Primaprimaprima
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User ID: 342
Primaprimaprima
8d ago
You'll see topics about Catholicism, declining birth rates, AI, immigration, and... that's broadly it.
Why are you surprised that people want to talk about the hottest culture war topics in the culture war thread? (Ok Catholicism isn’t quite as topical as the others perhaps, but I like the Catholicism posts all the same.)
Primaprimaprima
10d ago
the reaction from friends and family was overwhelmingly one of disgust and negativity. Why in the world was I reading a near-porno by a creepy old islamophobic misogynist about a fantasy scenario where 10% of the population somehow takes over the government of very secular France?
Tell your friends and family to stop being lame. Or get better friends and family.
Primaprimaprima
12d ago
I don’t always agree with your posts, but I agree with this one.
Just live your life.
Primaprimaprima
13d ago
The East Asians are pretty much already there
Not even close, in any way. Happas are very acutely aware of their own non-whiteness.
Primaprimaprima
13d ago
The ambiguous word in the text on which everything hinges is “jurisdiction”. The author explained how the word “jurisdiction” is to be interpreted, with examples. How are his comments not relevant?
This is far outside of my domain of expertise, maybe there were other relevant considerations (e.g. historical precedent) that force a different interpretation of “jurisdiction”, I don’t know. But if the author’s comments on his own amendment are being reported accurately, then “he should have been more explicit” seems like an incredibly weak rebuttal.
Primaprimaprima
26d ago
There are a few different things going on with Ulysses that contribute to why it's achieved such an exalted status.
On a "macro", conceptual level: you can think of it as an illustration of Clement Greenberg's thesis of the "flatness of the canvas", just applied to literature rather than painting. One of the dominant philosophical themes in early 20th century art was the "self-consciousness" of the art object: the work of art taking its own formal construction as its subject matter and embracing its nature as an object of artifice, rather than presenting itself as a transparent representation of an external subject matter (in the way that e.g. classical representational painting aims to be a transparent window to a scene depicting physical objects in 3D space). Abstract painting forced the viewer to consciously acknowledge the fact that they were looking at paint on a flat canvas. Ulysses does something similar with words, it embraces the "textuality of the text": treating words as a pliable and fluid medium that don't necessarily have to be constrained by the traditional logic of representation. It plays with this concept in a bunch of different ways without just falling apart into a string of random words. But it also pushed stream-of-consciousness writing to its limits and foregrounded the internal psychological states of its characters in a way that no novel had ever really done before. And it's also replete with explicit and not-so-explicit references to the Western literary canon, like a puzzle to be decoded. Basically it's operating on all these different levels at once and still managing to weave it all into a coherent whole.
On a "micro", technical level: it's kind of just obviously a work of intense and surpassing beauty, Joyce was unmatched as a prose stylist:
—Mr Chairman, ladies and gentlemen: Great was my admiration in listening to the remarks addressed to the youth of Ireland a moment since by my learned friend. It seemed to me that I had been transported into a country far away from this country, into an age remote from this age, that I stood in ancient Egypt and that I was listening to the speech of some highpriest of that land addressed to the youthful Moses.
His listeners held their cigarettes poised to hear, their smokes ascending in frail stalks that flowered with his speech. [...]
—Why will you Jews not accept our culture, our religion and our language? You are a tribe of nomad herdsmen: we are a mighty people. You have no cities nor no wealth: our cities are hives of humanity and our galleys, trireme and quadrireme, laden with all manner of merchandise furrow the waters of the known globe. You have but emerged from primitive conditions: we have a literature, a priesthood, an agelong history and a polity.
Nile.
Child, man, effigy.
By the Nilebank the babemaries kneel, cradle of bulrushes: a man supple in combat: stonehorned, stonebearded, heart of stone.
—You pray to a local and obscure idol: our temples, majestic and mysterious, are the abodes of Isis and Osiris, of Horus and Ammon Ra. Yours serfdom, awe and humbleness: ours thunder and the seas. Israel is weak and few are her children: Egypt is an host and terrible are her arms. Vagrants and daylabourers are you called: the world trembles at our name.
A dumb belch of hunger cleft his speech. He lifted his voice above it boldly:
—But, ladies and gentlemen, had the youthful Moses listened to and accepted that view of life, had he bowed his head and bowed his will and bowed his spirit before that arrogant admonition he would never have brought the chosen people out of their house of bondage, nor followed the pillar of the cloud by day. He would never have spoken with the Eternal amid lightnings on Sinai’s mountaintop nor ever have come down with the light of inspiration shining in his countenance and bearing in his arms the tables of the law, graven in the language of the outlaw.
He ceased and looked at them, enjoying a silence.
Primaprimaprima
27d ago
It’s “Rationalist” terminology.
Scott Alexander’s blog slatestarcodex came out of the Rationalist community (centered around LessWrong and affiliated blogs/sites) and this forum is descended from the slatestarcodex community.
Primaprimaprima
29d ago
Honestly it feels like we’re entering “We have always had a deal with Eastasia” territory. I’ll believe it when I see it.
People would be interested to know about the discovery of one of Newton’s lost diaries where he kept alchemical notes, even if it wouldn’t “advance our knowledge” about anything in particular (besides about Newton himself and his personal intellectual trajectory). Similar deal here.
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