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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   10642 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 6, 2026

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Exactly. One can enjoy the philosopher and find the philosophy interesting, but one must grapple with the death.

Another good illustrative example of a writer/philosopher who offed himself: Hemingway. There's so much to admire in the Hemingway Hero, but then you have to ask about the shotgun waiting at the end of the line. Honest conversations about Hemingway's vision of masculinity and life cannot ignore the suicide. I love Hemingway, but his life philosophy must be considered in that context.

Foucault is undoubtedly one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century, and his work on sexuality is seminal and must be grappled with. Ignoring him as a crank, dismissing him, is impossible if one is a philosopher. But one can't admire his work without asking questions about his death.

Lindyman actually posted on the same topic today:

This is the David foster Wallace mental trick of just coming up with fake narratives to attach on people so you don't get frustrated waiting in line in the grocery store[.] How[']d that work out for him?

DFW emphasizes the need to consciously reframe one's perspective to find meaning and avoid despair in mundane, everyday life, essentially treating the world as a projection of individual thought patterns. This approach reinforces an isolated view of the world, where meaning is constructed purely in the mind, rather than found through engagement with shared, objective and external realities Leads to being stuck in your own head. Rumination. And eventually despair.

I think Bourdain's work presents an interesting and coherent set of questions and attitudes about modern life and meaning. There's a reason his work is so good! But, you have to consider his life as a whole.

Honest conversations about Hemingway's vision of masculinity and life cannot ignore the suicide.

You could perhaps pin his father's prior and brother's later suicides on the same memes, but his sister's and granddaughter's later suicides probably weren't because of a malformed conception of their masculinity. There might be some genetic mental health factors and/or suicide contagion here too.

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