Before and after bling I understand. But "during bling"? That's just a blip.

[imomus]

Marxy popped up on yesterday's thread about Ku:nel magazine after I criticized Jean Snow for having been so down on the late, LOHAS-themed Relax magazine. Jean seemed to like Relax only when it was suggesting he smarten up and wear a celebrity-endorsed suit; he expressed perplexity when the magazine told him to go find his spirituality in a forest or to consume less. This, I thought, was understandable; Jean is a design commentator, and design is pretty heavily invested in the idea of aspirational consumerism -- the quest for ever-more-bling.

Marxy's defense of Jean's peevish boredom with post-materialism fell into three parts, the first drawing on Bourdieu's notion of cultural capital as a strategy of distinction:

1. Maybe most of us are just so attuned to use cultural information as a way to distinguish between each other that KU:NEL can't help us with everyday competitive society?

2. An average post-materialist, non-consumerist young Japanese though would probably buy zero magazines rather than a magazine that speaks to his/her tastes.

3. Japanese youth are generally becoming less materialist, but we are seeing this split into two groups: those that aestheticize their non-consumption and those who don't. Seems like only the first group read KU:NEL.

Before addressing those, I want to go back to the allowance I made for Jean -- the idea that design commentators are naturally invested in bling. Actually, I don't think this has to be the case, for three reasons:

1. The idea that bling makes us happy is delusional. As John Lanchester put it, reporting in the New Yorker on Richard Layard's research into happiness: "Americans are about twice as rich as they were in the 1970s but report not being any happier; the Japanese are six times as rich as they were in 1950 and aren’t any happier, either. Looking at the data from all over the world, it is clear that, instead of getting happier as they become better off, people get stuck on a “hedonic treadmill”: their expectations rise at the same pace as their incomes, and the happiness they seek remains constantly just out of reach." Even without a looming environmental crisis, that would justify post-materialism right there. Or, as the National Bureau of Economic Research put it: "As economies get richer, they can afford to question the need for further riches. In a country where people are starving, economic growth remains regarded as a vital objective to overcome hunger and other poverty problems."

2. Although you wouldn't know it from Jean Snow's site (well, not until you followed his links to commentators from PingMag to Monocle, anyway), much design coverage elsewhere has shifted, for these reasons, to a more noticeably post-materialist position. As Artek's Tom Dixon told Tyler Brulé, "one of the themes that's running through the stuff that we're doing is -- I dunno, that overused word of "sustainability", really. The way we're tackling it is by even going to the point of not designing at all." Rather than making new stuff, Dixon was therefore buying back old Artek pieces and celebrating their signs of wear and tear, their patina.

3. If we can accept the paradox that not-designing might be a way of designing, it shouldn't be hard to accept the paradox that not-consuming might be a way of consuming. As the Wikipedia entry on post-materialism puts it: "Cohorts who have experienced high material affluence start to give high priority to values such as individual improvement, personal freedom, citizen input in government decisions, the ideal of a society based on humanism, and maintaining a clean and healthy environment... As increasing post-materialism is based on the abundance of material possessions or resources, it should not be mixed indiscriminately with asceticism or general denial of consumption. In some way post-materialism may be criticized as super-materialism."

The Nationmaster site suggests caution over the idea that the whole of society will grow more post-materialist over time. "In countries with a relatively high level of postmaterialism such as The Netherlands or Sweden, the degree of post-materialists in society never grew higher than 30 percent, and during some years even declined." The World Values Survey found positive correlations between post-materialism and a country’s economic level (.66), human development (.56) and civil liberties (.46). But they too stress that this doesn't mean some kind of Fukuyama-style "end of history" is at hand, some kind of post-materialist Nirvana for all. The reason this isn't on the agenda is that inequality between nations is increasing, not decreasing: "In 1963 the GNP per capita in the richest world region (North America) was 40 times higher than in the poorest region... By 2000 it was 108 times." Overall, though, the World Values Survey agrees with Ron Inglehart: most societies, they think, are heading towards post-materialist values.

