thank you, freshman math class, for destroying any hope i had for the basic decency of humanity. special thanks to the tutor, who explained that, actually, that senior columnist who ranted about how bitches is crazy actually is eloquent, brilliant and exceptionally talented, and told me i should talk with him sometime.
posted by anne @ 12:17 PM
10 Comments:
So, in other words, you've lost hope for the basic decency of humanity because someone wrote something you disagreed with and your tutor suggested that you to engage this person in conversation.
Oh, the horror.
nate, i will copy out this article and i will post it on my blog. just for you. i am at work now, but it will be up by tomorrow at the latest. i would be interested to have your reading of it.
actually, i'll type it up now. here we go.
done.
Thank you, btw, for just posting in the text in question. It was interesting to have this in context.
Honestly, however, I was perfectly willing to believe that the column you were talking about was indeed wrong or even hurtful: I'm not really sure how that changes the fact that you seem to want to damn the writer, shut off conversation, and demand consensus from all people who still desire to be called "good".
Oh, for fuck's sake, Nate, is this really a worse cause for disappointment in humanity than somebody disliking Wes Anderson? I know it's hard for you to accept, but many people don't think it's worth wasting their time talking to raging assholes.
I suppose the difference is that when I say I'm disappointed in humanity if someone dislikes Wes Anderson, I'm making something of a joke. I'm using the strongest possible term to express something relatively small.
Anyway, thanks for your disproportionate anger on the subject, Moss. That does seem to be the theme.
nate, the behaviour of people on-campus when i've mentioned the problems i have with this article has been nearly uniform: no one is interested in discussing it, nearly everyone thinks it's hilarious *and* well-written (everyone who approves of it has defended it so), and if i continue to press the issue, asking for their reasons and wanting to pursue my question in depth, people either blow me off, tell me i'm "overreacting", or actually just walk away from me. while i'm talking to them. this behaviour from a group of people who proclaim themselves in love with conversation and the life of the mind is a bit baffling. i feel betrayed by the school, because it doesn't seem to be what it claims to be, or even to be what it used to be.
there's a startling lack of curiosity in the current crop of johnnies. people don't talk about the books, or care about the books, or, frequently, even *read* the books. this is true outside of class, and in class as well. i think that's a reason to despair, if nothing else.
this is also just one in a long line of shitty Moon articles in which the writer expresses hideously unexamined privilege, scorns those who lack it, and then laughs at their own cleverness. so there's that context, as well. kolock wrote this article in response to negative letters he got after his last column, which started off being about the awesomeness of banging drunk freshmen girls who thought he was really smart, and slid into an incomprensible rant about the manliness of winning Seminar. (while drunk.)
which column was itself preceeded by a column so entirely incomprehensible that i still don't know what the point was. something about how great it would be to force one's grandmother to watch porn or something, because it would disprove the existence of god.
and those are just kolock's columns. the others are the same or worse. and though this is just The Moon's content, the attitudes and conversations of the students are on the same level. any senses of humour they do have are small, hateful and vicious. it's sad.
shorter me: i'm not the one trying to shut off conversation. i'm the one trying to initiate conversation. no one else will engage in it with me, and that to me goes against everything SJC is, you know, supposed to be.
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