Can anyone convince me that the artistic life is superior to the life of attempting to gain as much wealth and power as...

Can anyone convince me that the artistic life is superior to the life of attempting to gain as much wealth and power as possible (e.g. the life of a politician or businessman)?

sad fact is that it's not worth it unless you become famous or successful and even then you gotta consider that it becomes increasingly difficult the older you get.
basically, life sucks.

This isn't something for which universal principles can be established. People are different. Some people lay awake at night thinking about their big business idea or the big venture their company is working on. Then there are some people that lay awake at night in the world of their imagination, thinking about things that don't necessarily exist outside of their mind. I'm sure you know which one you are, and being authentic to that is what you need to be thinking about, not a false idea of superiority. It's possible to dwell in both worlds, like Wallace Stevens, who built up a successful career as a business executive at the Hartford insurance company. He kept working there in the position of vice president even after winning a Pulitzer for his poetry.
That dual lifestyle should be the ideal for writers today who aren't aristocrats. Even if you have artistic tendencies there can be great value to earning respect and money for something that doesn't depend on subjectivity and luck like literature does.

>tfw I do both

Different strokes. In *all* times and places, some were attracted to the artistic life and some to wealth and power. Look within on this one

Depends on you m8. There's no objective winning argument for either one path or the other. Whether you should go for the artistic life or the business grind depends on your own internal premise values that no one can argue with or change.

Realistically though, no one is earning a living wage as a full time writer anyway, so may as well do both, or just write as a hobby.

No, and why would anyone bother? You have to convince yourself

is it even possible in this day and age to be a working man and an artist at the same time, and still create good work? I often wonder how anyone could create good art without devoting one's entire life to it.

Both are equally futile. Do what gives you the most short-term fulfilment

All is vanity. The universe does not care about DFW or a businessman- both are extremely insignificant, and are nothing but a speck, an uneventful instant in the vast expanse of time.

Jez b urself

why are people on this board so obsessed with nebulous notions like "superior" and "best"

True. At the same time though, humans do care about stuff like that, and that's all that matters. If you're such a nihilist, kill yourself. You should be able to do this.

There is no inherent best. But there are various factors that might make an artistic life more valuable subjectively. An artist influences millions of people if successful. If not, he can still enjoy his own work and thus make OT very important from his perspective.

Gaining wealth/power is much harder, if we are actually talking about significant capital and not i'm earning an above average wage tier

i don't care about the universe, though. I care about myself

no. go pursue the latter, moron.

I don't know. But I bet someone smarter than you has thought a lot about this and written down his thoughts. You should probably go read what he had to say.

Because every sad, lonely, outcast shut-in out there likes to tell themselves that they're just better than everyone else. They don't do all those things like dating women and going to parties because they're stupid and pointless, and they're engaged in superior intellectual pursuits that are leading them nowhere.

>social life is life
brainlet detected
existentialism is the only life

Necessity the robot said to me in a singsong way and also staring at the stars who were shining in bright light in the summersky who was dark due to cosmic constellations. It's about neccessity the other robots echoed and danced in rhythmic motions akin to human dances and said again: necessity - it's about neccessity. A man stepped forward patting the robots on the shoulders in friendly ways and said to you, the man who asked this question: There is no objective way to lead your life! You will feel the truth iinside you as an unstoppable neccessity. Thus listen quietly to what your soul whispers. A man with red hair and a hat across it and who also wore pants, underwear beneath them and a shirt and andabove that a jacket which was 20€ in a store for clothes, nodded his head with faint but determined notions of arrogance but also assured cinfidence: You are wrong! Very much so wrongTeh man said but then was struck with insecurity and collapsed on the ground and was fluttering eyelids in essence but also breathed in sand into his nostrils and felt his heartbeat like the rollings of a bassist who was jamming to some of his dreams. "I'm on the edge of no conctrol" he said and rode subways all across the twon looking at faint silhouettes of individuals standing at subway stations in confusion and utter disarray. Sometimes he would write into his diary: "Morality of divions is low - War may turn any day now" and then close his diary and look out of the window into a daily sky of comformity. I believe that god is on my side though, a child said to him and jumped in playful moves across the sea. I watched it as it jumped far and wide and high and low. "Nice variety of movements" i complimented the schild and it said: Thank you, i call it perspectivism of soul. As such i can acknowledge that all movements have inherited value - it's all a matter of perspective. As long as one can shift perspective from left to right and up and above but also low and beneath, one can affirm all that is. "You are some freak - since when can 5 year olds talk this way" and the children jumped away from me, i clearly overstepped some boundaries of sorts. I was kind of sad i realized with shock. Despite of all i had grown used to the persence of this child. "Stupid me" i lashed out against myself " I only knew it for 5 seconds" but my heart was broken. The child had golden hair and blue eyes, clearly a sign of racial superiority i would have said if i was a nazi or something, bu tgladly i was not. I was more like Bakunin or something. I don't know. I guess that sometimes i would bomb stuff like the parliament of the UNITED STATES. But i would then not be an islamist or something i would say: See, you act as if Bakunin was a sort of great cultural figure but i just took it to a serious level and now you all act " He did something wrong." Since when is killing people wrong? I've read novels and so i know about morality. The woman who was my caretaker shakedened her head in disap

Maybe not hyper-technical mediums like painting or music. Writing, though, is something that requires a mix of life experience and technique.

The difference between other endeavours and art, in my view, is that you can be your own demiurge and forge your own rules (though it must be within the limits of communication), while in the former sphere you'll still be beholden to the rules of others. And, unlike Science, you can create a simulacra of the world without worrying about the material edifice.