Repulsive Interactions

The Young Gary Busey Chronicles.:

Things I don’t quite remember aren’t real after a day spent reading comics: time travel, repulsor tech, anti-mutant bigotry, the Gotham City PD , the survival of print journalism, no heist-free gala fundraisers

From Peter Milligan & Mike Allred’s X-Statix #3

I find the cult of positivity in America really disturbing for a lot of reasons. Firstly because it defines positivity as 100% optimism at all times, but also because it sees positivity as tantamount to virtue and goodness, making the acknowledgment of anything negative a sign of moral corruption.

I’m going to come right out and say that Voltaire’s Candide was a pretty formative text for me. I read it when I was a teenager, but unlike the other books I venerated at that age, I find that it only becomes more relevant to the world I inhabit. 

There is a callousness and self-interest inherent in so much of the talk of positivity I hear. Books like The Secret, which insinuate that you deserve everything good you get, and that everything bad is born of negativity, inspire, rather than a desire to help others and to change the world for the better, a sense of entitlement and complacency and an excuse to ignore the suffering of others. Phrases like “You have to love yourself before you can love someone else,” while perhaps well-intentioned, deliver the message that being frustrated with yourself makes you undeserving of love and inadequate at loving.

The cult of positivity rewards exceptionalism, not in the sense of being exceptional in what you do, but in the sense of being exceptional in what you have. If you don’t get everything that you want, it is because you are flawed and undeserving. You brought it on yourself with your negativity. Good things only happen to good people, and bad things only happen to bad people.

The cult of positivity is capitalistic in the worst sense, in that it denies the existence of luck and privilege and presumes that everyone is dealt the same hand. People who believe in it don’t feel genuine gratitude when good things happen to them (although they will attempt to give that impression—“I’m so blessed”); they think “I deserve this,” regardless of the actual effort put forth to earn their good fortune. Do millionaires work harder than fast food cashiers? Do people who survive life-threatening diseases “embrace life and positivity” that much more than people who don’t? It sets up a culture where you have only yourself to blame for your lack of success, and contrary to what the cult of positivity will tell you, that is entirely different from personal accountability.

It is no one’s duty to be happy or to see the good in everything. It is everyone’s duty to work hard and help others as best they can. It’s great to look on the bright side, to retain your strength of character and hope that things really can get better, but it is morally vacuous to do so at the cost of actually recognizing the need for change in the world and doing your best to enact it.

Jonathan Evans, in an email to Lisa Lutz (via davidmanque)

I blame the popular sentiment against semicolons, like I blame so many other contemporary literary ills, on Ernest Hemingway. Who would have thought that so many generations of writers would balk at any kind of stylistic evolution away from terse reportage? I wonder, had he lived to see it, if he would have had a similar reaction to Alan Moore, post-Watchmen, where he basically apologized for making comics gritty and miserable for a few decades (LOOKING AT YOU, FRANK MILLER). Like, “Hey guys, was I naive to think you would all kind of, you know, do your own thing, writing-wise?”* And then go back to being smug and beardy and eventually withdrawing into crotchety irrelevance/h8erizm/a cave, also like Alan Moore.**

I would add something further about the merits of semicolons, but the quotation really sums up their exquisite nuance better than I ever could. I will say, however, that strictures against their use are completely nonsensical. But then, I am from the school of thought that thinks, with regard to style, you can do whatever you want as long as you do it judiciously. I also have been known to wear black and navy blue together, but SO DID PATRICK MCGOOHAN ON THE PRISONER, AND HE LOOKED FLY AS HELL. It doesn’t take a genius to extrapolate that I also think What Not to Wear is a stupid show with a borderline-pernicious premise.***

*Of course it is telling of my own writing sensibilities that my Fauxmingway sounds like a mad casual, comma-lover, but you try growing up in the San Fernando Valley and majoring in Classics, and just see if it doesn’t rub off on you. COLLOQUIALISMS & SUBORDINATE CLAUSES 4 LYFE.

**I like some of Alan Moore’s work, but I think Watchmen is pretty dated and heavy-handed, and also Alan Moore says that nothing good or original is happening in comics right now, which means he obviously doesn’t have a clue about anything, because GRANT MORRISON, if nothing else (and there is a lot of else!).

***In general, I hate the lowest common denominator approach to style and creativity, which emphasizes rules over the more difficult, but infinitely more rewarding, method of seeking out the sometimes intangible “it” factor that makes things (books! outfits! music! etc.!) work even when it doesn’t seem like they should. It’s a sloppy learning curve, but at least it doesn’t produce armies of clones.