"Biological determinism is one of psychology’s ugliest evasions, removing the poetic human from any issue."

"As we as a society become desperate financially, and more regulated and conformist, our ideals of competence become more misleading and cruel, making people feel like losers. There might be more to our distractions than we realized we knew. We might need to be irresponsible. But to follow a distraction requires independence and disobedience; there will be anxiety in not completing something, in looking away, or in not looking where others prefer you to. This may be why most art is either collaborative — the cinema, pop, theater, opera — or is made by individual artists supporting one another in various forms of loose arrangement, where people might find the solidarity and backing they need."

"They have been raised to compete, & endlessly conditioned to measure themselves against their peers, but they have done so in an environment that denies this reality while it creates it.…

…no surprise that the urge to rear winners trumps urge to raise artists. But the nagging drive to preach the value of culture does not go unnoticed…

…culture in which they have been raised has denied them any other framework w/ which to draw meaning…

Part of the cruel genius of capitalism lies in its ability to make all activity w/in it seem natural & inevitable…

…the role of the resentment machine: to amplify meaningless differences and assign to them vast importance for the quality of individuals. For those who are writing the most prominent parts of the Internet-- the bloggers, the trendsetters, the uber-Tweeters, the tastemakers, the linkers, the creators of memes and online norms-- online life is taking the place of the creation of the self, and doing so poorly."

[Also here: http://thenewinquiry.com/post/12473769143/the-resentment-machine ]

"I believe, though, what infuriates some of those who write so disrespectfully in the blogosphere is that it just isn’t fair if everyone does well. Someone needs to do worse, someone needs to do better. And, most important, it is the teacher’s responsibility to determine who the winners and losers are. There is some mystery involved since, in the conventional situation, students write a term paper and a final, those are graded, and then a final grade is handed down. It’s a uni-directional model of contribution and response. End of process. A lot like the “comment” section on an article posted on the Internet."