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BEING_REAL_BEING_KNOWN

                                                     February 02, 2019

Here's one story:

    When a new culture breaks off from an older one, it
    inevitably adopts the vaules of the old at first, it
    thinks of success as doing things that are good in just
    the same way that the older culture could do good
    things-- the dream is, at least at first, just to show
    that the new can do just what the old does.

    But the new-- understaffed, underfunded-- can't really
    compete with the old on the same terms.  It has to come
    up with something that arises out of the nature of the
    new, that grows from it's present circumstances.

    The new culture triumphs when it becomes
    authentically itself.


But there's another story you can tell:

    To convince the older established culture
    to lavish money and attention on the new,
    the new has to play up to sterotypes, it
    has to live up to the expectations of it
    that the old has-- no matter how
    exaggerated or distorted they might be.

    You have to put aside any ambition of
    competing with the older culture on it's        You may be crude and
    own ground, and instead play up your            ignorant, but you're
    outsider status.                                really *alive*, you're in
                                                    touch with the true
    You must take what you are, and become          reality, unlike those
    an inauthentic cartoon of yourself.             civilized snobs.


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