Showing posts with label the well-adjusted. Show all posts
Showing posts with label the well-adjusted. Show all posts

Monday, June 4, 2012

An Essay on Criticism



It’s okay to not like things.
It’s okay, but don’t be a dick about it.
It’s okay to not like things.
Don’t be a dick about the things you don’t like.
These lyrics were set to an upbeat tune and uploaded to YouTube by user 808X in April of 2011. The 16-second video has been viewed over a million times. It is the national anthem of the well-adjusted, the beautifully condensed etiquette manual of Web 2.0. Those four lines tell you everything you need to know in order to navigate these confusing, trying modern times of ours.

In 1709, at the age of twenty-one, Alexander Pope wrote a 744-line poem in heroic couplets entitled An Essay on Criticism. It included the following passage:
But you who seek to give and merit Fame,
And justly bear a Critick’s noble Name,
Be sure your self and your own Reach to know.
How far your Genius, Taste, and Learning go;
Launch not beyond your Depth, but be discreet,
And mark that Point where Sense and Dulness meet.
Or: it’s okay to not like things, but don’t be a dick about it. Possibly as a result of having the ditty playing in my head as I reread the poem ahead of this post, it seems to me now that Pope was concerned with decorum to a far greater extent than with the substance or content of criticism. A critic should be tactful – he tells us – mindful of appearances and highly practiced in the art of dissimulation. ‘Speak, tho’ sure, with seeming Diffidence.’ When teaching, appear not to teach, but to remind the reader of something that they already know. In all things be
Not dully prepossest, nor blindly right;
Tho’ Learn’d well-bred; and tho’ well-bred, sincere;
Modestly bold, and Humanly severe.
And so forth. Even to the extent that Pope’s model critic must possess integrity and be willing to censure friends and ‘gladly praise the Merits of a Foe’, this too is a quality that matters so long as it is conspicuous and you are seen to be doing those things. And in the closing lines of the poem, what is that final precept, to be ‘averse alike to Flatter or Offend’, if not ultimately a social imperative, seeing as both flattery and offence are so intrinsically tied to social codes and perceptions?

In one other respect the video by 808X is the perfect update of Pope’s three-hundred year old poem, for the latter wrote – amongst many quotable lines – that
Words are like Leaves; and where they most abound,
Much Fruit of Sense beneath is rarely found.
Now what could be more succinct – therefore make more sense – than ‘it’s okay to not like things, but don’t be a dick about it’?


So what does it mean? The clues in the video are limited to some fairly basic drawings. The neutral person, above, who neither likes nor dislikes things, seems fairly contented. Then he or she dislikes something. This is okay.


Being a dick, by contrast, transfigures the person entirely.


Big lettering underscores the cautionary message, without much in the way of clarification.


Dickish behaviour is represented as a kind of rage, but I think this is more figurative than literal, and that the larger point is that being a dick makes you look bad and is unpleasant for those around you. However this still doesn’t quite explain what the behaviour consists of. YouTube user paintballingguy offered the following response:
It’s okay to not like things.
It’s okay, doesn’t mean that I’m a dick about it.
It’s okay to not like things.
It doesn’t make me a dick to have things I don’t like.
Which is all well and good, but takes us no closer to understanding what it is that makes you a dick. It just reiterates that disliking something is not enough to qualify. In logical terms we might say that having things you don’t like is not in itself a sufficient condition for being a dick, and may not be a necessary one either, meaning that it might be possible to like everything and still be a dick by means of some other transgression.

So is disliking anything at all bad in itself? Again it’s hard to say but there may be something of a clue in the first line of the song. ‘It’s okay to not like things.’ It’s not good or fine. Merely okay. We don’t really endorse it, but if you must, then at least try not to be a dick about it. Note how this is written in the way the core Web 2.0 applications operate. YouTube has like and dislike options for its videos, but it’s in the minority: Facebook has a like button, but no dislike button; Twitter lets you broadcast or favourite a tweet, not hiss or boo; Google, which owns YouTube, allows you to register agreement (+1), but not disagreement. These are the default behaviours, whereas not liking things is just okay. We know it can’t be completely designed out of the system, so for now it is tolerated. Just be mindful of how you go about it. Use decorum.

So again we must ask what does it mean to be a dick? What does it look like? I ventured before that it’s an unpleasantness, something that makes you look bad and makes others feel bad about themselves. All Offence and no Flattery, as Pope might have said. Unlike the ogreish stick figure in the video he literally was disfigured, by the way, as a result of Pott’s disease, and in addition to this he was a Catholic, which barred him from living within ten miles of London or Westminster and from attending regular schools. In describing at such a young age the social role and the social etiquette of the critic he might have had his opinions coloured by all of this. For our part, we might want to think about what it is that excludes people from the social networks of today. The overwhelmingly favourable reaction to the video posted by 808X, as documented by the first few pages of Google results, is a chorus of Yes! and THIS! and Like and +1 and subscribe, although in order for it to rack up such a prodigious number of views by far the most common reaction must have been simply people sharing the video amongst their friends and contacts. But why? In answer to what? Do many people really feel that the problem with the internet or society in general is people hating on the things that they like? Who does that anymore? Are there even any genuine snobs left? Are there cultural critics willing to argue that, say, reality television is bad for its public and for society, and that if you watch Police Ten 7 you just might be an arsehole? Or is it true on the contrary that even the most derivative or exploitative manifestations of mass culture have been almost universally subsumed under the rubric of taste, concerning which, as we have known for some time, there can be no dispute? As for the artistic and cultural legitimacy of what is popular, that is another battle that was won decisively some decades ago. Nobody but nobody is relitigating that.

