What was Kurt Vonnegut?
Kurt Vonnegut was this writer that explored science fiction themes in his literature. He became the lefts most beloved writer when the left still had a most beloved writer.
My half-brother told me that he enjoyed Kurt Vonnegut’s writing that he published at the end of his life. These were small editorials that gave diatribes on the most beloved principles of the old left wing.
He had an upper middle class background.
He went to work for GE and was successful but stagnant in his soul.
After getting rich quick at GE he quit and started writing full-time.
His wife, children and most anyone else would not see him hardly ever until he was able to cause his typewriter to give him enough big breaks in published content to make him famous.
Once famous his family saw him even less because he ran away with a new woman in a blaze of his own socialite glory.
Then when he got older he became lonely and from the documentary I watched learned to cherish what he had left of life.
My half-brother also said to me that he did not always see the point of his writing. I have pondered this statement of my brothers for a couple years now. In the back of my head because I did not know what to say to it initially. Kurt Vonnegut may have been a bit experimental in his writing so that there was not a point necessarily but rather a notion.
Little clues of rationality.
There was this big idea in the hippie movement and the counter-culture of the 1960s and 1970s that believed they could figure out the meaning of life. In the 1950s America was solid in its image and dogma. We were the champions of the world. Then the civil rights movement happened and Vietnam and the sexual revolution and rock and roll and the television was there to show everyone all of the confusion and happenings.
Intellectuals went about trying to come up with answers to all of this unknown and new phenomena. Liberals found in select writers intellectuals who went about answering the questions that everyone was asking or if not asking, thinking. They fell in love with the intellectuals who answered these questions in ways that were entertaining and endearing.
Then in the 1980s people stopped looking for the meaning of life because they had finally figured it out. The answer to the meaning of life was the accumulation of money.
Everything became monetised and many Americans got very rich in the 1980s. There was still a market for intellectuals to answer the questions of the universe but they were answering these questions for the money. The market was no longer for intellectuals who would answer these questions with purity but rather impurity. People wanted to be corrupt and they wanted their corruption now.
So we got it.
How do I know?
I was born in 1990.
There is this study that is not social sciences or history or anthropology or philosophy or sociology but the study of human thought.
This is a neglected science but the idea is that during certain epochs or eras people think, learn, and act in a certain way and in another epoch or era they may behave opposite, similar or different while inventing new ways of being and letting others go extinct.
For example imagine a history textbook that described white people moving west as a heroic and selfless journey to secure America’s future.
Now imagine another textbook that describes white people moving west as a genocidal act of bloodlust, greed and domination.
Now in the transition time from one idea to the next there is going to be a consensus of people who understand that both are true and these ideas should be weighed equally but in the past only the prior was believed and in the future only the latter with no memory that once the first was accepted just like in the past no one could have imagined the present narrative.
The idea of a change of the way people thought happened in America.
In the 1950s people believed in virtue.
America was the hero.
We were such heroes and we believed in virtue so much we started dissecting our own policies.
Once we decided to do the heroic act of examining our own problems all kinds of open-ended, actual open minded, actual liberal thinking, critical thinking and dialogue began to take place.
In the 1950s the notion that America had problems was unthinkable.
It was like thinking that Mary was a sinner, that Superman could have a moral deficiency, etc. The idea being you would have to be pretty twisted to think America wasn’t perfect.
We don’t think that way anymore and we stopped thinking that way altogether by the 1970s because of our self-reflection and attempts at reform.
Then we stopped being self-reflective and attempts at reform and even further stopped caring about virtue altogether. All of our thinking and correcting, debating and rationalising was solved by the accumulation of wealth.
People do not generally think about things unless they have to do with making money now.
In the 70s because of the 60s people supported people with their money who they thought were the closest to understanding the meaning of life. Take Bob Dylan for example. If he had written a single song that gave any notion that he had only been making music for the money the people would have stoned him and not bought his music. He had to write from a place of pure inspiration and the people supported him with their money.
Everyone knows Taylor Swift writes songs for money and they like her for it. Further in the 1950s to think about accumulating money for the sake of money itself would villainize any person who were to admit it or get caught doing it. Take Joe Kennedy Sr. maybe for an example.
I think we as a culture would think that anyone who does not focus his entire being on the accumulation of more money is a fool.
Then why am I a fool?
What does this have to do with Kurt Vonnegut?
Kurt Vonnegut was trying to answer this meaning of existence without answering it directly but rather giving people clues through his humorous and witty prose. The people of his time supported him with money because they thought he was their best prophet.
So my little brother does not understand the point of Kurt Vonnegut and I had to tell him that I did not either. I wanted to recommend him to a young woman to read because he was one of the kinder and more popular writers of classic American literature but I also thought it possible that he was not relevant to our culture anymore since his books do not help solve this all pervasive hive mind question of how to make more money.
Why am I thinking about Kurt Vonnegut instead of how to make more money?
A strange wormhole exists with literature, music and art that since people will buy these things there is a market and since there is a market there is advertising and businesses trying to capitalise on the profits of these things. At some point of being tossed around the American market system and having various commodities and consuming different products I found that I enjoyed the ones that gave hints or even demanded that I cease from youthful lusts and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace, with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart.
