The 7 Vices Of the Very Small And Homogenious Social Class To Which I Am A Member doesn't have the zing now does it? posted by The Whelk at 1:32 PM on August 5 [12 favorites]
Vice eight: Wood paneled studies.
Vice nine: Smoking jackets. posted by Artw at 1:36 PM on August 5 [2 favorites]
Aren't those seven vices in the first link also the vices of a lot of uncreative people? I'd think really, really creative people would have really interesting vices like octopus baiting or picking fights with bears. posted by dortmunder at 1:37 PM on August 5 [18 favorites]
My god, that is bad advice. posted by KokuRyu at 1:39 PM on August 5
Wouldn't all the ales at a brew-pub be a house ale? posted by robocop is bleeding at 1:44 PM on August 5
Traits that correlate with creativity don't necessarily enable it. One wonders if the author would have had more creative success had he spent more time in front of the blank page rather than engaging in these vices in an attempt to awaken the muse. posted by sid at 1:45 PM on August 5
Vice 19.2: Vice 19. posted by WPW at 2:01 PM on August 5
Some of the Covey stuff they're mocking is actually probably better advice for many creatives than the Salon list.
(In general, Coveyish culture invites and deserves mocking, but a lot of it is actually good common sense advice. IMHO the problem with it occurs on a cultural level, especially inside businesses, where you often end up with a more theatrical application in which the phrases and trappings are employed as part of a big cargo-cult ritual to Effectiveness, rather than with individuals genuinely trying to refine how they manage themselves and their work.) posted by weston at 2:02 PM on August 5 [8 favorites]
I am highly discouraged that I have none of those vices (although a couple credit card issuers may disagree on #7, most of my debt-related problems I can blame my Ex for, as well as my disinterest in vice #6). That makes me totally uncreative, right?
But I can play this game:
Vice 22: Caffeine (delivered by brand name products with a certain cachet: Starbucks, Red Bull, etc.)
Vice 23: Unmatched Socks
Vice 24: Suicidal Thoughts
Vice 25: Going out with unclean underwear.
Vice 26: A deep spirituality in which your version of God bears little resemblance to anyone else's. posted by wendell at 2:03 PM on August 5 [1 favorite]
Vice 27: The inability to constrain laughter when dealing with uncreative people with authority over you. posted by wendell at 2:04 PM on August 5 [2 favorites]
Vice 27: Not reading articles/ books about what makes you creative posted by litleozy at 2:05 PM on August 5
Funny how "actually having something to say" doesn't figure in anywhere. posted by Afroblanco at 2:05 PM on August 5 [2 favorites]
Vice 33: Skipping several other vices so that you can have a cool number for your preferred vices. posted by Mister_A at 2:08 PM on August 5
Vice 11: Not exactly caring about this whole 'counting' thing because, like, it's just too restrictive, man. posted by festivemanb at 2:09 PM on August 5
Wow; both of these articles strike me as really, really wrong. The "vices" piece, which is actually stupid, seems to mistake being a dandy and tweaking bourgeois values for, you know, creating stuff. The Gilbert piece, which is not at all stupid, only wrong, suggests correctly that works of genius shouldn't be attributed solely to the personal qualities or hard work of their creators -- but then veers off the track in suggesting that we ought to assign credit to the flitting god-force instead. The notion she is looking for, I think, is "luck." posted by escabeche at 2:12 PM on August 5
Vice 11: An exciting new future thriller exploring the seedy underbelly of New Mars. posted by Artw at 2:12 PM on August 5 [1 favorite]
Elizabeth Gilbert on How We Kill Geniuses
Is she the one with the wooden leg?
If she is, then I'd like to imagine that she kills geniuses by beating them over the head with her wooden leg. posted by sour cream at 2:13 PM on August 5 [6 favorites]
dortmunder: D.A. Blyler clearly wants to mislead those who, like him, are mediocre, but who might achieve greatness anyway. He's reached the same conclusion you have, but he's writing this article in the hopes that he can dissuade his likely foes from success by urging them on toward debt, marital woe, alcoholism, obesity, cancer and certain death.
Those who are truly creative (you know who you are) have much stranger vices, and certainly stranger than the seventy thousand listed here in this thread.
Vice 70,001: Too weird to write about. So weird that no one's even thought to write laws against it. posted by brina at 2:19 PM on August 5
Vice #1 is dividing the world into creative and uncreative people.
After that the other vices just don't matter because you are an asshole. posted by srboisvert at 2:22 PM on August 5 [20 favorites]
The first link felt an awful lot like "7 bad habits that I enjoy and feel the need to defend". I'm not saying I completely disagree with them, but it strikes me as a fast way to distance one's self from being a fashion obsessed, sex fiend with a gambling problem who reeks of smoke; "I'm not drunk and in debt, I'm creative!" posted by quin at 2:25 PM on August 5 [1 favorite]
Vice 90210: Thinking you are suffering because of some teenage angst, when in fact you are in the 99.9999th percentile of quality of life of all people, anywhere in the world, throughout history. posted by darkstar at 2:25 PM on August 5
Vice eleven: Over-use of hy-phens in an attempt to appear olde-timey on the inter-net. posted by Mister_A at 2:27 PM on August 5 [1 favorite]
Vice Elven: All the fucking songs that slow the action right down. posted by Artw at 2:28 PM on August 5
Vice #1 is dividing the world into creative and uncreative people.
