Cultural appropriation

The Jolly Contrarian’s Glossary The snippy guide to financial services lingo.™ →Go uptown Index — Click the ᐅ to expand: Glossary Tell me more Sign up for our newsletter — or just get in touch: for ½ a weekly 🍺 you get to consult JC. Ask about it here.

In the neuroticist’s infinite quest to find something about to be upset about, the wilder-eyed of our number have taken intellectual property, a cultural concept squarely rooted in the western intellectual tradition — yes, that western intellectual tradition, the one that ruined the natural world — egregiously misunderstood it, and then to misapplied it to cultural and linguistic situations that make sense to no one but — well, a libtard.

As usual, this whole palaver is steeped in irony. It is amusing enough that “cultural appropriation” is, thus, in itself an act of cultural appropriation from the very western oppressors against whom it is usually used, but even better is it that this, of all western intellectual traditions, should be the one the critical theorists should latch on to, since property rights of any kind, let alone in abstract concepts like culture, were one of the more pernicious traditions western colonists imposed on their dominions.

Segregating certain historical behaviours, and reserving them for sections of the community is profoundly illiberal — isn’t it? — and profligate — why waste good ideas? — and generally wounding to the cause of cultural education, progress, integration, and for that matter preservation.

There is no monopoly on good ideas.

Well, there wasn’t, until some capitalists invented that idea and — ironically — forgot to claim ownership in it.