I was looking on Saturday at market segmentation sketches which show how some nations have post-materialist classes currently making up about 10% of their populations. Meanwhile, others have almost no post-materialist types. A magazine like Ku:nel, according to this data, could launch in Germany, Sweden or the UK, but not Poland, Bulgaria, Greece. Here's a chart showing the World Values Survey's estimation (circa 2000) of the percentages of post-materialists in various countries:



Okay, that's the general background to the whole post-materialist magazines scenario. How about Marxy's points? Magazines, he seems to think, are about giving us information we can use as cultural capital in a competitive comparison with others. I'm not so sure this really describes what magazines are, and what they do. I'd rather see them as "notes on beautiful life", aspirational, morale-boosting glimpses of happiness, or even answers to the fundamental questions of philosophy (Socrates' "How then should we live?") As for post-materialist magazines failing because post-materialists simply don't buy stuff (either the mags themselves or the stuff being advertised), I think we've seen how post-materialism is a mindset that exists precisely amongst some of the most affluent consumers, and is more a shift towards ethical consumption than no consumption. Advertisers -- especially those with eco- or ethical things to sell -- love to connect with these consumers.

Marxy's third point is that many or most Japanese youth consumers don't aestheticize their non-consumption, which is more to do with lack of money than a conscious choice to consume ethically. This is where I'd go back to the magazine that is, in many ways, Ku:nel's precursor: Kurashi No Techo. This is a consumer magazine that accepts no advertising, a magazine founded in the era of post-war austerity, a magazine which aestheticizes thrift, modesty, stoicism, good-heartedness -- values which actually run pretty deep in Japanese society, whether it's doing well or badly. In other words, I think things like a concern for nature, or an interest in the style of thrift, apply whether Japanese are rich or poor. Whether, that is, they're pre-materialist or post-materialist. There are interesting parallels between the pre-bling and the post-bling Japanese mindsets, and they're apparent in the similarities between Kurashi No Techo and Ku:nel.

If pre-materialists are traditional, materialists modern and post-materialists post-modern and post-industrial, maybe the brief, fleeting, vulnerable and hard-to-explain thing is modernity. If we understand "before bling" as an aspiration for material goods (Jean for the celebrity-style suit that will bring him success, or the poor people on the kartoffelngrafik charts who are the most materialistic in outlook precisely because they're the poorest social groups there are), and "after bling" as the realisation that material goods don't make you happy and that the "hedonic treadmill" is a waste of time, the hard thing to pin down is "during bling". Exactly where does mo' money equate to mo' happiness? And how long does that glow last before discontent sets in?

The happiness scientists have an answer. They mostly tell us that "during bling" is just a blip. People living in poverty become happier if they become richer, economist Richard Layard tells us, but the effect of increased wealth cuts off at a surprisingly low figure: $15,000 a year. Many sociologists and psychologists tell us that it's social connectedness that makes for happiness, not material affluence (Durkheim found that connectedness to others -- even via duty and obligation -- was the factor most negatively correlated with suicide). Behavioral geneticist David Lykken thinks there's a genetically-determined "happiness set point" in each of us which events in our lives can't really alter much. A study he made of identical twins concluded that "trying to be happier is like trying to be taller”.

Here's Lanchester in the New Yorker again: "Contrary to everything you might think, “in the long run, it doesn’t much matter what happens to you,” Jonathan Haidt writes. Consider the opposing examples of winning the lottery or of losing the use of your limbs. According to Haidt, “It’s better to win the lottery than to break your neck, but not by as much as you’d think... Within a year, lottery winners and paraplegics have both (on average) returned most of the way to their baseline levels of happiness.”

"Mihaly Csikzentmihalyi made people carry a pager, and told them that every time it went off they should write down what they were doing and how much they were enjoying it. The idea was to avoid the memory’s tendency to focus on peaks and troughs, and to capture the texture of people’s lives as they were experiencing them, rather than in retrospect. The study showed that people were most content when they were experiencing what Csikzentmihalyi called “flow”—in Haidt’s definition, “the state of total immersion in a task that is challenging yet closely matched to one’s abilities.” We are at our happiest when we are absorbed in what we are doing; the most useful way of regarding happiness is, to borrow a phrase of Clive James’s, as “a by-product of absorption.”"

I guess I was happy (in a post-materialist, flowy sort of way) putting together this report on happiness. In the words of Agnes Bernelle: "You want to be rich? But isn't that what you are?"

(Photos on this page are snaps shot this weekend in recycling designer Jan Lindenberg's flat; he's the Ku:nel subscriber, not me! Bigger versions on my Flickr page.)

