Tell-all memoirs: Have we hit bottom yet?
Ana Marie Cox creates a little political distance between herself and Hunter Biden: ‘I Wanted To Find Humility In Hunter Biden’s Book:’
At one point, before his slide into hard-drug use, Biden meets with King Abdullah of Jordan on behalf of refugees (an opportunity derived, he says, from “nepotism, in the best way possible”).’
Cox closes some (A)uthentic (S)elfhood distance between herself and Hunter Biden (measured in units of gritty, 12-step fellowship).
‘I kept thinking of that experience reading Biden’s book. I wish that Biden could acquire that kid’s gift of grace that’s born of humility, of receiving and giving help because we’re all in the exact same place. We all fall the same distance to the bottom.’
The bottom is wherever you say it is:–This topic has become so predictable, so bland, that even Hunter Biden is getting in on the action. First, the fall from grace, then the public redemption and appeal for forgiveness. Addiction’s a disease, just like cancer. We need more awareness and more social programs. Then comes a publicity tour. Some social media couch-sitting, maybe. The Romans had baths and we Americans have warm, therapeutic tongue-baths, open to the public.
The top is wherever you say it is: –I’m pretty sure one’s life will be immeasurably better by not spending it smoking crack or becoming an alcoholic. Shocking! I try and take people as I find them, and hope they do the same with me. Over-sharing is probably not a sign of an organized life, but nearly everybody deserves a little grace.
Also, think of the suffering you can avoid by not reading Hunter Biden’s ghostwriter or Ana-Marie Cox.
A few more thoughts (they’re totally free, after all): Many modernists tended towards genius-level artistry; looking inwards and spinning the suffering of life (reducing life) into form, coherence and a lot of truth. Then focusing outwards onto the world.
At the very least, this made some really interesting architecture, but also an architecture which divorced many people working inside these buildings, from many elements of their pasts, and day-to-day life.
Here’s an interesting presentation. There are some good reasons to re-evaluate things:
For the postmoderns, this task became harder, I’d argue, as the ground became more barren. Inner often becomes outer; all reduced to a (N)ow of (S)elf. That said, there are many geniuses and a lot of good art to inspire. For the post-post-moderns, there is some good stuff out there, too, but questions of epistemology and ontology remain nearly open.
How to live and what to do? Further downstream, in the current social, political and institutional worlds, you’re on your own, unless maybe you gain notoriety through celebrity. Beyond your family and friends, you’ll probably have to join a political tribe. Join a majority and find out later it was just a minority! Invest your money in a (C)ause.
Most of us, most of the time, can’t handle the kind of isolation that comes from such intellectual provenance. I think such insight has a lot of predictive value.
It’s almost enough to make a guy religious!
Let’s conserve weirdos, and innovation, free thought and free inquiry (now that new majorities are forming)?
Is this my political tribe, or can I just float free, as a (S)elf, upon the surface of so many dangerous currents?
No one was harder than Billy Idol. While exploring his (S)elf, he’s nearly died many times over, and was banned from Thailand!
Vital Art! Ripped from today’s Youth Culture!