Re. Arthur's post about:
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/17/how-to-live-without-irony/
I wrote:
me> I can't decide whether this is 21st Century Navel Gazing by the
me> kind of person who will only be happy when she has a regular
me> psychiatrist...
and further derisory remarks.
Arthur replied:
Arthur> Did you read the entire article?
Yes.
Arthur> The concern of the writer seems to be that much of the serious
Arthur> discussion about current affairs will disappear in an ironic
Arthur> giggle or a knowing wink as on the Colbert Report and nothing
Arthur> at all will be done about it since, ironically, nothing ever
Arthur> has been done.
Well, I *did* write:
me> I can't decide whether this is 21st Century Navel Gazing...or if
me> this is really some kind of problem in urban culture today.
I really don't know. I'm an oldish geezer at this point. I haven't
hung out with urban professionals for over 15 years and then it was
with a rather narrow group of technically oriented people. I've never
seen the Colbert Report. So I really don't know if the author's irony
thing is a pervading cultural pattern or not.
But I do read a lot of stuff. If I were asked to proofread, edit and
critique that article by the author, I would say something like, "Jack
up the hood ornament and drive a new article under it. Put that text
into your working notes and rewrite the piece identifying and
addressing the underlying mechanisms -- the etiology -- that induces
the 'ironic ethos.'"
Then I would point her at "cognitive dissonance".
In the past few months we (moreso those in the US) have been inundated
with the rhetoric of patriotic democracy, the privilege and
responsibility to take part in self-governance. Simultaneously, we've
been exposed, via the media, to all the conniving, manipulation,
demographic and political trickery and blatant posturing to sway
putatively gullible voter blocks. And we've been expected to believe
and accept both of those contradictory perspectives at once.
We're given advertising that claims to well represent good products at
the same time that everyone knows that the advertising industry is the
most cynical and devious patch on the street. Another pair of
contradictions that we're supposed to believe simultaneously.
People are expected to exhibit loyalty to employers, even harbour real
loyalty in their hearts while knowing that corporations follow
Friedman's dictum which relegates them to the status of disposable
commodity.
It's gone way beyond hypocrisy. It's not worth anybody's time to
maintain credible hypocrisy. The hypocrisy of Victorian London
society -- upright Anglican gentlemen who slummed in Whitechapel at
night -- was bad enough. Now we're all expected to quite publicly
believe, even evangelize, multitudes of contradictory ideas.
What's a rational response to that? Never mind rationl: what's a
livable response to that? In it's simples incarnation, irony is
language the literal meaning of which contradicts the meaning
understood by the informed listener. The public face -- the media
face -- of politics, banking, commerce, consumerism, even religion
embodies overt contradiction, so overt that the nudge and the wink are
themselves ironic.
>From the article:
Here is a start: Look around your living space. Do you surround
yourself with things you really like or things you like only
because they are absurd? Listen to your own speech. Ask yourself:
Do I communicate primarily through inside jokes and pop culture
references? What percentage of my speech is meaningful? How much
hyperbolic language do I use? Do I feign indifference? Look at
your clothes. What parts of your wardrobe could be described as
costume-like, derivative or reminiscent of some specific style
archetype (the secretary, the hobo, the flapper, yourself as a
child)? In other words, do your clothes refer to something else or
only to themselves? Do you attempt to look intentionally nerdy,
awkward or ugly? In other words, is your style an anti-style?
If the author's readers all give the wrong, "ironic ethos" answers to
those question, why are they as they are? I didn't think the article
made much headway in "identifying and addressing the underlying
mechanisms -- the etiology -- that induces the 'ironic ethos.'"
Or maybe I'm just a crank, writing way too late at night.
- Mike
--
Michael Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada .~.
/V\
[email protected] /( )\
http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/ ^^-^^
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