2 responses to “Are we the post-emotional, entrepreneurial generation?”

1. this quote especially is apt:
   “Well, we’re all in showbiz now, walking on eggshells, relentlessly tending our customer base. We’re all selling something today, because even if we aren’t literally selling something (though thanks to the Internet as well as the entrepreneurial ideal, more and more of us are), we’re always selling ourselves. We use social media to create a product — to create a brand — and the product is us. We treat ourselves like little businesses, something to be managed and promoted.

   The self today is an entrepreneurial self, a self that’s packaged to be sold.”

   ps: the link sends you to a log in page for NYT…

2. Interesting, and accurate, I think. I’d like to hear more…is it better to have non-aggressive hipsters and their “bobo” counterparts than to have the volatile anti-culturalists? While the latter were obnoxious and potentially destructive, at least they weren’t letting themselves be walked over. The danger in a hipster/bobo culture is much more subtle, and therefore more dangerous, I think. And I wonder where politics fits into all of this…

   On a sort of related note, something I’ve been thinking about recently is the role of the prophets of the Old Testament, culturally speaking: Elijah versus everyone (although with the remnant preserved by God), racing everywhere, staving off and occasionally slaughtering the forces of Baal. Contrast him with the lying prophets giving Saul false confidence to go into battle, selling what he wanted to hear and desperately grasping at credence. Is the underlying motivation of commercial success (whether based on useful entrepreneurship (deification of Steve Jobs), big-business/industry, a green/organic approach, or the utility of the internet) actually merely the iron horns we have forged to sway the monarchic influence of the everyday consumer/voter/cultural-social observer?

   Is that enough questions, slashes, and parentheses?