Aesthetics of earnestness 

Earnestness doesn’t have to mean you pick up the language and aesthetics often associated with earnestness

You can be grumpy, disagreeable

End with Margaret mead?

“That’s yesterday visa’s problem”

Standing out vs fitting in

You can actually do both or neither 

The trick is to remix 

To cultivate an understanding of the culture you’re in. This does take time and study. I have media recommendations. Mean Girls is a great movie to watch. The 48 Laws of Power often gets maligned as a book for sociopaths, but I think it doesn’t 

earnestness isn’t just about fiery passion. It’s about persistence.

“If you are writing without zest, without gusto, without love, without fun, you are only half a writer. It means you are so busy keeping one eye on the commercial market, or one ear peeled for the avant-garde coterie, that you are not being yourself. You don’t even know yourself. For the first thing a writer should be is—excited. He should be a thing of fevers and enthusiasms. Without such vigor, he might as well be out picking peaches or digging ditches; God knows it’d be better for his health.” – Ray Bradbury, Zen In The Art Of Writing (1990)

Where does earnestness come from?

Can it be taught in a classroom? Is it learned by example? Or is it our intrinsic birthright? When I’m around children – at my nephews’ birthday parties, for example – it becomes so clear to me that each child has their own engine of personality within them. They’re fascinating to watch.

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“Think of Shakespeare and Melville and you think of thunder, lightning, wind. They all knew the joy of creating in large or small forms, on unlimited or restricted canvasses. These are the children of the gods. They knew fun in their work. No matter if creation came hard here and there along the way, or what illnesses and tragedies touched their most private lives. The important things are those passed down to us from their hands and minds and these are full to bursting with animal vigor and intellectual vitality. Their hatreds and despairs were reported with a kind of love.” – Ray Bradbury, Zen In The Art Of Writing (1990)

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I should probably take a moment to talk about the title of the post. It’s a snub at simplistic contrarianism, or heterodoxy. You know, those people who always have to criticize everything, find fault with everything, who basically make a personality for themselves out of performing… man, I don’t even really want to talk about this.