Tree
1hr ago
Talleyrand supposedly served France, not any one man or crown. Can't think of any influential russian clergymen, but that's probably on me - o wait, rasputin, lover of the russian queen! I need to switch one of my podcast choices!
Tree
2hr ago
I didn’t know russians had a thing for french men of the cloth. Longing for a historical counter-weight to the autocrat, perhaps?
I’d take Hannibal, Leo, and Lavoisier.
What dilemma is there in this gossip rag? The man is innocent. A crying woman is not a story. People's disgust is not an argument.
it will eventually create headaches for them
It’s not ‘it’ that creates headaches for them, it’s people who try to get them cancelled or prosecuted. Assume your role of censor and hangman.
I'm not sure being married to palmer(edit: pavlovich) would have helped: the rag would have printed the lurid details of what they did behind closed doors, people would have felt 'iffy', they would have moved the blurry boundaries of consent to marital rape, and the tabloid life goes on.
Tree
13hr ago
My boss. Although tbh I didn’t care for the job. I like taking l long holidays after a few years' work.
the woke mob were absolutely capable of destroying people's livelihoods if they told them to fuck off
I'm not saying they weren't, but like hydro says a lot of people were far more afraid than they realistically had reason to. Also, defending one's ideas is not supposed to be costless. I would prefer to lose out on a job than debase myself with a DEI statement. And that's before any moral implications, because all those who went along were complicit in making other people's lives hell. I'm sorry your life got ruined, that's obviously above and beyond what can be expected of people, but I do think they have a duty to offer resistance when they disagree.
Tree
14hr ago
Eunuchs get assigned feminine qualities. To me, you seem hyper-sensitive to any insult to womanhood, even abstract and metaphorical - as required by modern etiquette. I'm criticizing gender roles, what's the big deal?
Also, only three decades? I was sure you’d go back at least to the Victorians.
We're explaining wokeness here, and in this extreme form it's recent. 30 years ago we had PC so it fits.
As to your implied jibe that I'm a reactionary who wants women in the kitchen, I've heard it all before, and you couldn't be more wrong.
Tree
15hr ago
Yes, there’s also agreeableness, emotionality, conventionality. I don’t really like femininity, especially not in men. Am I allowed to say that, or is only masculinity subject to censure? Men’s personalities have been one-sidedly filed down by three decades of this.
Tree
16hr ago
Ask for it back . "I do not avoid women, Mandrake, but I do deny them my essence."
Tree
16hr ago
According to you, nybbler, there was never anything to be done, it was an unstoppable steamroller, and all rebels would die for nothing. With an attitude like that, it could never have been stopped.
Tree
16hr ago
"Ending masculinity" in males leaves you with female clones. Metaphorically, you've cut off their balls. This is unpleasant by itself, but there's a double meaning: eunuch is an insult among men, their high pitched voice is a source of ridicule, and they're assumed to have a weak character, especially among ancient authors.
Tree
17hr ago
incredibly dangerous to speak out against it
Hyperbole much? Surely a contributing factor to the rise of wokeness is the utter spinelessness of most people. It was amazing to see again and again, the woke attacking some man of considerable achievements with no apparent woke beliefs, which would conclude with him delivering an abject groveling apology. Or the university presidents and professors who went along with radicals they clearly didn’t agree with. The grad students who traded ‘DEI statements’ for a job. Or you, reader, who put his pronouns in his profile.
Part of the reason is, you aren’t allowed to call men pussies anymore (in polite company). In the past, those who prostrated themselves in this way would have been shamed “Be a man and say no fuck off when you mean no.“ The taboo-ization of manliness has left society wide open for this kind of agreeable-emotional scam ideology, which reinforces the taboo further. Wokeness is both a cause and a symptom of it.
We used to reproduce sexually, which gave us some genetic diversity. After we all turned ourselves into female clones doing parthenogenesis, we became vulnerable to viruses. But thankfully for us middle class folk, through cultural isolation, some intrepid billionaires and rednecks avoided being gelded, and so the woke virus was ultimately stopped.
Tree
1d ago
Maybe this corps of North Koreans will manage to disappear before there is any proof they ever existed
They have released a video of what appears to be north korean prisoners:
Tree
1d ago
I don’t mind arrogance as such. You can catch me admitting that normal people are pretty stupid, too. But that doesn’t mean their lives and hobbies are meaningless and their thoughts ‘false consciousness’.
That passage we discuss is not just arrogance, it’s unjustified arrogance, it’s wrong. Hobby readers read ‘with all their attention’ too. And their hobby of reading is ‘part and parcel of their lives’ too.
You speculate that what I wrote reflects some sort of ego-driven rejection of others’ superiority, that I’m offended (and you’re allowed to do that, even though I think it’s incorrect). You form a model of my personality based on my writings. Well, that’s just what I did with his. It jumps up at me that he’s someone who resents the happiness of others….. (((((((((((“under capitalism”)))))))). That last part is just a fig leaf.
Paraphrasing adorno: ‘people should have no hobbies, no poetry, no beautiful buildings, their lives and thoughts are meaningless. (((((((((((again, “under capitalism”))))))))’. There’s superiority in that statement, but it’s not the superiority that bothers me. It’s the hostility to joy, beauty, meaning, life.
I just want to make it clear that it can be considered in isolation.
Death of the author, huh? Even ignoring all context, I still think “reading with all my attention” is pretentious, describing something as “part and parcel of my life” is trite, and hobbies are not mock-worthy. But whatever floats your boat, as long as I don't have to hear it during smalltalk.