Comments

[microworlds.livejournal.com]

Thinking of your first reason, I remember in grade school one of my friends posed the question "what if there wasn't money?" What he meant was "what if everything was free?" My first reaction was "wow, I would be able to have every video game I ever wanted!" But on second thought, if everything was free, everyone would take everything they could get their hands on.

Remembering that, and thinking about it more, if it was announced worldwide (in present day, mind you) right this instant, there would be a mad rush to take everything from stores. But what if there was no money, ever? Trading aside. Would there be huge chain corporations like McDonald's? Would we be happier if there was no money, and we learned to value services and hard work? I'm not saying we should get rid of money altogether, it's just interesting to imagine what it would be like.

[qscrisp.livejournal.com]

If there were a machine that could generate things out of the air, money would become redundant. It sounds like a fantasy, but I'm sure many things we have today would have sounded like fantasy a hundred years ago.

[microworlds.livejournal.com]

I would love that to happen! I would also like to have a teleporter so I could go anywhere I wanted. Although it would be unfortunate for Momus because I would pop out of nowhere and scare him at random times, and then I would disappear 2 seconds later. Combine the teleporter and the object generator, and I could give Momus every issue of every magazine he would ever want!

But we would have to endure endless amount of posts about those magazines, so I don't know.

[anashi.livejournal.com]

Yes. It's the wabi and sabi. The Japanese aesthetic for tasteful simplicity and appreciation of transcience no matter what station in life. There's a sort of cultural revival going on that's celebrating the country. It's more subtle than a revival though. It's becoming reflected in the fashion even here in Kyoto. I think it's refreshing. I value the city and its aesthetic but country life has a richness to it I find more appealing. I think I am a post modernist at heart. You're right it is hard to explain. It's not the opposite of being a consumer, because I still buy as much as I did before I came to Japan. It's more about thoughtfulness. All these magazines approach their subjects with such caring. I usually buy 'Come Home' a zakka magazine with nice interior designs.

[chuckdarwin.livejournal.com]

So... happiness comes from being part of a dynamic and fun social group and doing challenging work well?

No wonder so many people want to be musicians.

[georgesdelatour.livejournal.com]

As always, some really interesting ideas here.

Isn't "happiness" - in the sense of contentment - overrated? Isn't it - at least sometimes - discontent that fuels progress and beneficial change?

The most important feature of the world economy right now is the rapid economic growth of Asia - especially China and India. This suggests that the Chinese and the Indians are becoming more materialistic than they used to be. Indians and Chinese are clearly rejecting the asceticism of Gandhi and Mao. They want to be richer and they want more stuff. That's what's driving their economic growth, isn't it?

The post-materialists in Sweden and Japan maybe reject shopping and stuff. But they may still want their hospitals to have all the best new hi-tech machinery for MRI scans and so on. Those have to be paid for, and ultimately, that requires economic growth.

Certainly politics everywhere - except maybe Bhutan - is still predicated on the assumption that people want their economy to grow and their GNP to rise. I can't imagine - even in Japan or Sweden - a politician greeting news that the country had a trade deficit or zero economic growth as something excellent - as benign evidence that the nation was becoming less materialistic.

[barnacle.livejournal.com]

I originally had several musings, especially on flow and personal benefit, but only the following is of direct interest to you. I'll discuss the others another time, in another place.

"In a world where to rebel is to conform, to conform is to rebel (http://imomus.livejournal.com/342852.html)" versus: "If we can accept the paradox that not-designing might be a way of designing, it shouldn't be hard to accept the paradox that not-consuming might be a way of consuming." I'd like you to say—given the likelihood of someone bringing it up in an anonymous comments and beating you with it anyway—why you feel the paradox of Quinlan Terry can't stand up to scrutiny, but yours can. My guess is that what resolves the paradoxes in both cases is the uncovering of elisions of the meanings of rebellion and design/consumption for rhetorical effect; the reason that I agree with you and not Terry is that I find the first elision odious but the others acceptable.

(From a largely anticonsumerist stance I also find your original paradoxes agreeable, if only because they're designed to stimulate the lifestyle change in others that my politics would like to see.)

A couple of points

[(Anonymous)]

Hello there.

1) I'm not so sure this really describes what magazines are, and what they do."

