He always felt culturally like family to me. His peaks—the biting humor about corporate absurdity, the writing on systems thinking and compounding habits, the clarity about the gap between what organizations say and what they do—unquestionably made me healthier, happier, and wealthier. If you worked in tech in the 90s and 2000s, Dilbert was a shared language for everything broken about corporate life.
His views, always unapologetic, became more strident over time and pushed everyone away. That also felt like family.
You don’t choose family, and you don’t get to edit out the parts that shaped you before you understood what was happening. The racism and the provocations were always there, maybe, just quieter. The 2023 comments that ended Dilbert’s newspaper run were unambiguous.
For Scott, like family, I’m a better person for the contribution. I hope I can represent the good things: the humor, the clarity of thought, the compounding good habits with health and money. I can avoid the ugliness—the racism, the grievance, the need to be right at any cost.
Taking inventory is harder than eulogizing or denouncing. But it’s more honest.
Same to me when it comes his comics. There is an ugly part I did not like about Scott Adams but, that doesn't mean I will like his work (Dilbert) less. I have to admit it felt disappointing to find out about his vitriol online. Best wishes to his family and rest in peace for Scott. alway
There are a few artists whose output I can't even enjoy any more because their vitriol became so out of control that I couldn't see their work without thinking of their awfulness, though. (Note: I'm not talking about Scott Adams. I'm honestly not that familiar with his later life social media)
In the internet age, simply consuming an artists media funds the artist. Get as philosophical as you'd like while separating the art from the artist, but if they're still alive you're still basically saying "look you're a piece of shit but here's a couple of bucks anyways".
Is it ethical to buy Dilbert books now that Adams is dead and the money's not going to him?
On the contrary, I think folks that always try to find some sort of hypocrisy in how folks choose to not spend their money are broken.
It seems too cynical by half, and completely discards any sort of relative morality to one's purchasing decisions. I have also long suspected that there is a selfish motivation to it - as if to assuage your (again, the royal your) own morality about how you choose to spend your own money, you need to tear down other people's choices.
It's the same kind of performative virtue signaling that led someone at the New York Times to call him racist twice in the first two sentences of his own obituary.
Ignore is not only bliss, but necessary.
> Ignore is not only bliss, but necessary.
It honestly depends on the time, if we as a society wants change, some amount of uncomfort is needed to better shape it for the needs/affordability of the average person but also a lot of people don't want to face that uncomfort so they wish to be ignorant partially being the reason that some of the issues are able to persist even in a democratic system