Tree
2d ago
I only knew adorno by reputation, which in my circles wasn’t great. Now having read these few pages of primary source, I feel I understand him much better, and despise him far more. He’s a bitter, spiteful man, utterly devoid of what one might call, generosity of spirit. Just this morning I was reading about postmodern art, and I came upon one of his quotes “To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric.“ – That fucking scold, I thought. People have never needed poetry, and art in general, as much as after Auschwitz. Adorno’s chief purpose in life seems to nag and make others miserable.
But you’re right of course, all that is a little ad-hominem-y. Let’s get to what he says, as opposed to the how and why.
Is it not possible to read thoughtfully and carefully, and equally possible to read thoughtlessly and carelessly?
Sure, that can happen. But he implied that those who read 'as a hobby' , ie most people, always read carelessly, while he never reads carelessly. That is an unproven, absolute and pointless claim of superiority. It would be like claiming he’s a very good driver, therefore he should never be fined for speeding. While trying to erase the conceptual regime that discriminates between work and not-work, he invents new conceptual distinctions (his reading versus normal people reading) which make far less sense.
Do you think that it's possible to lead a meaningful and holistic life, as opposed to one that is not? Maybe it's possible, but not particularly valuable either way, and thus not something to be aspired to? Or do you think that it's both possible and something that is proper to aspire to, but you just have specific issues with Adorno's presentation?
Holistic is a bullshit term, as in holistic medicine, holistic science, holistic nutrition, holistic shower gel. I believe people’s lives are meaningful already.
Do you think that the hobbies you spend your time on are meaningful, or no?
Sure. Take this place. On a very modest level, I think exchanging ideas is potentially helping the world. Even in my most cynical moments, when I think it has no "redeeming social value" and is just for fun, I find that meaningful, too.
Tree
3d ago
But Adorno already said that he has no problem with simply listing the activities he does outside of his working hours
Oh, he has a problem with it, it’s his whole problem. He worries that he doesn’t come off as cool when he tells people what he does with his time:
Woe betide you if you have no hobby, no pastime; then you are a swot or an oldtimer, an eccentric, and you will fall prey to ridicule in a society which foists upon you what your free time should be.
So when he reads, he reads ‘with all his attention’(as opposed to normal people, who supposedly read distractedly. The point is, he’s better than them, at reading) . And he doesn’t have hobbies, he has a meaningful, holistic life. Please.
We’re all nerds with nerd hobbies here, but this one unloads his inadequacies and frustrations in the most petty, passive aggressive way possible.
Tree
3d ago
Sounds like a frustrated bear excuse, my guy. If the government’s holding the line, it’d be stupid not to leverage. It makes no difference whether it is naturally a good strategy, or if the government is artificially propping it up. It has been working for 16 years, so you can’t use it as an example of a strategy that’s likely to fail on a 2 year timeframe.
Tree
3d ago
No, he’s not right. Even if we lived on a tropical island before capitalism, when two strangers would meet, among the first questions they would ask would be ‘so what do you do to eat?’, and ‘what do you do when you’re not fishing/hunting/gathering?’ . And when Old Theo would answer ‘How dare you imply my non-work activities are mockworthy and meaningless? I do everything passionately!’, the other man would hit him over the head with a stick, just like in real life.
The negative implications of ‘hobby’ that adorno is incensed about, he put there himself. People do not think their hobbies are meaningless and worthy of mockery.
Tree
4d ago
Making music, listening to music, reading with all my attention, these activities are part and parcel of my life; to call them hobbies would make a mockery of them.
Imagine some guy lays this on you after you ask him about his hobbies. What an extraordinarily annoying and pretentious thing to say. Adorno’s dripping contempt for the “barbarous”, “horrifying”, “mock-worthy” common man, what he enjoys, how he talks, and what he thinks. All rooted in Adorno's resentment that the rube has again and again rejected marx’ bullshit.
“people are unaware of how utterly unfree they are, even where they feel most at liberty“ - thought bubble of guy in corner at party meme.
Tree
5d ago
yeah, I already said this, losses are acceptable.
I don't take the pro-russian right seriously when they say they care about ukraine, its economy and demography. For one thing, because they say they don't care about ukraine on the next argument (it's far away, strategically unimportant, we need the money for the people here, etc). For another thing, because it's an argument putin makes, a mafia-extortion argument ('pay the black hand and nothing will happen to your nice flower shop'). Like zelensky says: We never pay any-one Dane-geld, no matter how trifling the cost; for the end of that game is oppression and shame, And the nation that plays it is lost!
Tree
5d ago
If he doesn't want a deal, because, as usual, since day one, total russian victory is just around the corner, that's fine. Ukraine, for its part, can accept trump's offer, gets increased aid, and continue the war. Westerners aren't exactly under pressure to end the war.
I much prefer to make the same deal (whatever it is) now rather than earlier (assuming it was even on the table). If you're going to make a deal with a mafioso, it's much better morally to have him pay for it in blood, rather than just handing it over. Losses on your side that result from this preference are par for the course & acceptable. This only seems heartless from a naively pacifistic view. The mafioso is of course far more heartless.
Tree
24d ago
Not gonna happen. Even if AI is strictly superior at clerical/intellectual jobs to most people (and I doubt that), there is unlimited demand for dog-walking at 10$/hour.
The machines have long ago replaced human physical power, and animal physical power, and weaving and sowing and cobbling and copying and calculating and transporting and and and ... never was man left idle.
Tree
24d ago
There are black women who’ve won legitimately(miss France, for example)
Bad example. Oldest miss france ever at 34. She finished first runner up of her departement fourteen years ago. So during a time where most women lose attractiveness, she managed to raise hers from regional contender level to national champion. And they just changed rules to allow women over 24, as well as married women or mothers, to participate. The rule change by itself is fine, but obviously it's just a way to put 'inspiring' 50 year old women up there 'with the most difficult job in the world'. Whatever, beauty contests are stupid anyway, they just got considerably stupider now that they're ugly.
I meant pavlovich
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