Said Megan Nolan, one of 16 writers asked to name one "irresponsible, immoral, indulgent" thing they do.
This collection of confessions — in the NYT — goes along with an opinion piece, "I Don’t Need to Be a ‘Good Person.’ Neither Do You" by the clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst Jamieson Webster.
Nolan, a novelist, should add: And to whatever degree it works or does not work, I get raw material for novels.
By the way, the comments over there are all about the one person who confesses to shoplifting. That person, Thomas Morton, tries to sort of justify his behavior on the ground that the prices — in the airport where he commits his crime — are high, the employees are underpaid, and he loves the feeling of "having stuff... that I didn't pay for." I think that entry should have been left out, because it distracted readers from all the interesting material 15 other writers contributed.
Morton was an editor at Vice Magazine. Here's his Wikipedia article, which has already been updated to contain the report of his confession "to habitual shoplifting at airport stores." I would expect to hear from him soon that he was describing a fantasy — nothing he really does.
Posts
37 comments:
There are a lot of ideas in the Jamieson Webster column, but I think her message is hidden among these references. Here are the sentences that registered on me, or sounded like she had come closest to the confession that the piece really wants to be, I think.
How do you locate free will in a world this compulsory?
This trouble with pleasure can be lived with. What seemingly can’t is the feeling that the basic laws that shore up our society are only just functioning; every day we face new evidence of how ruthlessly these are being undermined by those in power.
Once upon a time, America incorporated a diversity of religions and cultures into its vast nation, which multiplied, splintered, adapted, shattered into a panoply.
Breaking taboos shakes you to the core.
I’m reading ... about a torrid affair at 50, after a long, stable marriage that left her dissatisfied.
Many of my patients are mired in a shame that flattens them
In this vertigo we’ve forgotten that no one knows, or has ever known, what it really means to be an adult.
Having a second child was the most transgressive thing I’ve done in my life.
I revived my occasional smoking habit again after she was born. I just wasn’t willing to let the feeling fade away — not yet.
[And then, in the little bio at the end, the fact that she teaches at the New School. Hasn't it always been an outlet for frustrated anarchists and inhibited hedonists who are eating away at the margins of society to compensate for their unfulfilled desires? This little essay is part of the eternal battle between Eros and Civilization. The column was another entry in the return of the '60s. More freedom, more pleasure, fewer rules. Alternately: How to become Hunter Biden?]
I wonder if those behind the New York Times ever considers how often they're urging Americans not to be good, to divorce spouses, to indulge in a taste of evil, and so on?
Megan Nolan reminds us that, at a certain age, and with the benefits of contraception and a carefully curated cohort of pals, the electricity,plumbing and hydraulics of sexual hedonism can seem self-evidently wonderful. There are quite a few reasons why the unsustainability of such arrangements is likely to presage regret. It would be nice to know where Megan and friends will be in 2033.
Lawrence Kasdan made a film about this called The Big Chill.
Godless and neo-Marxist nation is a nation in decline.
How often does she get checked for venereal diseases?? Make it a weekly habit. At the very least.
Morality is so passé, for now. Under the New Regime, new standards will be imposed, but they'll be fluid, according to the narrative du jour.
She’s a whore. NTTAWWT, but she’s a whore.
Megan Nolan says: "I'm a slutty Slut! i Ruin marriages, families and friends.. I'm So COOL!"
Tom Morton says: "I rob and steal, because it makes me feel So COOL!!" OH! i work for 'Vice' !
gilbar says: "If it makes ME feel COOL, can i Murder? NO? What about unborn Children? Okay Then?
"I sleep with my friends, and I befriend the people I sleep with" seems at odds with the subsequent statement "that the worth men and women can hold for one another is beyond sexual and romantic."
Morton says stealing is COOL,
because he loves the feeling of "having stuff... that I didn't pay for."
He doesn't care about the people he hurts, because
a) some of them make a lot of money
b) some of them are poor (does he Even realize that he's hurting the employee's too?)
Megan says Slutty Slut Sex is FUN! I'm assuming that her partners (usually) wrap it?
What if; one of her partners wants bare back, because he loves the feeling? Okay? No? Why?
The message is that we are so smart, elite, and caring that the world needs to let us do whatever we want and thank us deeply for what we give you by just being here. Come, join us.
Many top scientists act this way, they deserve to seduce undergrads, it keeps the blood flowing to their large brains.
So, just as I suspected. Therapists really do think it's their job to relieve you of guilt and shame. And get you to leave your spouse and ghost your family if anyone in it offends thee.
Just blow it all up.
And we wonder why do many people are living on the streets?
Weimar
What & said.
Well, Morton's just the salt of the earth.
Nolan is actually a gay man.
...the employees are underpaid...
It would be interesting to hear Morton's explanation of how shop lifting will result in a higher wage for the shop employees.
Transgressive behavior is cool until it isn't. You can spend a lifetime waiting for the turn, but it'll happen sooner or later. Not looking forward to the events that make it happen, but it looks like it might happen before our crew checks out.
Yeah, Weimar.
Sorry, babe. Kerouac said it much better.
And, just like that, "Am I The Asshole?" has no reason for being.
The answer is, and forever shall be, "No, you are not the asshole. Nor will you ever be."
Jamieson Webster, roughly translated:
Can I ever do what I really want to?
Especially when the big bosses flout the rules constantly; why must the rest of us (okay, me) obey them?
Once, religion supported us; but they "shattered." That took away what might have supported my life with meaning, now I have none but my desires.
