Note-taking for Learning of Culture with Lisa Stulberg
Our first reading in the class was Ta-Nehisi Coates. The second one is Max Weber. The transition between their prose styles is like gliding downhill on a bike into a brick wall. Nick Seaver calls it “the 1-2 relatable-canonical punch.”
David Foster Wallace likes to tell this parable:
There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, “What the hell is water?”
In America, the water is capitalism. A capitalist enterprise has two necessary ingredients: a disciplined labor force, and an owner class that re-invests its capital. These things are so familiar to us in modern America that it’s startling to be reminded how culturally specific they are.
Continue reading “The Protestant Work Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism”
