Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT
Will Wil and Penelope's relationship last?
Is it cold in here?:
Carl Sandburg. If my degree were in English instead of physics, I suspect I could name more.
Good point about Pennelope. Even though her criticism was that Wil failed at being self-supporting, something that she manages to do, it's a glaring fact that she has (presumably) a college degree (has this ever been covered explicitly?) but is a barista idly leafing through classified ads with unpursued ideas about working in publishing. Maybe there's some projection on her part.
nichidani:
you know, i'd never thought of that but you guys make a good point. pen is a little under-accomplished to be judging wil, or anyone really.
at least she's doing better than him, though that's saying very little.
i'd say the only character in their age range that has a career rather than working is dora, since she owns the coffee shop.
and sven, who sells shitty songs for millions.
... and whatever it is steve does? o_O
dcnblues:
Carl Sandburg began his writing career as a journalist for the Chicago Daily News. In other words, he was one of the lucky few who find a job doing what they like (writing, in his case). That's great for an artist, when it happens. Getting paid to train yourself in your medium is friggin great when it happens. Ask Jeph.
My argument is that, if you're someone who feels drawn to poetry, you're SOL in that regard. And that you don't deserve contempt for not wanting to work some shitty job.
The best counter-argument would be Nietzschean,
--- Quote ---Nietzsche believes that human strength and wisdom is elevated in direct proportion to the depths of human suffering and the overcoming of suffering. Direct experience of the harsh and impersonal nature of the universe leads to a unique understanding of reality that sets a person above and beyond the comparatively shallow belief systems and illusionary hopes of the mass of humanity (the herd)...
For Nietzsche, suffering makes one “hard.” If it is true that that which does not kill us makes us stronger, then it is equally true that by overcoming suffering, by facing it squarely and by not turning toward such overworn tools as “faith” and “hope”, we become something greater than what we were without suffering. “And if your hardness does not wish to flash and cut and cut through, how can you one day create with me? For creators are hard. And it must seem blessedness to you to impress your hand on millennia as on wax, blessedness to write on the will of millennia as on bronze – harder than bronze, nobler than bronze. Only the noblest is altogether hard. This new tablet, O my brothers, I place over you: become hard!” (Thus Spoke Zarathustra: Third Part - 1884).
http://www.angelfire.com/ga/wkb/nietzschesuffer.html
--- End quote ---
but that's not what Penny is saying. She is unaware that working some crap job full time to support oneself will suck your creativity into that job. There is no greater indictment of modern society than someone waking at three in the morning, and realizing their subconscious creative energy has been vacuumed up by office politics or the need to pay the heating bill.
I still think Aristotle nailed it. All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind.
Is it cold in here?:
Emerson said something to the effect "The poet does not dig", in reaction against an idea that a well-rounded scholar should have experience of actual work. So it's not just Aristotle.
On Carl Sandburg, he was a long way from sponging off his parents and avoiding manual work:
--- Quote from: wikipedia ---At the age of thirteen he left school and began driving a milk wagon. He subsequently became a bricklayer and a farm laborer on the wheat plains of Kansas.[1] After an interval spent at Lombard College in Galesburg,[2] he became a hotel servant in Denver, then a coal-heaver in Omaha.
--- End quote ---
Langston Hughes apparently wasn't injured by working as a busboy.
Does being supported by others work for Wil, given what we've seen of his poetry?
nichidani:
--- Quote from: Is it cold in here? on 15 Jul 2009, 15:54 ---Does being supported by others work for Wil, given what we've seen of his poetry?
--- End quote ---
hell to tha nawwwwwww.
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