I would be careful to construct a universal theory of how magazines work as media. Comparing a mainstream Japanese magazine to a mainstream UK/US magazine, it's pretty clear that they have separate aims and means. Japanese fashion magazines' consumerist message is much more clear, more functional, and more didactic than GQ, which preaches and teaches but has to speak to its readers "like adults." CanCam and ViVi, both very popular, teach exactly how to compete in the modern romance rat race, not how to "fit in."

KU:NEL does not read like a standard Japanese "consumer bible," so it may be closer to your conception, but I would hardly say it's close to the Japanese standard.

2) In other words, I think things like a concern for nature, or an interest in the style of thrift, apply whether Japanese are rich or poor.

There are different taste cultures based on socioeconomic class in Japan, and the "slow life" aestheticized post-materialist section seems to correlate perfectly with household income and education. Magazines like Egg or Men's Egg have tastes grounded in the working class/rural lower middle class/non-salaried class cultures. I don't see the "Green" spirit of frugality, preservation, etc. in these magazines or as part of this culture. That's to say, I do think that environmental consciousness is growing in Japan but its aesthetic facet is helping it spread through the structures of the consumer society. It's "in." This isn't bad, but I think it's too easy to assign pro-environmentalism as a "deep structure" inherent to Japanese culture and biology, somehow brought back to life.

3) Jean is a design commentator, and design is pretty heavily invested in the idea of aspirational consumerism -- the quest for ever-more-bling.

What RELAX had was a message that consumerism was about sophistication and not about pure expenditure. Japan is sorely lacking a central media source with this kind of attitude about money and culture these days! It's all bling.

(By the way, some Pew poll showed Americans to be very happy: http://www.tehrantimes.com/index_View.asp?code=160955)

Marxy

[(Anonymous)]

Forget about Japanese mags, in the western world post-materialism is the archetypal middle-class notion: we got everything AND we know better. "Now if only all those working-class nobodies could understand there's more to life than having a lot of money..."

In our countries the GDP per head may be growing but that doesn't mean people are richer than they were 40 years ago. In our world the story's always the same: the poor are getting poorer and the rich are getting richer.

Nick, I'm sorry to say, you sometimes become a caricature of the smart-ass Bo-Bo. You were never a servant, you weren't born of servants, you were never born to serve. You're a suburban middle-class kid who chose to develop into an impoverished aesthete. Good for you, but then you will never know what it's like to be a working-class nobody and you'll never understand what makes working-class nobodies-from-the-real-world "happy". You don't learn about that in surveys and market segmentation sketches, y'know.
But then why bother, those people are boring, a Henrik Vibskov-designed €320 blanket is no bling and you got a Lenin poster on your wall. You obviously know better.

I tell you what, why don't you move to some black district in New Orleans and start preaching the locals about the virtues of Post-materialism, about how they're about twice as rich as they were in the 1970s. I mean they're obviously in the wrong, surely re-building their houses wouldn't make them happier.

[(Anonymous)]

Although it's clear that if you become three times richer you're not going to become three times happier, it doesn't necessarily follow that there's no link between economic growth and happiness. Happiness is clearly a relative, dynamic, aspirational thing. Beyond a certain point, it may not matter how much money you have, but it does matter how much your peers are earning and how much you can aspire to earn - or at least what opportunities the economy affords you for a fulfilling career or occupation. If you stagnate while everyone else is roaring ahead, it'll make you unhappy. Also, research shows that people in a growing, dynamic economy tend to be happier than people in a stagnating economy. It's not the size of the economy, but the direction it's going in. If it's giving you opportunities to do what you want, if unemployment is low etc., you'll be happier than in a declining economy with high unemployment, no matter how well off you individually are.

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

I wanna address this nauseating, "think-tanky" buzzword "Post-materialism" again.

"As increasing post-materialism is based on the abundance of material possessions or resources, it should not be mixed indiscriminately with asceticism or general denial of consumption. In some way post-materialism may be criticized as super-materialism."

This is exactly what I've been saying. "Post-materialism" as you're describing it isn't "post-materialism" at all; it's materialism repackaged with a new aesthetic. It's more ethical, it's less "competitive", but it's still just as consumer driven. People still have and want their cars and their mod-cons and posessions. It's just instead of a car they get a hybrid, and instead of lightbulbs they buy energy saving lightbulbs, and instead of buying designer clothes they buy "honest", uncomplicated clothes made with ethics in mind.