Do I dare.... ?
She did it!!!
My patients are mired in shame, why should anyone experience shame? Je refuse.
No adults = no responsibilities, no standards apply.
I've taken one step.
I've taken another; I smoke, even though my husband loathes it. What should be next? I think, I really think, that more is permitted and in fact more is my DUTY to myself.
As my mother used to say, why fill your mind with trash?
I suspect that Nolan is all talk, but now her male friends are going to be upset with her. "What the hell? She never slept with ME!"
"And to whatever degree it works or does not work, I get raw material for novels. And STD's."
Such conventional NY sins. Eating at Chick Fil A for crying out loud. Would have like just one person to say "I voted for Trump and may do so again." But you know that would be beyond the Manhattan pale.
Tom Morton sighted, alert airport security....
Making your entire life "Duty Free".
I, for one, expect a swing back to expectations and demands for rigid social conformity once the Left consolidates its hold on all three branches of government in 2024. That "conformity" will be changed in definition often enough, randomly enough, to allow selective prosecutions of anyone not supportive enough of the regime.
@Megan, friends don’t pass STDs to friends.
Yesterday, I looked up a term I'd heard, "Charity Girls". Those were poor shop girls in the 1890-1920 who "dated" for a night out and gifts. In the 1920s, middle class girls left the patriarchal home to live in city apartments and work in department stores.
This passage opines on the fluid nature of the morality:
For others, charity girls represented a yardstick against which they might measure their own ideas of respectability. The nuances of that measurement were expressed, for example, in a dialogue between a vice investigator and the hat girl at Semprini's dance hall. Answering his proposal for a date, she "said she'd be glad to go out with me but told me there was nothing doing [i.e., sexually]. Said she didn't like to see a man spend money on her and then get disappointed." Commenting on the charity girls that frequented the dance hall, she remarked that "these women get her sick, she can't see why a woman should lay down for a man the first time they take her out. She said it wouldn't be so bad if they went out with the men 3 or 4 times and then went to bed with them but not the first time" (17).
For this hat girl and other young working women, respectability was not defined by the strict measurement of chastity employed by many middle-class observers and reformers. Instead, they adopted a more instrumental and flexible approach to sexual behavior. Premarital sex could be labeled respectable in particular social contexts. Thus, charity girls distinguished their sexual activity from prostitution, a less acceptable practice, because they did not receive money from men. Other women, who might view charity girls as promiscuous, were untroubled by premarital intimacy with a steady boyfriend.
Charity Girls and City Pleasures
Author(s): Kathy Peiss
Source: OAH Magazine of History, Vol. 18, No. 4, Sex, Courtship, and Dating (Jul., 2004), pp.14-16
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25163695 .
What is amusing is this doesn't align with the common "knowledge" about promiscuity before the 1970s.
Especially when the big bosses flout the rules constantly; why must the rest of us obey them?
do YOU cheat on your Tax returns? NO?? Then YOU are a MORON! ALL the COOL PEOPLE Cheat!!
do YOU cheat on your Wife NO?? Then YOU are a MORON! ALL the COOL PEOPLE Cheat!!
do YOU take Bribes from competitors? NO?? Then YOU are a MORON! ALL the COOL PEOPLEDO!!
do YOU spy on your country? NO?? Then YOU are a MORON! ALL the COOL PEOPLE Spy!!
Only a MORON would have MORALS!! ALL the COOL PEOPLE Cheat!! Be a COOL PERSON Cheat!!
Work for SATAN!! It's FUN! And Profitable!!! And COOL!!!!
The left's goal is to burn it all down and then rule the resulting Anarcho-Tyranny. We'll all be living in Portland or San Francisco.
"This is what we all used to do when we were young and then grew out of when we moved into the serious part of life. Except I just didn’t."
She was born in 1990.
The Crack Emcee said...
"I wonder if those behind the New York Times ever considers how often they're urging Americans not to be good, to divorce spouses, to indulge in a taste of evil, and so on?"
Dude. Consider? They keep careful notes. That's what their compensation is based on.
"I Don’t Need to Be a ‘Good Person.’ Neither Do You"
No, I think I do, if I want to be happy. Or at least satisfied with myself.
"I Don’t Need to Be a ‘Good Person.’ Neither Do You"
Would your parents be proud of you for that observation? I suspect the answer could be illuminating.
I don't understand why AA thinks that the shoplifting fellow's apologia should have been omitted. If it is just that a clever editor ought to have realised that the shoplifter's crime would quasi-monopolize the comments, well, I can see that; maybe it is the only actual civil crime 'confessed'? But I skipped those two pieces in the Times this afternoon, so am resigned to remaining in the dark. Frankly, the only article I read was Bob Barker's obit. Am glad to say that my TPIR watching days were done with before he took up the save the animals nonsense.
From the article...
"I sleep with my friends, and I befriend the people I sleep with. As a result, my social life mostly consists of a sort of merry traveling band of fellows with whom I have happily porous and shifting relationships. This is what we all used to do when we were young and then grew out of when we moved into the serious part of life. Except I just didn’t. I know this sounds like hell to most people.... When it works, though, it feels like a vindication that the worth men and women can hold for one another is beyond sexual and romantic and also that it can continuously change, like everything else. When it doesn’t, it’s still pretty hot."
Megan Nolan, the human bonobo.
My experience is that it takes a certain number of responsible people to amass sufficient wealth for another person to live long enough to write about how irresponsible that person has been.
Post a Comment