Vain men ascendant

Here's GQ Style Guy Glenn O'Brien's encouraging thoughts on the return of the Well-dressed Male. I especially agree with his observation of how the female half of many couples tends to be far better dressed than her male consort. Maybe there's an evolutionary reason for the male predisposition to slovenliness, but surely it can't hurt the guys to up their sartorial game, if only as a gesture of respect and appreciation for the effort their lady friends make.

Sure, don't judge a book by its cover and all that, but here's a thought: what are the odds that a hooligan/hillbilly/harasser/heckler/hoon would be wearing a baseball cap, hoodie, saggy jeans and dirty trainers, rather than a smart hat, fitted jacket, trim pants and dress shoes/boots? You don't need a PhD in Research and Statistics in Social Psychology to intuit that how one dresses can speak volumes of one's character (or pretensions to a certain kind of character). And spare me the charge of monetary elitism; you can get a decent jacket from an op shop for a fraction of the price of those hi-tech, hi-performance, hi-monstrosity sports shoes.

The ideal man strives to cultivate internal and external grace, charm and style. We're all gonna be a long time dead. Might as well look dapper before our final exit.




15.4.10

Postmodernist writing: the real deal

In case you hadn’t notice (and who could blame you for failing to do so), my previous ‘essay’, "Preconceptualist patriarchialism and semiotic narrative", was a pastiche of absolutely meaningless mumbo-jumbo, randomly generated by this clever program created by fellow Melbournian Andrew Bulhak (click on your browser’s ‘refresh’ button to generate a brand new configuration of po-mo keywords, hackneyed phrases and notable names). A wry dig at the abstruse terminology, liberal name-dropping appeals to authority and banal observations dressed up in profound-sounding language that are the stock-in-trade of many postmodernist and social constructivist writers, the Postmodernism Generator at least produces essays that are, as Richard Dawkins noted, “distinguishable from the real thing only in being more fun to read.”

Preconceptualist patriarchialism and semiotic narrative

1. Capitalist subcultural theory and capitalist deappropriation


“Sexual identity is fundamentally responsible for capitalism,” says Bataille; however, according to la Fournier, it is not so much sexual identity that is fundamentally responsible for capitalism, but rather the failure of sexual identity. Semiotic narrative implies that narrative is a product of communication, but only if Sontag’s analysis of capitalist deappropriation is invalid; if that is not the case, language may be used to entrench the status quo.

Objective reality and science

No one would deny the utility of science in creating more effective medicines, more nutritious food, less polluting fuels and faster, more efficient communication systems. But to achieve such utility, it requires researchers, designers, engineers and manufacturers to recognise the objective laws of nature (in physics, chemistry, biology etc) and work within their limits. Would you fly in a plane designed and built by folks who reject the physical laws of aerodynamics? Or take medication prescribed by someone who is totally ignorant of human physiology or pharmaceutical chemistry? Yet when scientists declare that an objective reality – independent of our subjective selves and our culture – exists, and that the scientific method is to date the most accurate way to discover the facts – truths – of this objective reality, they are accused by non-scientists (and amazingly, even some scientists, as we shall see below) of being needlessly provocative and egotistic.

The three cultures

During the mid-twentieth century, the British physicist and novelist Charles Percy Snow wrote and spoke of the gulf between the ‘two cultures’; the humanities on one side and the sciences on the other. Snow observed that a breakdown in communication between intellectuals from both camps of knowledge was obstructing efforts to solve the world’s problems. In the nineties, American science writer John Brockman updated the concept of the two cultures by positing the emergence of a ‘third culture’. This third culture consisted of scientists and other intellectuals who were communicating their (mainly scientific) ideas directly to the public and in the process challenging the traditional cultural authority of writers and thinkers from the humanities.