After that the other vices just don't matter because you are an asshole.
Normally, I would be satisfied with merely favorite-ing a comment, but since I can only favorite it once and that seems insufficient, I would like to applaud you, srboisvert. posted by sarabeth at 2:28 PM on August 5
Between Elizabeth "Eat Pray Love" Gilbert and some other woman with the wacky idea that humans evolved from "aquatic apes" I'm starting to lose respect for this much-ballyhooed "TED Conference." posted by dnash at 2:29 PM on August 5 [3 favorites]
Have Elizabeth Gilbert and Elizabeth Wurtzel ever hung out together? I would kind of like to see that. posted by Metroid Baby at 2:50 PM on August 5
I like that Gilbert speaks so respectfully of the pre-Enlightenment notion of creativity being driven by forces/beings separate from the person doing the creating. Anything creative I accomplish is certainly a collaboration at best with some mysterious spirit or muse that arrives when and if it pleases (a tight deadline can sometimes compel it to materialize though). This understanding also mitigates the awful whirlpool of credit/pride and guilt/blame considerably for me.
That Salon piece did make we want a cigarette real bad! posted by squalor at 2:56 PM on August 5 [1 favorite]
Vice 37: "Going diarrhea" in the shower. posted by jefbla at 3:03 PM on August 5
Vice 37: 37 times! posted by wendell at 3:03 PM on August 5
Vice, schmice.
Favorited this post without reading any of the linked articles.
Epic thread. posted by yiftach at 3:05 PM on August 5
Vice 41: No poofters. posted by Evilspork at 4:16 PM on August 5
Vice 10w-40: Using only API SH-rated motor oil.
Vice-A-Roni: You know how them San Franciscans are...
Veni-Vidi-Vice: I came, I saw, I got creative. posted by Greg_Ace at 4:29 PM on August 5
Vice 30: NSFW/NSFA
One day I was watching broadcast television and Casino came on. Clearly I missed quite a bit. posted by delmoi at 4:45 PM on August 5
Vice 314: Enjoying pi a little too much posted by drezdn at 5:30 PM on August 5
I know I'm late to the party, but I was sort of interested in the article right until the moment he got to the first one and it was "be a drinker." What tired bullshit. posted by Bookhouse at 5:43 PM on August 5 [1 favorite]
Vye scream, voo scream, vee all scream vor vice cream. posted by jefbla at 6:29 PM on August 5 [1 favorite]
Vice 42: Revealing the answer to the meaning of life in a novel pageturningly entertaining enough to give non-geniuses the idea they've got it all figured out. posted by gompa at 7:12 PM on August 5
Your vices should be cherished along with your virtues. If you are amusing or entertaining, clever or creative, fun to be around, others will forgive you them. But if you are a gawping dolt or an addict or just boring, others will come down on you and your vices like the hammer of Vulcan. And rightly so. Nobody wants to spend time with a dim-witted drunken chain-smoking fashion victim nattering away about their gambling debts in words of one syllable. If you're not clever, be funny. If you can't be funny, have fun.
So, kids, the takeaway lesson is: be someone first, indulge yourself later. You don't need to be a genius, but you do need to be genial. Because once those vices start get a foothold, you can't go back. posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 7:22 PM on August 5 [2 favorites]
Vice 23: Cooperating Fnord with Fnord Illuminati Fnord Agents. posted by Hactar at 9:16 PM on August 5 [1 favorite]
I just spotted a new 43 Folders post, which is entertaining timing because it reads like Mefi's own Merlin Mann is calling out the "creative habits" as being not only utter bullshit, but counterproductive, actually harmful bullshit. posted by Pronoiac at 10:30 PM on August 5 [3 favorites]
Vice 0 : Having such an easy time of things in your youth and getting so much recognition for your talents that as you grow older you think everything that "normal" people experience doesn't apply to you, so you shirk your own development, and you become like an overgrown child who's just so awesome that the world has to put up with your bullshit, but the childishness gnaws at you from the inside over years and years as you slowly realize the limits of your ability that you've bet your entire life upon, until you collapse in a pile of paralyzed insecurity, drugs, mediocre output, and broken relationships. posted by fleacircus at 11:10 PM on August 5 [3 favorites]
AN UNNUMBERED Vice: I might take of my pants now... posted by emperor.seamus at 12:14 AM on August 6
"Everything I like is illegal, immoral, or fattening." -- W. C. Fields (creative person). posted by RichardS at 5:08 AM on August 6
Great article. If I read it 10 years ago (and lived by it), I'd be dead now. But it would have been a great life! posted by mnb64 at 9:59 AM on August 6
Some people seem to mistake those vices as symptoms of creativity. Yet you can be uncreative and still have similar vices and be creative with not many vices. Perhaps differences in the way those symptoms manifest may say something about creativity. They certainly aren't needed and focusing on them as if creativity is some kind of fashionable life-style probably won't help you be more creative or understand what it is. posted by Soupisgoodfood at 4:09 AM on August 9
« Older
Vampires are over, argues Neil Gaiman. (Via the Gu...
| Three part BBC documentary...
Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
Subscribe
posted by The Whelk at 1:32 PM on August 5 [12 favorites]