I heard Daryl Hannah’s an intellectual.
i wonder if she ever read a this thing Asimov came up with called psychohistory. Psychohistory is a fictional academic discipline that studies the generational flow of what a culture values based on how they understand the last Big Thing that happened to them. (my friend’s theory) is that culture, though most of the 90s, didn’t have that many real big things, that it just you know, had big movies, some sex scandals, (etc.). this last decade is suddenly getting labeled as the forgotten or lost decade (in these blogs). I mean, hell, I wonder who’s really forgotten. which child was left behind an all that.
anyway, psychohistory predicts that a culture that has been through, say, a huge war, is going to be like, fiscally conservative, and the other way around. i.e. the baby boomers are the opposite, they never saw a big war until the late 60s and 70s. so – they raise all these kids and everything is like The Family Ties where all the Michael J. Fox kids interested in capitalism.
The problem that Asimov wrote into the whole idea with psychohistory is that when a culture knows its supposed to react a certian way, it doesn’t. You know, lots of people hate to be defined. But I love getting an explanation (through a film, or a book or – rarely – a bit of news) of why somebody is the way they are in the world, and then having to figure out how to make it real, using personal experiences and stories. Between all the crazy people in my neighborhood (not to say my building), the hardworking people at the manager’s office, the gigs, the sideline gigs, and the wandering alumni around the city and the bright folks I know on the internet – you know, the star trek fanfiction writers and cultural studies bloggers and then, my family, the only thing they have in common is my ass.
