Tuesday, August 25, 2020
Cinderella vs Booker T
Convective thought.
First, one unquestionable absolute truth.
All human traits and talents and tendencies are innate and permanent. Some traits are more strictly determined than others, but the initial condition is always permanent. You can't change your status or your skills or your likability.
In his strong and lyrical discussion of peasant life, Michelet sees the origin of fables like Cinderella and Ugly Duckling.
A very real and very genuine passion underlies it, that of her unhappy, quite hopeless love, one that cruel Nature often sows between pure souls of too widely separated ranks, the poignant regret of the peasant woman that she cannot make herself fair and desirable, to be loved of the knight; the stifled sighs of the serf, as looking down his furrow, he sees riding by on a white horse a too, too charming vision, the beautiful, the adored, mistress of the castle and the lands he tills. It is like the Eastern fable, the melancholy idyll of the impossible loves of the Rose and the Nightingale. But there is one great difference; the bird and the flower are both beautiful, equal even in beauty. But here the inferior being, so low placed in the scale of rank, confesses humbly, "I am plain and homely, a monster of ugliness!" The pity of it ! . . . But all the same, with a persistency and a heroic power of will unknown to the East, and by the very ardour of his longing, he breaks through the silly obstacles in his way. He loves so truly he is loved in turn, this monster; and Love makes him beautiful.Those fables may have been helpful in an era when your job was also predetermined and permanent. They're destructive in an era when jobs, and other ways of using your skills, are more flexible. Unpopular people can't become more popular or respected, but they CAN seek indirect popularity for their products or services. This is the ONLY way to avoid total frustration and depression. If you are hoping for a miracle that makes you attractive or likable, you're bound to fail. If you try to provide respectable products or services, you have a good chance of success. Even in the empathetic '30s, very few stories made this point. After WW2, raw meritocracy sponsored by Deepstate made the truth impossible to say or see. Every source tells us that riches and popularity are possible for everyone if you try hard enough. This is a DEADLY LIE. Booker T Washington is the only celebrity who ever told the truth. He has been forgotten and canceled for a long time.
Labels: 2000=1000, Carver, From rights to duties
¶ 1:17 AM
