Handwriting & Capitalism

I read an excerpt last night from Tamara Plakins Thorton's Handwriting in America: A Cultural History (Hey Jack! That's a Yale book - you get some kind of discount on your employer's wares?) in a book about literacy last night, and found it to be remarkably interesting - mostly because of my own well-documented history (and ongoing struggle with) the fine art of writing by hand. The main point that I thought was blog-able provides further insight into my latent anti-capitalism: in the early years of the United States, it was the merchants that valued pristine handwriting above all others. In fact, the truly elite members of society went out of their way to make their handwriting look sloppy. The social elites affected illegibility to make it clear that they were so well established that they didn't have to worry about how their handwriting looked. Meanwhile, since the merchants depended upon credit to survive, and their credit hinged upon the way their colleagues and business-partners perceived them, they had to strive for the best handwriting possible on all of their transactions. Good handwriting = good image. Handwriting, therefore, according to Thorton, was an extension of the self.

Thusly, my held-in-from-recess-worthy sloppy handwriting, as an extension of my (albeit young) self, clearly demonstrates my predilection for not being a capitalist.

And that reminds me of another, tangentially related anecdote, about one of my most favorite things that I've ever said to our Grandfather:

This was back when I was only a couple of months out of having quit playing French horn, when I had just started working at a grocery store (assuming, at the time, that that gig would be only a couple-month long "vacation" (oops)). Grandpa was up in New England visiting all the family that lived there, which included me. Hearing that I had quit horn and Graduate school, he immediately started to brainstorm ideas as to what I could do instead. Right at the end of the evening, as I was about to depart, he got to "Well, you could go get an MBA," and I said, "Grandpa, I read too many books in college to be a functional capitalist." And he laughed! (And I'm so glad he laughed.)