American Apparel stands out to me as a perfect example of this: Everything about AA is simplicity. Their whole zero logos, zero patterns look, and their whole "our clothes are made from sustainable materials, made in the USA because factory workers in china should be payed more than a dollar a day" stance. But underneith it all is the same old slick, packaged consumerism. They're still selling me a lifestyle. It's more ethical, less gaudy and thats fantastic, but lets not kid ourselves here -- it's still materialism.

A man born in today's western society who realises no amount of materialism (however slickly ku:nel or anyone else can package it) will make him happy, who then go to live in monastery somewhere as a monk and gives up all possessions -- that to me a "post materialist". Society isnt fucking there yet. Youre not a post-materialist, I'm not a post materialist. You're doing nothing but granduerising and putting spin your old habits by even using that term to describe yourself.

You are a 'Conscientious Consumer'. Thats great, so am I. But that's it. We're still consumers defining our lifestyles and ourselves with our possessions. I reject the "post-materialist" label, and I think you should too.

[(Anonymous)]

nice piece, momus.

i really enjoy jean snow's ever so rare personal posts about biking and what not, but otherwise the site is just links to the same old things. is there really a need to link to ever ping mag article? more stories, more bikes, less links!

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

"I'd rather see them as "notes on beautiful life", aspirational, morale-boosting glimpses of happiness"

Comments like this just compound what I've said above. You're saying that you open up glossy lifestyle magazines and think "thats what I aspire to be" or "This is a morale-boosting glimpse of happiness"?

How are you any different to the "bling" seekers? You're associating aspirations and happiness with your consumerism. You're not "post-modern, post-material", you're just middle-class British bling because that's exactly the sort of mindset they have too.

I'm under no such illusions -- Consumerism is a fleeting distraction. And by that I dont mean that asceticism leads to happiness, thats just as dangerous as thinking posessions lead to happiness.

It's about mind-sets. Being happy with what you can and do have, accepting things that you can't and don't have.

"Many sociologists and psychologists tell us that it's social connectedness that makes for happiness, not material affluence"

"social connectedness" is just another aspect of materialism; Relationships as posessions. Pinning your happiness to the state of your relationships is just as shakey and pinning it to your posessions. It takes your happiness outside of your own hands and puts it into the hands of others, just like materialism takes happiness out of your own hands and puts it into consumerism.

"The study showed that people were most content when they were experiencing what Csikzentmihalyi called “flow”—in Haidt’s definition, “the state of total immersion in a task that is challenging yet closely matched to one’s abilities.” We are at our happiest when we are absorbed in what we are doing; the most useful way of regarding happiness is, to borrow a phrase of Clive James’s, as “a by-product of absorption.”"

Buddhists have been saying this for well over 2000 years. "Living in the now" and "meditation" are two such aspects of this.

[slime-slime-sly.livejournal.com]

I think the best would be is to find a machine that made us super small like in "honey, i shurnk the kids". Then we would have proportionatelly so much more of everything, and we wouldnt contaminate or have to fight so much for national resources. Theyve made computers so small, it should work with humans too. But then transatlantic travel would be a pain and we'd have to fight against giant germs and insects.
Dont steal my idea.

[peacelovgranola.livejournal.com]

yes, the buddhists. also reminding me of the vedic ideas of seva and nishkarma--service and service performed while unattached to the fruits of your efforts, etc. the bhagavad gita can also blow your mind on this topic.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

You have a bit of a point there, but

You're a suburban middle-class kid who chose to develop into an impoverished aesthete.

I was brought up right bang in the West End of Edinburgh. Not the suburbs, right bang in the West End! Near Binns and the Caledonian Hotel and the Castle!

Good for you, but then you will never know what it's like to be a working-class nobody and you'll never understand what makes working-class nobodies-from-the-real-world "happy".

Maybe I'll understand what doesn't make them happy, though -- bling! -- having been there, done that? And maybe they won't understand what makes them happy too?

But then why bother, those people are boring, a Henrik Vibskov-designed €320 blanket is no bling

I did say that since I had no bling I'd buy a €2 Humana blanket, de-stink it in the garden, and just pretend it was a Vibskov blanket.

