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Alana Vincent
@alana-m-vincent.net
Historian of Religion. Migrant (currently based in Sweden). Bad at gender, worse at writing bios, absolutely incapable of refraining from profanity. I do stuff involving religion and literature and genocide, usually all at once.
983 followers1.1k following1.2k posts
AValana-m-vincent.net

SO the interview ends with this full-throated defense of rugged individualism, and a nice callback to Luther's speech at the Diet of Worms: Here I stand. I cannot do otherwise.

You write about the importance of solitude and courage in creating good art. Why are these so important to one’s craft? Ultimately, the decisions by which we live our lives must be made individually, each of us for ourselves. Other people can advise us, but there has to be a moment of retirement, a moment of singleness, when you say, This is how I choose to live, this is what I choose to stand for. And to make that decision without solitude, to make that decision in the middle of a crowd, often a shouting crowd, means the risk of taking on the crowd’s values, as opposed to living by your own values, which are almost never found in the middle of the crowd. I think courage has always been a standing apart. Kierkegaard talks about this in one of his posthumously published writings, “On the Dedication to ‘That Single Individual.’” He writes of the need to become an individual apart from the crowd, apart from the judgments of those upon whose approval your livelihood, your social standing
or your well-being depend. Courage is the ability to say, It will cost me a great deal, but I have examined the matter to the best of my ability, and I cannot do otherwise. It is very lonely. You have to say yes to that loneliness.
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TEt2thacoops.bsky.social

"no one will ever be able to change my mind" CAN be good when standing up to oppression, but it can oppose progress and restricting humanity to binary framings that no longer work in a modern, diverse society, it's how you use it and what you're standing up for that matters, a nuance lost on her 😢

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AValana-m-vincent.net

But here, again, we have that image of the crowd, the shouting crowd, trying to persuade the writer, the dogged pursuer of the (singular) truth, the truth that outlasts empires, outlasts millenia, to abandon their commitment.

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AV
Alana Vincent
@alana-m-vincent.net
Historian of Religion. Migrant (currently based in Sweden). Bad at gender, worse at writing bios, absolutely incapable of refraining from profanity. I do stuff involving religion and literature and genocide, usually all at once.
983 followers1.1k following1.2k posts
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