So why all the likes for this video, why all the love? Unless it is precisely because it compresses into sixteen wonderful seconds an entire set of cultural attitudes to which most people subscribe. We only ask that we be left alone with our likes, and not unduly exposed to our dislikes. Isn’t that how Web 2.0, how consumer culture operates? Networks that create endless loops of positive reinforcement. Forums that allow us to devote to most authors and texts, obscure or otherwise, the kind of minute, maniacal attention that Pope prescribed for the study of the great ancient poets, producing a multiplicity of canons which are nonetheless still canons, therefore just as flawed as the staid ones that we inherited; and, most importantly, leaving no means to critique or bypass the mechanisms of that consumption.

Everything must pass through the social networks, therefore everything must be liked (or disliked in the calculated fashion of the shock-value piece, which amounts to the same thing). If all goes according to hype, soon there will be no publishers nor editors and so the logic of this social layer, that is to say of efficient consumption, will be alone in governing access to information and ultimately most forms of culture. It’s the future we bought, the future we agreed to. It plays in chunks of sixteen seconds to the sound of an upbeat tune.





Monday, September 19, 2011

The Well-Adjusted


The privatisation of stress is a perfect capture system, elegant in its brutal efficiency. Capital makes the worker ill, and then multinational pharmaceutical companies sell them drugs to make them better. The social and political causation of distress is neatly sidestepped at the same time as discontent is individualised and interiorised.

(Mark Fisher)


Having adapted or conformed suitably to new conditions, the well-adjusted go confidently about their business. And their business is most likely to be contract work in a finance, services, marketing or IT-related field. These are proper new economy jobs, as opposed to old economy jobs that have been rebranded and casualised. The strategist. The outside consultant. The optimiser. The optimisation strategy consultant.

However the well-adjusted are not primarily a social class. They are a socialised class.

The well-adjusted rely on social media and mobile communication to craft and maintain their personal and professional reputation. This is a tautology, insofar as in the world of the well-adjusted the personal is the professional.

The well-adjusted are effortlessly ingratiating. Their mediated social interactions are always calculated to maximise the likes and minimise the dislikes. But calculated is a misleading term, for the rhetorical techniques and the inter-personal algorithms necessary to achieve this goal have been fully interiorised.

While possession of an iPhone device or equivalent does not alone a well-adjusted person make, it is necessary to own an iPhone device or equivalent in order to aspire to well-adjusted status. The capacity to police one’s reputation on the go is an essential requirement.

The well-adjusted enthuse about Twitter and are dismissive of Facebook, but are active on both.

The well-adjusted do not check their messages or Twitter and Facebook updates with obsessive frequency. They check them with the correct frequency.

Politically, the well-adjusted gravitate towards the left of centre. Professing to oppose the neoliberalism that produced the economy in which they thrive, they nonetheless maintain that the reforms of the nineteen-eighties were necessary and retain a soft commitment to social democratic goals – think New Labour in Britain, or Clark’s Labour in New Zealand – combined with the belief that there is no alternative to free-market capitalism, a flexible labour market and a lean, rationally streamlined welfare state. They call this ‘being pragmatic’. By contrast, right wingers who believe that radical neoliberal reform will lead to a purer, truer welfare for those who actually need it are forced to defend that conviction on purely ideological grounds.

Having adapted or conformed suitably to new conditions, the well-adjusted don’t believe in ideology. They believe in rational, evidence-based debate on an issue-by-issue basis. There is nothing that the well-adjusted love more than data, but they rarely question how it has been collected outside of a quick check to make sure that the methodology is in order. Attempting even a watered-down Foucaudian critique of this position is one of the few sure ways of irritating the well-adjusted, who are otherwise largely unflappable.

To their credit, the well-adjusted are excellent listeners and there is virtually no limit to the points of view that they are prepared to consider and dismiss.

The well-adjusted believe that politics is the art of the possible, where by ‘possible’ they really mean ‘what can reasonably be achieved within the next six months’. However this doesn’t stop them from supporting a range of campaigns and social causes, typically by means of retweeting as opposed to marching.

The well-adjusted believe that anthropogenic climate change is a scientific fact and advocate sustainable living.

The well-adjusted are in favour of multiculturalism, chiefly in that it broadens the range of available recipes and ingredients. For the well-adjusted are passionate about food. Often you can tell a well-adjusted household just by looking at the spice rack. Or the wine rack. Or the whisky cabinet.

And the coffee, God, the coffee. You don’t want to get the well-adjusted started about coffee. Jesus Christ.

