Bumper sticker mentality, self-esteem and second-rate art
I harbor a distinct antipathy toward what a friend of mine used to call “the bumper-sticker mentality,” which disdains thinking and settles instead for sloganeering.
You’ve probably seen this one: “Arms are for hugging.” This isn’t wit. It’s plain old-fashioned equivocation — taking a word that has multiple meanings and pretending it only has one. Whoever came up with this should run out right now and hug a howitzer.
But slogans aren’t only to be found on stickers attached to bumpers. They also decorate t-shirts. I saw one the other day that I thought epically bizarre: “Pain is temporary. Pride is forever.”
Putting aside the fact that how temporary pain is pretty much depends on the cause of said pain, all these two short sentences seem to amount to is a colossal non sequitur. Pride is no more necessarily everlasting than pain is necessarily temporary, and what the one has to do with the other is anybody’s guess.
“After great pain a formal feeling comes,” Emily Dickinson wrote. I don’t know about that either, but I think that, given the circumstances, a formal feeling is more likely than a great surge of pride. My own experience has been that cessation of notable pain is followed by one hell of a sense of relief.
Anyway, what’s so great about pride? Last time I checked, it was still the headliner among the seven deadly sins, it still goeth before a fall, and remains the cause of a tragic hero’s undoing.
I’m not proud of much myself. I love my country. I think it’s the best anywhere ever, in fact, but I can’t say “I’m proud to be an American.” After all, I was born here. To be proud of being American would be like being proud that I was born with a head.
I’m not proud of my accomplishments, either, such as they are. They give me a sense of, well, accomplishment, the satisfaction that comes of having done something as best one could.
There used to be a mural at Broad and Lombard — part of Philadelphia’s Mural Arts Program — that always got on my nerves. It declared that “if you can dream it, you can do.” This, of course, is arrant nonsense. I can dream all I want about being a concert violinist, it ain’t gonna happen. Ever. There’s a reason we distinguish between dream and reality.
I suppose all of this stuff derives from the latter-day preoccupation with self-esteem. Current wisdom seems to be that it’s a good thing to think highly of yourself, that it’s better to overestimate yourself rather than the opposite. It seems to me that the best approach when it comes to estimating yourself is to aim at accuracy.
One of the best attempts I can think of is Somerset Maugham’s estimate of his place in literary history. He thought he would be found, ultimately, to occupy a seat in “the very front row of the second-rate.” This is by no means as modest as it sounds, the first-rate being people like Shakespeare, Dante, and Tolstoy. Maugham thought he deserved to be counted among the best of the also-rans. I tend to think he was right, if only for his short stories.
By the way, just so nobody thinks I’m equivocating, “taking pride in your work” doesn’t mean standing around thinking what a great guy you are; it simply means being a responsible worker, someone who always tries to do the best job he can, whatever that job is.
And, speaking of jobs, a composer friend of mine told me some years ago of a call he got from someone who wanted to study composition with him. He asked the caller what instrument he played and when the caller told him didn’t play any instrument, my friend asked him if he could read music. When the answer turned out to be no, my friend kindly explained that he didn’t think the caller was ready yet for the level of instruction my friend had to offer.
What my friend wanted to know was why anyone who didn’t play an instrument or read music would want to be a composer. I told him that the fellow probably thought that writing symphonies and concertos sounded more interesting than fixing toilets or laying floors.
Problem is, how many artists of any kind does a society need? My guess would be only the ones who can safely be regarded as at least second-rate. As for plumbers, carpenters, and the like, one always prefers that they be first-rate.
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Hi Frank,
Just to note. I recognize that slogan, “Pain is temporary. Pride is forever,” from when my son used to wrestle. It has to do with athletic training, and technically, then, ought to have a “the” before it, “The pain is temporary. The pride is forever.”
The kids would walk around the gym or field house, wherever the meet would be, with such slogans on their shirts. “Hold my medals while I kiss your girlfriend” gets a little braggadocio. Guys would have a big Superman “S” on their shirts too. There was a girl’s wrestling team with, “Silly boys, wrestling is for girls.”
Back to the pain one, which could be more a team decision to have as a slogan, versus an individual’s attempt to prop himself up—I liked to ponder, “Pain is weakness leaving your body.” It’s not true as such, but in relationship to training, there can be a correlation to getting stronger versus not feeling so much pain while doing those wind sprints. Of course, these “pain” slogans apply to other sports as well. But the high school wrestlers train in such a way, that military boot camp can be just another good work out, and appreciated as such.
My son Dan who’s older now, but wrestled for Bridgewater, used to like those wind sprints. And there are stories of wrestlers who go onto the service, and when asked by a drill sergeant —as if for punishment—-if they would like to do what for others would be painful and strenuous physical feats, they say sincerely say “yes”.
Your friend the composer is clearly misguided. Did he even consider meeting with the kid to see if he wore the right scarf? With the right scarf and the right hair, what more does the poor kid need ?
Bumper stickers are signatures on an idiot’s self-portrait. That’s my own poetic take on the matter.
We’ve got them in spades here in Portland — they come in various shades of “Obesity is a Hate Crime!” “Keep Your Laws ON My Body, Mr. Obama!” and “Impeach FOX News!”
At rush hour, all I can see for miles is a giant Slogan-Ocean, sprawling out toward eternity.
That mural actually read: “If you can dream it, you can,(sic) achieve it,” punctuated thus, with a nonsensical comma after the second can. But one day, after the mural had been up a few years, someone painted out the unnecessary comma. So I regard that mural as something positive, a rare example of illiteracy vanquished.
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Austin is chock a block with these bumper stickers, some for the Kerry Edwards campaign of many years ago. Why do they not remove these sad testaments to failure?
Wit – and humour – are especially difficult to evaluate. I may not put it on a bumper sticker, but do enjoy a bit of wordplay.
Do you know that David Grossman – yes, that Grossman – collected Israeli bumper sticker slogans and made them into a rap hit? Here’s a link about it:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/16/arts/honk-if-you-love-sing-bumper-stickers-israeli-author-turns-slogans-into-rap-hit.html?ref=david_grossman
“Frank said it, I believe it, that settles it!”
;-)
Hi Jeff,
What a truly frightening thing to say!
Nice photo essay here:
http://pajamasmedia.com/zombie/2010/10/01/a-berkeley-photo-safari/?singlepage=true