All is Vanity
February 03, 2005
The end of this Washington Post article on print-on-demand vanity presses gets to the heart of why so many people keep these operations in business, which is fascinating for what it says about the culture. People with their ignorant “dreams” of authorship have no idea how the media works as technology and culture. They sense it is a kind of exclusive church, but they don’t know how to get in it. They can’t accept that they might not be allowed in under any circumstances.
Typically the dreaming author wannabe confuses having a print object (a book) with the accomplishment and public esteem they really desire. It is like the way the masses view higher education, and it explains the spam we all get about “diploma mills.” Like diploma mills, the “author mills” trade on idiocy and low self-esteem that people seek to remedy with a piece of paper that requires anything but hard work and talent. And that is how many people see even legitimate diplomas now, so the circles of legitimate and illegitimate accomplishment keep collapsing in on each other. Americans do not know what the fixed standards are for quality, competency and real achievement in any area of life, except sports. They do not want to know. If you get up and tell them, you will be derided as an elitist.
This know-nothing slothfulness is fundamental to to the nation: its citizens habitually dislike and rail against established institutions that are necessarily particularist and exclusive. When they are healthy, the institutions don’t care what outsiders think of them, they put big demands on those who we want in, and they remain exclusive and “elitist.” So the rabble is motivated to start new, more “open and inclusive” churches, universities, presses, record labels, etc. out of a reactive need that lacks real direction. The culture slides so much in favor of these constant reactions and revolutions, it creates a corrosive ooze of an economy that well-founded institutions float in, and that economy threatens and erodes those institutions bit by bit. The basis for values and standards of any kind is lost; the criteria of quality and merit go out of discussion.
This is All is Vanity in The Japery, a part of The New Pantagruel. Previously: Lott on Buckley | Next: Culturemakers | TrackBack (0) | Comments (0)
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