The closer you get to leisure class the more ambitions barbellize: trivial, like seeking out the best chips, or save-the-world. Nothing in between.
Does not bode well for postscarcity utopian dreams. They will be unstable.
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where does pursuing personal taste fit? eg getting into songwriting. I guess trivial
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If it's hard most people won't really pursue it. Just pretend to.
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Heh that's actually a major theme in the novel i'm working on; most musicians are LARPing for the sake of participating in a scene
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Successful entertainers need not necessarily be talented artists, just professional narcissists (not necessarily judging but stating matter-of-factly)
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It's a diversion from original topic...but celebrities often succeed by blurring lines between pretending to be popular and achieving it. Self-absorption is a necessary trait, and again, it may not be malevolent, just...narcissism.
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yup... a metaphor swirling in my head is that there's a sort of 'personality gravity', and it also acts extra hard on certain kind of people.
what's nuanced is distinguishing geek-cool from sociopath-narcissism-zombie-capitalist cool. Most ppl dont care anyway
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miles davis and jimi hendrix were self-absorbed in a different way from, say... uh, everyone else. lol. i'm trying to figure out the difference, and trying to figure out if it matters. any thoughts/suggestions? my characters are arguing and idk whose side i'm on
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I'm probably worse at fiction than you, but I've found that giving characters a scene-level motive (like "need to catch a plane" or "score a petty point") in addition to overall plot level resolves argument scenes
Yes! Thing is I also need to figure out where I stand (that's why I'm writing this, I suppose). Re: clueless kids getting into a scene thinking they're grasping at some truth. Think I'm leaning towards a "we're all LARPing one way or another" + "define your own itch & scratch it"
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