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The author describes youth culture's social form by calling it "post-emotional," "entrepreneurial," and eventually "generation sell." As underwhelming as this
by moxie 15y ago
The author describes youth culture's social form by calling it "post-emotional," "entrepreneurial," and eventually "generation sell." As underwhelming as this is, I think it's incredibly generous, as I would call its social form simply "nothing."
The tendency to start artisan businesses is not a social narrative, it's just another part of the aesthetic. The author compares modern youth culture with the hippies, beatniks, and punks. But those generations were doing what they were doing for a reason. Read anything from the heroes of those generations, and you'll see a clear "grand narrative" that described the social relationships of the world they were trying to create. The social narrative of punk culture was not "a tendency to start bands that played three chord songs." That was part of the social aesthetic. The narrative was one of anti-authoritarinism, collective autonomy, and a vision for a world without hierarchy.
The truth is that youth culture today has no narrative. Yes, money is cool again, small-business entrepreneurship is a common pursuit, and "maker" culture has taken root, but these are just the things people do. Ask someone why they made the latest LED clock design out of "make magazine," and they'll more than likely say something along the lines of "because it's neat." Look at the average young entrepreneur, and you'll find someone who discovered technology before they discovered themselves -- someone who is "innovating" because that's what they read they're supposed to do, rather than out of some informed sense of the social reality they're trying to create.
- maratd 15y ago> The truth is that youth culture today has no narrative. You couldn't possibly be more wrong. The narrative of today's youth culture is passion. The passion to pursue your craft and the freedom to do it your way. To satisfy your curiosity without harming the world around you. It is unbelievably positive and optimistic. Liberty is the narrative of today and it's a narrative that has far more substance than those prior to it.
- moxie 15y agoIf you seriously think that the passion of running a taco stand is more substantial and more liberating than the narrative which led to the events of Paris in May 1968, then I'm sorry for you.
- maratd 15y agoI don't judge a narrative based on its ephemeral qualities or its capacity to be memorable. I judge it based on its moral quality and its capacity to affect positive change. On both of those counts, what came before is clearly inferior.
- neilk 15y agoWhat, you prefer tossing bricks and overturning vehicles, in some spastic orgy of revolutionary zeal that fails to bring about any measurable change? At least tacos are tasty. I pretty much hate May 1968. Not so much for the event itself; there was a lot to admire in what workers did to advance their rights. But for what it meant to the progressive ideal. There was much conflation between the starry-eyed ideals of the students, and the real effects that the strikes had on government. The academic left thought that one caused the other. Hence the glorification of dippy slogans like "I declare a permanent state of happiness". It seems to be the watershed when leftism stopped being about education and material welfare, and started being some kind of conceptual art project.
- neilk 15y agoPreposterous. First of all, beatniks, hippies, and punks were never the majority of their generations. We use them as shorthand for certain eras because they were innovative. But that's another way of saying that they weren't like everybody else. The truth is, there was never a generation as socially conscious and globally aware as this one. It's not because they are more virtuous, it's because this is just the world they live in now. How dare you suggest that this generation has no "narrative" when we have a global protest movement ongoing right now, that's fixating the attention of the whole world? Like the best of the punks, they're not just talking about it; they're doing it. And unlike 1968, they have more than slogans and attitude; they have technological and social skills and they're setting to build an alternative vision of society. And there isn't even a need for everyone to have exactly the same goals before we move forward. A libertarian and a hippie can have different visions of society, but still agree on how to make a communication protocol robust. Perhaps that is the main difference; this new generation seeks practical agreement rather than ideological unanimity. That's a lot of what OWS is about as well; developing a practice that can afford many different views. These practices don't exclude anyone, or even have one single agenda. On the contrary, they thrive on diversity. Forget the hopelessly naive 1960s concept of "speaking truth to power". The new ideal is to create a self-sustaining practice that brings about change. To me, that's the internet; that's Burning Man; that's Tor, Mozilla, Wikipedia, and even Google on their best days; and that's Occupy Wall Street. And from what I can see, it's working.