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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32433 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 13, 2023

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An update to a post I made after Christmas lamenting the state of children's books, and all their on the nose, "current year" agenda pushing nonsense. Specifically an update in reply to this comment.

This is why we only have classic little golden books and some innocuous stuff from the 80s and 90s on our bookshelf. Also Roald Dahl, he's great. As others have said, there's no reason to buy modern propaganda children's books. Not only are they proselytizing, but they're mostly objectively ugly.

Roald Dahl goes PC in a world where no one is 'fat' and the Oompa-Loompas are gender neutral

archive link

The publisher, Puffin, has made hundreds of changes to the original text, removing many of Dahl’s colourful descriptions and making his characters less grotesque.

The review of Dahl’s language was undertaken to ensure that the books “can continue to be enjoyed by all today”, Puffin said.

You can read the litany of changes for yourself. I guess I missed the boat on stocking up on Roald Dahl children's books. As is feeling increasingly typical these days, there can be no escape from current year. Fuck me I guess.

Thing that would have seemed impossible and absurd even last year happens, people get temporarily upset, change nothing. Everyone gets used to it, desperately copes that "this is the high water mark," and goes on with their lives.

Then something even worse happens and the process starts all over again. This is how the last decade has gone. And this is how the next decade will go. And the one after that and the one after that.

I don't really see the point of even talking about it unless it's building actionable solutions.

The absurdity and bipartisan revolt leads me optimistically believe we're closer to the peak than not. It does not mean wokeness has peaked, but we're close to it . Rewriting classic books is something even many left-wing artsy types and progressives will not stand for. Losing the intelligentsia means losing the movement, because that is where the money is too.

Absurdity isnt an objective measure - it only demonstrates how far outside or inside the current overton window an idea is. The idea that prepubescent children can know that they somehow have the spiritual essence of the opposite sex would also have seemed absurd to most anyone 40 years ago. Heck, 1950's sock hops were absurd to Sayyid Qutb when he went to Colorado State Teacher's College. That an idea is absurd to a person only tells you where that person stands now. Not why they stand there now, and not where they'll stand tomorrow.

Surely it has some sort of telos or terminus, though, no? Civilization may appear asymptotic in terms of how much ruin and insanity it can withstand, but there must be some practical limit.

Fires eventually burn themselves out, but you should still be concerned if you find one in your home.

In Rwanda, men hacked their neighbors to death with machetes. People were condemned to death for wearing glasses and owning books in Cambodia. The Soviets slaughtered thousands of whales to meet quotas that served no purpose. How crazy can people get?

North Korea still exists.

I have no idea what the practical limit to a civilization's utter insanity is. I just know whatever that limit is, we appear to be dead set on suicidally testing it.

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