Many view Sir Ethan Woods as an icon in Shekland. He’s a supposed hero to any and all who want “the opportunity to create”. This is bullshit, Ethan like all of his rich friends was nothing more than a self-obsessed narcissist trying to carve out a legacy for himself. Using his money and fame to impose unreasonable expectations on anyone, and he didn’t even have the decency to end his coercion when he died. We are still suffering his nonsense now, and throughout this op-ed I will show you exactly why this is the case, and what we need to do about it.
Reshuffling
Reshuffling was a stipulation that Ethan provided when he gave Shekland Miner to the Shekland University. Every decade someone is selected by the commissioner of art to redesign the school as they see fit. Ethan provided enough funding allocation to drive this initiative for roughly 500 years. In an interview he said “it’s an important aspect of studying. If you go somewhere to learn how to design, then it should be designed well”, going on to talk about it’s merits as being a form of “expression and creativity”. Besides being a one-note instrument Ethan’s legacy does not live up to these claims.
Reshuffling realistically does not allow for any expression or creativity. Because of the tradition, several of the more avant-garde redesigns received such public backlash that they were cancelled. So it’s “expression and creativity”, but not that much, that’s too much. Here is one such design:
Now I will be the first to admit, I do not like the design. It’s meant to be a satire of some of the recent redesign’s of Archive nodes. That being said it is definitely creative, and something different compared to the red-brick everyone is so used to. Yet the commissioner of art refused to release the funding to build it, until it was redesigned to fall more in line with what people want. Sounds like a bastion of “creativity” to me.
But the real problem with this program is the waste. I understand how important art is, and I don’t want to downplay that. But why are we supporting the vision of a man who’s been dead for decades now? He gave this money to solidify his “legacy”. With just what remains in the budget we could build close to 600 houses, or build some houses and cover the living costs of students. This money could go to making a real impact on people’s lives, and instead it’s tied up going through a wasteful tradition of a narcissist who wanted his name synonymous with creativity. If the commissioner had any decency they would transfer the funds to other projects immediately instead of wasting time with incremental updates. Here was one of the updates, you try and figure out which was the before and after:
A real inspired difference for sure. Fundamentally this is the same basic building with some slight differences. Not exactly the creativity he supposedly yearned for. So not only is reshuffling a waste of money, but it’s demonstrating just how little people care about shaking up the cultural zeitgeist.
Actioneering
Ethan was a huge proponent of actioneering, the disgusting practice of allowing people to give themselves “as a gift” to another in order for them to be allowed to do what they want. In an interview he gave he said “…actioneering isn’t a problem. The problem is people who have such little respect for themselves they would engage with it in the first place”. He then went on to affirm that actioneering should not be outlawed, and that actioneering is an issue of “moral character”, not “material conditions”. All of this is easy to say when you are practically drowning in money. The fact he thinks he has any rite to impugn people who are just trying to get by while he coasts through his life is pathetic.
Hopefully people now can see through how transparently horrible Ethan actually was. He’s not someone we should uphold as an outstanding member of our society. He’s a guy who happened to get incredibly lucky, and because of it we now all have to live with the consequences of his will choking us out years down the line. Take the funding from reshuffling and put it into something useful, stop deifying an asshole, and ban actioneering for the barbaric slavish bullshit that it is.