Ok, he is really cute, but there is something off about a super rich person telling people to follow their dreams and take chances.
Especially someone who started out super-rich. It's not even like a movie star who started out normal -- that may be a one-in-a-million shot, but at least it's not too late for people to "make it," whereas it is way too late to get Gloria Vanderbilt as your mother.
I did a useful task! OK, half of a useful task, but still. Half a task is better than none, I always say.
Especially someone who started out super-rich.
My little epiphany after staying at the Bellagio was to sort of appreciate the rich people who do
anything
at all. Because they can readily spend their lives floating about from facial to spa to fancy dinner to club.
There are certain musicians who started out as rich kids - Townes Van Zandt, Gram Parsons - and they could've gone sliding through life on their trust funds. It's so easy. So props to Gwyneth and all the other pampered kids who bothered to do something with their lives.
I don't know that I can count being an artist as doing something useful with your privileged background. (I know you didn't say "useful.")
Edited to note that a guy I used to work with was Abby Rockefeller O'Neill's son, and he worked full time (running a mental health program) for a partial salary.
I don't know that I can count being an artist as doing something useful with your privileged background.
Heh. This is where we diverge in opinion by a wide margin. Since I can think of very few life-choices as valuable as being a creative artist. In my ethos - making things that affect people for generations - most useful/valuable thing. Maybe...pediatric oncologist, or cardiologist would come in ahead of that.
I think art is valuable and important, but not useful. And useful is my most important thing, so.
worse still, AC in the speech quoted a commencement address given by Yoko Ono. I can't rmember the exact quote, but his response?!?!?! "easy when you have a billion dollars" eyerolly toward Yoko. UM POT!!!
Also, easier to try one's hand at a creative career when paying the rent is not a big concern.
I don't know that I can count being an artist as doing something useful with your privileged background.
I think art is useful, specifically useful, not just valuable and important.
"easy when you have a billion dollars" eyerolly toward Yoko. UM POT!!!
Ha ha!
I'm not saying anyone has to agree with me.
I think art is valuable and important, but not useful. And useful is my most important thing, so.
Shelley argued that poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world. The chief moral value of art (as he posited it) was that art gave you experiences you didn't experience and consequently created intimacy and sympathy with others. That seems plausible to me. That's one thing I get from reading or movies. To know things beyond my experience.
Why do I think culture/art has such a high utility? Because in my experience all of the presumptions within our culture are mutable and part of an ongoing conversation. So the books on urban density that you favor were not pulled out of the air intact, but are the practical result of a long conversation that originates in philosophy and art before it achieves practicable use.
All practical and useful solutions are rooted in prior philosophical, artistic and cultural dialogue. Right down to the scientific method which derives from Aristotle.
