23 June, 2010
Open Question Details
While reading Fredric Jameson, I came across this quote by Chrystia Freeman (Sale of the Century, 2000): "Yet, at least for the intelligentsia, life in the fin de siecle USSR had its compensations. No one had very much money, but no one had to do very much work, either. The result was a whole society that acted as if it had never left college: intense, emotional, time-consuming friendships; endless hours spent drinking tea or vodka and discussing the meaning of life; the avid pursuit of esoteric spiritual or creative interests. If middle-class Russians sometimes seem perversely nostalgic for the Soviet Union, one reason is that the collapse of communism forced them horribly and abruptly to grow up" (p. 114). Feel free to problematize the related notions of "growing" and "intellectual" and "college" at will.
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That sounds like a situation we should welcome. Much more social, cultural, pleasant, artistic, relaxed and of the moment. An atmosphere of being, becoming and sharing. Growing up isn't all it's cracked up to be if it means spending too early morning and too late evening hours breathing each others cars on the way to work with a headfull of anxiety about how you're going to pay for the whole mess. Seems to me that a creative, free people should be able to come up with a much more rewarding, casual way of life than the commercially offered model most folks appear to aspire to. We're smarter than that why don't we prove it and have a good time?
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