtues which thriftiness, hard work etc. supposedly hold in the eyes of god, which according to Max Weber were translated to the service of Mammon. This is pretty much the opposite of Hebdige, who is all about rebel boys on the streets undermining the capitalist system."My response:
Protestant Ethic = through the grace of God, if you're one of the elect, your actions, including your leisure-time pursuits, will serve a useful social and moral purpose.
rebel boys on the streets = the elect
undermining the capitalist system = serving a useful social and moral purpose
By the way, I have nothing against art or Frank serving useful social and moral purposes. I just don't like the clampdown that comes into effect when "serving a social and moral purpose" is tied to a vision in which (1) the capitalist world is fundamentally corrupt and all-engulfing (= puritan conception that worldliness is fundamentally corrupt); (2) if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem, so if you're not actively undermining capitalism, you're reinforcing it; (3) since your actions should serve a useful social and moral purpose, and since your actions - every single one of them - either undermine or reinforce capitalism, you should endeavor to make all your actions undermine capitalism; so (4) these people wouldn't play what they couldn't justify, and they have to justify their playtime and that of the people they champion by saying it undermines capitalism. So if some gutter punks are getting fucked up and going wild, and this rocks, by golly it better undermine capitalism too.
However, in r'n'r, the Protestant Ethic isn't so much the committed leftist's attempt to undermine capitalism as it is the hipster-freak-punk's attempt to maintain his vision of himself as outside of the mainstream; the ethic in full effect tells him that any action moves you either towards or away from the mainstream. Of course, not all punks buy into this (as a matter of fact, before punk became a movement, one thing that distinguished proto-punk-types from the freaks was that the punks didn't buy into the counterculture's vision of itself as a counterculture; but that was back in the days when punk = intelligent), just as not all leftists buy into the idea of capitalism as an all-engulfing system, or the idea that if you're not part of the solution you're part of the problem.
The r'n'r Prot Ethic has interesting permutations: e.g. a full-time sex-drugs-and-r'n'r funster is still a puritan (undermining the prot ethic = serving a useful social and moral purpose); if he's attempting to purify rock'n'roll, cure it of its social pretensions and make it full fun like in the nonexistent good old days, he's still only playing what he can justify, even if he's flip-flopped the terms so that full-time morality = seven-day weekend.
A little bit of Prot Ethic is better than none, I think; it can be useful for pushing words into Superwords. If to be a freak or a punk you have to be outside of society, then "freak" and "punk" will always keep slipping from your grasp, will dart on ahead while you try to chase them. Any and every freak/punk will potentially fall short, will always be playing catch-up.
― Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Monday, 10 February 2003 17:20 (twenty-one years ago) link
Has anyone actually seen this Protestant Ethic person walking around in the last, say, twenty years? I gather that Hebdige actually exists, but then he resides within the cryogenic realm of the academy, where any number of extinct creatures feed and defecate. Even so, P. E. is by now something of a straw opponent, yes? And the rebel boy on the street is about as lively a figure as the embattled worker. Relative to this, Frank, would you care to enumerate those aspects of life that fall outside the capitalist world?
― Luc S., Monday, 10 February 2003 19:33 (twenty-one years ago) link
Praps by defining yrs elf as solution you become part of the prob-lem, probb-lemm oops my old vinyl Bollocks got stuck again sorry(examples of such ID might icl George W, and the (original, West-Endorsed)Saddam, and anysaviour really. Mark: "qua" comes from reading Ayn Rand's version of Aristotle while you should be listening to your 9th grade Latin teacher (at least in my case). Don't know which "form" 9th grade equivalates but obv. formative years (aint they all)
― Don Allred, Tuesday, 11 February 2003 03:26 (twenty-one years ago) link
three years pass...
seven years pass...