/lit/ - Literature

You ever feel like despite all this wallowing and self-pity, nothing will come of it? Allow me to generalize, but I imagine most of the people posting or viewing this thread have some sort of literary aspirations, or at the very least, desire someone to understand and emphasize with their thoughts. Generalizing again, these thoughts are often degenerate, lonely, self-deprecating, self-absorbed, and even suicidal. The thoughts come from a "deep anguish",as Kierkegaard put it, resulting from isolation, self-imposed or not, and rigorous standards of self-evaluation. And, like Kierkegaard's poet, we scream out in pain; we scream that our potential has been ravaged, our social connections sundered, our careers tarnished, and our lives stuck in an orbital pull of acedia and self-hatred. And it's these screams that attract the public in the parable, they wonder how humans could survive in such intense despair.

But unlike the poet, the public doesn't care for our screams, instead of music they hear groveling, and tell us to "release ourselves" or to shut up. The struggles of self-deprecating, anxious and/or schizoid youngsters on some defunct Cantonese political activism imageboard has no interest to anyone outside of ourselves. And why should it? Could the story of someone who felt nauseating anxiety trying to form a relationship with his peers capture the same attention as another rags to riches story? Could the "bastions of creativity and artistic pursuits" like the Princetons, Browns, and Oxfords admit teenagers who found isolation and reading to be more authentic than the valedictorians with the varsity rings and community service? Helen Vendler seems to think so, and her essay about valuing introspection and "the arts" is featured on the Harvard admission page.

But Vendler's feature is a footnote below Harvard asking seniors to describe their extra-curriculars, their relationships, their internships, and their grades. Even Vendler's own essay focuses on producing rather than reflecting, and she seems to ignore that reading, perhaps even more so than writing, is a creative art. I imagine the situation is only worse in admission offices, where officers will be less creatively inclined or understanding of what's "unique". But I don't think it is the elite universities fault for not recognizing the music in our screams; their job is to not only produce artist but scientists, presidents, secretaries, CEOs, etc. So, with an apathetic shrug, the potential of these types are ultimately sacrificed for the greater good, and the question of whether these types could've become the artist they aspired to be under the right environment is unanswered. And if Harvard is rejecting these potential artist, what hope does the public have? The answer to whether these introspective types found in these threads, and on 4chan in general, can attract an audience willing to hear screams is no.

Redon