Could we accept that we'll be forever doomed to ride on the wrong side of the cultural touchstone from the moment we set down the chisel?
Someone recently corrected me that inception has nothing to do with the dream-within-a-dream, the matroshka dreaming was merely a feature of the inception operation to artificially "plant an idea" in the thoughts of another and everyone who has been mistakenly referring to it by the more popular definition just ain't woke enough.
For example, it's thoroughly unfashionable to speak favorably of anything Russian in origin anymore. But we could learn a thing or two about how to be progressive from the Soviets. Back in the day, there was a preponderance of Jews in Russian academic institutions, because, well, Jewish culture prioritized education. But rather than implement some form of affirmative action to get more, uh, equitable representation in academia that reflected the, um, diversity of the Russian population, they simply put a maximum quota on Jews. So imagine if, here in the US, when a minority got a coveted promotion instead of an old white guy, they weren't vilified for being the DE&I plant, but rather the post didn't go to yet another old white guy because there were already a disproportionate number of old white guys on the board. Unfortunately, we aren't great at this type of perspective and optics, which feeds ammunition to this rising tide of anti-woke folks.
Yuengling is one of the few things I miss from the East Coast. I've brought it to some of my coworkers, but only the ones from PA appreciated it. All the beer out here in the PNW is objectively so much better than everything out East, though. I've taken to referring to Yuengling as beer from "America's oldest brewery" which gives it the appropriate amount of street cred in a culturally neutral form. Unless they conflate it with "America's oldest profession," which is a large part of why Seattle is still on the map.
The LockMart thing impacts me personally. Used to work closely with them at the Naval Surface Warfare Center (where we developed submarine technology, how sneaky). But I'll be lying if I didn't admit that one of the big reasons I left DC was to extricate myself from the defense-industrial complex. If I had stayed, chances are I would have worked for beltway bandits for the rest of my life. That said, the signals intelligence technology was truly awesome and probably the closest we'll ever get to doing Star Trek stuff in our lifetimes.
To paraphrase Chuck Palahniuk, on a long enough timeline everything becomes problematic. Or at least, everything is at risk of becoming problematic in the fullness of time. Whatever we think we are "woke enough" about right now, in 10 years we'll look back and cringe. In middle school we (me and my classmates) used the r* slur like it was nothing. In high school we said everything we didn't like was "gay" (and many of us were queer and out at that time), and I still catch myself to this day saying something is "lame."
That's another problem with relying on cultural touchstones, it's hard to know what's going to last. If you want your manuscript to stand the test of time you have to be really mindful of what you reference. Part of the reason Pride and Prejudice is still so easy to enjoy today is because it doesn't rely on references to anything specific to its time.
I wanted to make a point the other day and I said "you know that scene in The Wizard of Oz where--" and the friend I was talking to had never seen it. A helpful reminder to me that even when you think "everyone will know this!" not everyone will know.
Could we accept that we'll be forever doomed to ride on the wrong side of the cultural touchstone from the moment we set down the chisel?
Someone recently corrected me that inception has nothing to do with the dream-within-a-dream, the matroshka dreaming was merely a feature of the inception operation to artificially "plant an idea" in the thoughts of another and everyone who has been mistakenly referring to it by the more popular definition just ain't woke enough.
For example, it's thoroughly unfashionable to speak favorably of anything Russian in origin anymore. But we could learn a thing or two about how to be progressive from the Soviets. Back in the day, there was a preponderance of Jews in Russian academic institutions, because, well, Jewish culture prioritized education. But rather than implement some form of affirmative action to get more, uh, equitable representation in academia that reflected the, um, diversity of the Russian population, they simply put a maximum quota on Jews. So imagine if, here in the US, when a minority got a coveted promotion instead of an old white guy, they weren't vilified for being the DE&I plant, but rather the post didn't go to yet another old white guy because there were already a disproportionate number of old white guys on the board. Unfortunately, we aren't great at this type of perspective and optics, which feeds ammunition to this rising tide of anti-woke folks.
Yuengling is one of the few things I miss from the East Coast. I've brought it to some of my coworkers, but only the ones from PA appreciated it. All the beer out here in the PNW is objectively so much better than everything out East, though. I've taken to referring to Yuengling as beer from "America's oldest brewery" which gives it the appropriate amount of street cred in a culturally neutral form. Unless they conflate it with "America's oldest profession," which is a large part of why Seattle is still on the map.
The LockMart thing impacts me personally. Used to work closely with them at the Naval Surface Warfare Center (where we developed submarine technology, how sneaky). But I'll be lying if I didn't admit that one of the big reasons I left DC was to extricate myself from the defense-industrial complex. If I had stayed, chances are I would have worked for beltway bandits for the rest of my life. That said, the signals intelligence technology was truly awesome and probably the closest we'll ever get to doing Star Trek stuff in our lifetimes.
To paraphrase Chuck Palahniuk, on a long enough timeline everything becomes problematic. Or at least, everything is at risk of becoming problematic in the fullness of time. Whatever we think we are "woke enough" about right now, in 10 years we'll look back and cringe. In middle school we (me and my classmates) used the r* slur like it was nothing. In high school we said everything we didn't like was "gay" (and many of us were queer and out at that time), and I still catch myself to this day saying something is "lame."
That's another problem with relying on cultural touchstones, it's hard to know what's going to last. If you want your manuscript to stand the test of time you have to be really mindful of what you reference. Part of the reason Pride and Prejudice is still so easy to enjoy today is because it doesn't rely on references to anything specific to its time.
I wanted to make a point the other day and I said "you know that scene in The Wizard of Oz where--" and the friend I was talking to had never seen it. A helpful reminder to me that even when you think "everyone will know this!" not everyone will know.