As for telling me I'm saying the people in New Orleans shouldn't rebuild their houses, nonsense! It's very clear in the Layard research and National Bureau of Economic stuff I quoted today that only after a certain point of basic security ($15,000 a year income, says Layard) that more bling stops producing more happiness:

"As economies get richer, they can afford to question the need for further riches. In a country where people are starving, economic growth remains regarded as a vital objective to overcome hunger and other poverty problems."

[imomus.livejournal.com]

"Post-materialism" as you're describing it isn't "post-materialism" at all; it's materialism repackaged with a new aesthetic. It's more ethical, it's less "competitive", but it's still just as consumer driven.

Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying here! And by this definition I am a post-materialist. You shouldn't get post-materialism (a term coined by Click Opera hero Ron Inglehart in 1970, not by a think tank) mixed up with asceticism (monks etc). It's not about that.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

"social connectedness" is just another aspect of materialism; Relationships as posessions.

Oh come on, this takes us nowhere. Relationships are to be defined as possessions now? Way to make materialism even more unavoidably huge than it already is! Even Buddhists have to relate, mate! Feckin' materialists, eh?

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

"You shouldn't get post-materialism (a term coined by Click Opera hero Ron Inglehart in 1970, not by a think tank) mixed up with asceticism "

I'm not mixing it up with Asceticism -- Asceticism describes a life characterized by abstinence from worldly pleasures.

I can still fuck like a rabbit and I can still be lazy as hell whilst being a post-materialist. Asceticism denotes a life free of pleasure. Post-materialism should denote a life free of trying to amount posessions, but it doesn't because it's a superficial, pretentious, think-tank style buzzword.

You're not a "post-materialist".

Re: A couple of points

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Sorry it took a while for your comment to appear, I've been experimenting with screening anon comments.

I assumed you meant those who didn't aestheticize their lack of consumption were just too poor to consume (which is why I brought up Kurashi No Techo's similarity to Ku:nel). But it seems you're saying the kids who don't aestheticize their lack of consumption are Egg readers? Surely they're aestheticizing their consumption, though?

it's too easy to assign pro-environmentalism as a "deep structure" inherent to Japanese culture and biology, somehow brought back to life.

I do think there's a much deeper pro-environmental streak in the Japanese character and culture than in any other advanced nation I know. I think it relates to Shinto and I think it's measurable in all sorts of ways -- people's care about recycling, for instance, or the extremely high percentage of forest in Japan (70% of the nation's entire surface area, compared with a mere 11% in the UK), or the frequency of plant motifs in Japanese visual culture.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I CARE LESS ABOUT BLING THAN YOU DO, MATE, AND I CAN PROVE IT!

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

You dont understand.

Relationships are attachments to people. Attachment to anything presents potential for suffering.

there are many, many sects of Buddhism but they all share one very important value: The four noble truthes.

1)There is suffering

2)There is a cause of suffering — craving/desire/attachment

3)There is the cessation of suffering

4)There is a way leading to the cessation of suffering — the Noble Eightfold Path

Even though points 3 & 4 are disputable because they can only be undertaken and experienced by an individual in isolation, 1 & 2 are undeniably an fact of every human life.

A buddhist aims to simply be. He puts no undue, unwarranted importance in the transient. That goes for possessions and relationships, which is why I see your need to be in urban cities surrounded by people as an attachment that will eventually lead to your own unhappiness -- it shows a level of discontent, a level of attachment burning in you that cannot be met forever at all times. Your entire self-worth and happiness seems to be built around your persona and your lifestyle. This persona and lifestyle will eventually leave you as you age and die. A buddhist tries to be aware of this.

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

Dude. DUDE. Just call it "conscientious consumerism" and I'll gladly come round for a cup of green tea and flip through the ku:nel mags with you. I love that style, and I'm completely on the same page as you on this, aesthetically that is.

The lack of self awareness and almost delusional nature of the term "post-materialism" makes me heave, like somehow the middle classes have equated beige and patina and hybrid cars and solar panels with being "over consumerism". Come on! COME ON!

[imomus.livejournal.com]

When I use paradox it's an attempt to start a dialectical process, when my enemies use paradox it's "endless slippage and semantic tail-chasing"! That's because I'm progressive and they're retrograde!

[georgesdelatour.livejournal.com]

Musicians? Are you sure?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fb1uytt7zaM