In all matters related to food and drink, and many others beside, the well-adjusted reify taste over culture. So for instance a well-adjusted shopper may purchase Parmigiano Reggiano or the scandalously expensive ‘parmesan’ produced by Kapiti Cheeses in New Zealand. But if it turns out that they like the knock-off better, then the Kapiti Parmesan will be declared as good (and functionally ‘real’, ‘authentic’) as Parmigiano Reggiano, if not more so, and become a suitable substitute in all Italian recipes that call for this particular type of cheese.

Taste being an end in itself, and requiring little by way of education (or study, or understanding), the well-adjusted are happy to enjoy the things that most people enjoy, including – in post-ironic fashion – the most exploitative manifestations of popular culture. They would dismiss Neil Postman’s arguments in Amusing Ourselves to Death simply in that he had them at ‘amusing’: an enjoyable spectacle by definition can do no harm, either to the spectator or to more nebulous categories such as culture or discourse. Criticism is therefore reduced to the form of the review, and critical theory is dismissed out of hand.

A corollary to this is that nothing could be further than snobbery from the sensibility of the well-adjusted, and indeed the well-adjusted are not to be confused with hipsters. Hipsters are in fact far more capable of self-reflection than the well-adjusted, and besides the well-adjusted are neither setters nor followers of fashion. Although they pride themselves on always being current and informed about the latest trends, they do not feel pressured to conform to them.

So what do the well-adjusted look like? For a picture that is about to become out of date, trawl any archive of stock photographs with the search phrase ‘person with laptop’. Then you eliminate the ones who are too laid back,



the formally dressed,


or those who appear to be overdoing it (a phone, a laptop and your card? Plus, the well-adjusted know their credit card details by heart.)


Until you end up with something like this.





Busy, casual, relaxed, connected. Working – possibly, although it's hard to say – yet at the same time chilling out, at home or in a café.

(I say the picture is about to become out of date because the laptop will soon have to go. It’s just that ‘person with smartphone’ is compositionally more awkward and hasn’t quite produced an equally satisfying set of interchangeable images yet.)

This last exercise should have finally clarified that the well-adjusted do not exist except as a sociological construct, a composite image, a demographic profile. For the purposes of this post I deduced most of their characteristics by going through this article by Mark Fisher on the privatisation of stress and working my way backwards: that is to say by reversing the distressed mindset of the workers and would-be workers who in the course of the past two to three decades have had to metabolise chronic job insecurity and the constant shrinking of social safety nets, and attempting to produce its negative image.

To put it another way: if the success of capitalist realism is measured by the generalised belief that there is no alternative not only to the status quo but also to further neoliberal reforms (the only way out is to go deeper), then – if only because goods still need to be sold, but also and far more importantly to create a screen in front of the distressed subject – there must also exist a more cheerful narrative predicated on wilful acceptance. However creating this narrative is not solely the task of marketers and advertisers, nor ideologues or politicians for that matter: it is the culture itself that must produce the image of a model, contented subject by working inductively through the demands that are put on each of us.

Job insecurity and living from contract to contract are a source of anxiety? Then there must be somebody for whom this is not so, somebody for whom the designation of freelance (lovely word, that) is an opportunity for deducting some cost of living items from their taxes and who uses the enforced downtime as an opportunity for rest and recreation. The social and professional demand to be always communicatively available and plugged into multiple networks is a source of stress? Then there must be people who are only too happy to always be available, and for whom checking Twitter and Facebook updates or new emails and text messages never becomes a compulsive habit.

Because ultimately, if I can’t make it work, it must be my fault. If I can’t trust that the work will come, and that I won’t get sick, it must be my fault. If I feel ambivalent about some aspects of food culture, reality television or the Rugby World Cup, it must be my fault. I must adjust my settings and learn to enjoy. Some online communities can help with that, teach you how to smooth the corners. Not any single person can be well-adjusted, but together we can reach homeostasis and create a self-adjusted whole. A model, ideal subject: liberal, cultured, non-judgmental, environmentally conscious, socially aware. That’s someone, or something, to be. Don’t corporations also strive to embody those characteristics?

And so the social networks, as well as a place for creating and sharing on the margins of the established pathways of capitalism, are also this: a training ground for the aspiring well-adjusted. Which is to say – seeing as more and more the personal truly is the professional – a tool to fight insecurity, to behave more appropriately and become better liked, hence more employable; but also to derive much-needed psychological comfort from that collectively constructed simulacrum (or stock photograph, if you will) that is the well-adjusted person. Yet the simulacrum operates in turn as a source of anxiety, for it embodies and sharpens the demand to conform to that model subject and naturalises the workings of the system that produces it. (And here we glimpse the mechanisms of community without solidarity that Fisher hints at when he refers to the individualisation of discontent.)

I don’t have much to offer by way of conclusion, other than to suggest that we might wish to pay a qualitatively different kind of attention to the attempts at communication that fail, to the awkwardness, perhaps even the trolling, not as flawed or disruptive strategies to be designed out of the system, but rather as qualities of a different kind of subject – the maladjusted – to be considered in a dialectical relationship with its opposite. That could be something to pursue. In the meantime, read The Privatisation of Stress, for it is illuminating. I’ve also compiled a brief separate entry on the well-adjusted child.