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Editorial See other Editorial Articles Title: The True Meaning of the V-Word The True Meaning of the V-Word by Steve Sailer March 27, 2013 What do people really mean by the word “vibrant?” Until the disco era, “vibrant” was used only rarely, mostly in connection with vibrations, literal or metaphorical. A quick search online finds no examples of “vibrant” in the works of George Orwell or John Updike, one in Evelyn Waugh‘s (“that silence vibrant with self-accusation”), and two in Vladimir Nabokov‘s. (Humbert Humbert looks up to a “vibrant sky” through “nervous” rustling branches.) According to Google’s Ngram, “vibrant” was an occasionally used word from the 1920s into the early 1970s. But then its share of all the words in books roughly quadrupled by the mid-2000s (when a few people finally started to make fun of it). In 2013, it’s hard to avoid the word. For example, on Monday, President Obama announced, “Immigration makes us stronger—it keeps us vibrant.…” Similarly, when new Secretary of State John Kerry paid a visit to German Chancellor Angela Merkel last month, he announced that the American-German relationship is “one of our strongest, most vibrant alliances.” (Is “vibrant” the post-Cold War version of “dynamic?”) And downtowns are always vibrant, or will be Real Soon Now: “Planners in Maine Envision Vibrant Downtowns.” In particular, “vibrant” comes up relentlessly in real-estate-related articles. Vibrancy is the nirvana of urban planning. Every so often these days, the word is used reasonably. For example, the Washington Post‘s obituary last weekend for 94-year-old Cuban jazz great Bebo Valdes said he “helped create a vibrant, melodic style of music.” Presumably, most styles of music are more or less vibrant, but it’s hard to begrudge this usage. Since roughly the disco era, however, “vibrant” has been the utility infielder of journalistic adjectives. If you wish to communicate to readers that they are supposed to think positively about something or someone but you can’t come up with reasons that are plausible, discreet, or acceptable in polite society, just toss in the word “vibrant.” As your mother would have taught you if she were a contemporary newspaper editor, if you can’t think of anything nice to say, just say “vibrant.” Before the Vibrancy Era, “vibrant” didn’t necessarily have positive connotations. Nabokov’s 1948 short story Symbols and Signs, for instance, told of an incurably deranged man to whom “Man-made objects were…hives of evil, vibrant with a malignant activity that he alone could perceive.…” But now, “vibrant” is a synonym for “doubleplusgood.” That’s why earthquakes are not “vibrant.” For example, if you Google “vibrant” and “earthquake,” you can find references to Haiti’s “vibrant literary community” and the “vibrant Haitian civil culture,” but not to that unfortunate country’s 2010 earthquake. And yet questions remain, especially about the manifold ways the word is used in writing about communities. In New Orleans, for example, why are both the post-apocalyptic Lower Ninth Ward and the prelapsarian Garden District, where Angelina and Brad like to lunch, frequently described as vibrant? Why are Latino communities always vibrant? Why is downtown Dubuque, Iowa vibrant, while Valparaiso, Indiana is not merely vibrant, but visionary? Why are contemplative art galleries considered essential to vibrancy? Mostly, “vibrant” serves as a placeholder. For example, in January, The New York Times headlined an article about a not-too-bad black neighborhood in homicidal Chicago: “Diagnosis: Battered but Vibrant.” It’s a polite thing that white people say when they can’t think of anything else. Often, vibrant is used to signify “growing.” Reporters especially like to find Mexicans “vibrant” as a tribute to their swelling numbers. In The New York Times last year, Adam Nagourney wrote redundantly about Los Angeles’s “vibrant and expanding population of Mexican-Americans.” In this context, “vibrant” signifies “minority…but not for long!” And yet when white people talk about a place full of white people as being “vibrant,” what do they mean? The more I’ve thought about urbanist uses of the word, the more I’ve come to believe that underlying all the goodthink euphemisms, there lurks a Platonic essence of an honest definition. I believe that if you strip away the phony tinsel of vibrancy, you’ll find the real tinsel underneath. Nobody has gotten more mileage out of the V-word than Dr. Richard Florida, who spent the last eleven years giving speeches at up to $35,000 a pop to local civic leaders on how they can bring vibrant urbanism and urban vibrancy to their hick burgs. Since it’s impossible to talk about Florida’s economic geography theory without getting the professor hopelessly confused with the state, I’ve long called him Dr. Vibrant. His shtick has been that having a lot of gays, immigrants, and artists—the “creative class”—will bring profitable industry to town. If you are wondering why gay marriage has become such a popular cause among Chamber of Commerce types, don’t overlook Dr. Vibrant’s relentless speechmaking. He’s been presenting gays to local burghers as a sort of magic talisman of prosperity. It’s gone over great with provincial worthies who are a little vague on whether or not Silicon Valley is in San Francisco. In my observation, the arrow of causation runs largely in the opposite direction: gays, immigrants, and artists follow the big-money boys. If, say, Clarksdale, Mississippi still has more farmers than bohemians, it’s primarily because Clarksdale is poor. If a place is rich enough, it will soon fill up with Dr. Vibrant’s kind of people. For example, in the late 1970s, I went to Rice U. in Houston. After OPEC raised the price of oil in 1973, Houston overflowed with skyscrapers and homosexuals. Did the gays bring the giant oil companies to Houston, as Dr. Vibrant’s theory implies? No, the high price of gasoline brought extra money to oil-company employees, who gave much of it to their wives, who sometimes spent it on dresses and decorating. Competing economic geographer Joel Kotkin (whose less fashionable but more sensible shtick is that the suburbs are a nice, affordable place to raise a family) has recently taken a swipe at Dr. Vibrant. Kotkin points out that in the Obama Age, when the economy’s precarious vitality is ironically dependent on the politically retrograde energy and agriculture sectors, the lowest unemployment rates are frequently found in places with more natural resources than people. (Dr. Vibrant angrily responded.) Still, I don’t think North Dakota will wrench the mantle of vibrancy from Lower Manhattan anytime soon. (At present, the neighborhoods north of Wall Street, with their countless chic restaurants, look like all the romantic comedies in the history of the world are being filmed there simultaneously.) That’s because I have an ultra-reductionist theory of what people really mean when they honestly think of a place as “vibrant.” They mean that there are attractive women walking around at night. That’s it. My four decades of watching beautiful women have revealed that they tend to be found in prosperous places. Indeed, if you have lots of good-looking women, then the dynamic artists, gay boutique owners, and immigrant busboys will take care of themselves. Civic leaders of America, despite what Dr. Vibrant has told you, all you have to do to have your town considered “vibrant” is to attract attractive women. Also, to get people to say you have “good schools,” just get good students. Please make your checks for $35,000 out to “Cash.” Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 1.
#1. To: Prefrontal Vortex (#0)
I thought the word for that was fertile.
There are no replies to Comment # 1. End Trace Mode for Comment # 1.
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