All along I’ve been wrestling with the problem of finding and maintaining some balance between individual and group that is my own balance. For the past sixteen years I’ve been a celibate hermit, more or less, deeply relieved to be working alone in my collapsing old house in a tiny village next to the Blackfeet reservation on the East Slope of the Rocky Mountains.
“Quiet Revolution” has two formal meanings. One is a website: www.quietrev.com: “Advice and stories for introverts and extroverts alike on how to appreciate our quiet sides.” The tight relationship between quiet and solitude is not quite acknowledged or analyzed -- at least so far as I have read. The whole thing is derived from a book by Susan Cain, daughter of a rabbi and herself a corporate lawyer.
Susan Cain reminds me of Susan Lucci, the notorious Erika Cain.
My mother-in-law saw the world with British class system eyes. She felt there was no question she ranked high. Yet they were not greedy or domineering, but lived -- nearly hidden -- quiet lives. The Masonic Lodge became their "tribe" -- not ANTI-Indian, but UN-Indian -- they were UN-Catholic because that's where the Indians attended. Sort of the reverse of my declared stance now: “I cheer for Browning!” is an irrelevant statement since I don’t attend sports events. But it amusingly aggravates Valier people and makes a convenient boundary around me.
Vive les Quebequois!
The internet has become for me something like a book, except I’m living and writing it. One would think that the new website “Quiet Revolution” would be a natural home for me, but it is not, partly because of demographics: these people are all young, prosperous, educated, basically compliant but entitled. The other part is related. In the Fifties when we last had a wave of “group-think” it soon boomeranged into the Age of Aquarius -- defiant opposition to the mainstream. The book that gave us terms for what was being revolted against was “The Lonely Crowd.” I am decidedly NOT Other-Directed. Well, maybe a little counter-culture.
From the anonymously authored Wikipedia: "The Lonely Crowd is a 1950 sociological analysis by David Riesman, Nathan Glazer, and Reuel Denney. It is considered, along with White Collar: The American Middle Classes, written by Riesman's friend and colleague, C. Wright Mills, a landmark study of American character. Riesman et al. identify and analyze three main cultural types: tradition-directed, inner-directed, and other-directed.” My mother-in-law was tradition-directed.
"Quiet Revolution," the website that is supposed to be about quiet solitude, is not talking about the same thing as being inner-directed. The very fact of a group collaborating on a website clearly based on the popular performance of a charming corporate lawyer in a TED talk is NOT working alone. It falls in the group described in the previous post as “Market Pricing.”
Solitariness in our culture is associated with either being problematic and excluded or else with privilege. Being allowed to live alone in a hermitage near a monastery is a high honor. I suggest that this "Quiet" website is about privilege. In school terms the teacher might send a student to the library to isolate a troublemaker, but also if he or she has earned the privilege of working alone because of productivity that only needs resources since it is self-starting. Some people combine revolution (trouble-making) with quiet solitary thought. They become inexhaustible. Inner-directed.
I still read in this chair.
In the late Forties when I was a child, I hated recess and would sneak indoors to stand against the radiator, pleasantly scorching my wet wool coat in the quiet dimness. If a teacher discovered me, she would force me back outside. In the fourth grade I had a male teacher, a veteran, who saw that I was very near-sighted, which explained why I was so bad at “playground” which had a lot to do with throwing balls. Also I got a “pass” from my extrovert mother because of her chagrin at not taking proper care of me. No one ever mentioned that eye care was expensive and therefore ignored. Being near-sighted also explained my marathon reading.
Not that reading was necessarily enlightening. In fact, I tended to read my father’s books, which nearly crowded us out of the house -- but usually they just presented more questions that no one wanted to answer. The branch library a few blocks away became my adjunct home, far more than school was, until high school when dramatics provided a good balance of introvert/extrovert. By now, at 76, I can dimple up and tell funny stories if the situation demands it, but I do not drink as others do to “loosen up.” It’s not a virtue or asceticism but a way of letting my introversion guard my extraversion. My introversion made it clear that I was not suited for the kind of ministry that is supplying camaraderie and security for people who are other-directed and feel qualified to be the Other who takes charge of your life.
Party Mary
Nor am I suited for today’s group-based writers’ lives. We are strange about these “creative” things. Something that can best be done alone at a keyboard now obligates a person who wants to be published to endlessly fraternize, read aloud in bookstores, tolerate rude interviewers who have not read one’s books, and otherwise prevent the opportunity to get back to the quiet keyboard.
I cannot grasp the idea of allowing random others to critique one’s writing with the purpose of “improving it.” To me it feels degrading, invasive. More optimistically, it is a way of writing as a group that fits a product meant for group consumption like movies/TV. It is part of the “cloud” and “wiki” ideas. "Heartbreak Butte" was written that way by a 7th grade class.
I suspect that “Game of Thrones” is sliding into violence and sex because it’s no longer written by one focused author, George R.R. Martin, who has a visionary grasp of the big picture, but instead by a group of unnamed people trying to capture as big a numerical audience as possible. We’re back to “Market Pricing,” profit as a group enterprise, corporatized. Such homogenization takes all the thought and surprise out of something that in Martin’s hands was unique. Ironically, the pursuit of profit destroys the poor innocent golden goose, which is not Martin, but the integrity of the creation. At least this entropy makes room for the next thing.
I suspect that “Game of Thrones” is sliding into violence and sex because it’s no longer written by one focused author, George R.R. Martin, who has a visionary grasp of the big picture, but instead by a group of unnamed people trying to capture as big a numerical audience as possible. We’re back to “Market Pricing,” profit as a group enterprise, corporatized. Such homogenization takes all the thought and surprise out of something that in Martin’s hands was unique. Ironically, the pursuit of profit destroys the poor innocent golden goose, which is not Martin, but the integrity of the creation. At least this entropy makes room for the next thing.
Returning to the starting point, http://www.quietrev.com/our-team-quiet-revolution/ is a display of “our team” that is revealing. The usual lemmings, children of Baby Boom parents. This is very much bait-and-switch. I deleted it from my bookmarks. Oh, well. Here's a lovely music vid from Chris de Burgh called "Quiet Revolution." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdT9oq7VBDA I'll try that next. The internet is almost inexhaustible.
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