A Final Farewell to Horatio Alger
Jun. 5th, 2003 04:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rinueA couple of days ago, I had an interview with a production company. Executive Assistant - the same position in "Swimming With Sharks." (Nicer boss, though.) I was the 45th applicant; the job is very desirable. If I get it, I'll be handed my dreams. After working very hard for three to five years making coffee and walking the dog, they'll set me up to direct. Or act. Or produce. Whatever I ask for.
Understandably, I am once again thinking about the New American Dream. I think I'm right about what I said in the Manifesto -- it isn't about freedom or self government. It isn't about picking yourself up by the bootstraps, rising to the top through talent and hard work. The New American Dream is about luck.
We don't want to earn lots of money; we want it to be given. Marry rich, win the lottery, be picked out of a crowd by a talent agent. Luck into the right amount of the right corporate stock. Forget about learning curves and dues-paying; that stuff is for suckers.
It's the same with beauty. Models aren't supposed to work out and starve themselves anymore. Read any recent starlet interview. It's about pigging out on burgers and staying stick thin - "blessed with a high metabolism." They're all very "down to earth." None of them wear makeup, or dye their hair, or have stylists. None of them had liposuction or breast implants.
Right.
It's something I don't understand, this national preoccupation with luck. Divine mandate, perhaps. The arbitrary favor of God. To me, luck is a let down. Luck means you haven't done anything right - you just got lucky. How stressful to have so little control over your life, never to point at cause and effect. How impossible to learn without If . . . Then.
I can't envy the lucky because I don't respect them for it. Yes, I was born very smart. That says nothing about who I am. What's wortwhile is how I use it, the hours I spend reading and where I choose to apply it. Val is incredibly beautiful; she's also spent many years practicing the bassoon. Which, in the end, reveals her character? For which, conversely, does she get the most compliments? Why is the value in fortune, not choice?
I can't imagine how we came to this point. Game shows, perhaps. The population explosion. Slient Majority homogeneity.
Maybe it's just an excuse for failure.
Understandably, I am once again thinking about the New American Dream. I think I'm right about what I said in the Manifesto -- it isn't about freedom or self government. It isn't about picking yourself up by the bootstraps, rising to the top through talent and hard work. The New American Dream is about luck.
We don't want to earn lots of money; we want it to be given. Marry rich, win the lottery, be picked out of a crowd by a talent agent. Luck into the right amount of the right corporate stock. Forget about learning curves and dues-paying; that stuff is for suckers.
It's the same with beauty. Models aren't supposed to work out and starve themselves anymore. Read any recent starlet interview. It's about pigging out on burgers and staying stick thin - "blessed with a high metabolism." They're all very "down to earth." None of them wear makeup, or dye their hair, or have stylists. None of them had liposuction or breast implants.
Right.
It's something I don't understand, this national preoccupation with luck. Divine mandate, perhaps. The arbitrary favor of God. To me, luck is a let down. Luck means you haven't done anything right - you just got lucky. How stressful to have so little control over your life, never to point at cause and effect. How impossible to learn without If . . . Then.
I can't envy the lucky because I don't respect them for it. Yes, I was born very smart. That says nothing about who I am. What's wortwhile is how I use it, the hours I spend reading and where I choose to apply it. Val is incredibly beautiful; she's also spent many years practicing the bassoon. Which, in the end, reveals her character? For which, conversely, does she get the most compliments? Why is the value in fortune, not choice?
I can't imagine how we came to this point. Game shows, perhaps. The population explosion. Slient Majority homogeneity.
Maybe it's just an excuse for failure.
