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I see that neither side of the culture war right now focuses on the positive, on something beautiful. Both sides see themselves as righteous oppressed victims fighting against the evil empire of the other side, but for both it is less a Star Wars vision than a Terminator vision. War machines running over skulls at night-time, death and lasers. The culture war is bleak and stark, it has no poetry, no romance. It is a grim attrition war, trenches and minor offensives but few large breakthroughs if by breakthroughs one means reaching one's opponent and convincing him of something. Where are the creative songbirds of thought and word who would transcend this opposition and maybe get both sides to become aware that both are equally stuck in the human condition? Has rhetoric truly reached the limits of its potential power? I have so rarely seen anyone change his mind about anything more than minor details.
It is all so tiresome. Maybe it is possible to move in some orthogonal direction and flank this whole conflict from a side that has the breath of fresh air behind it?
I often think this. Who is building beautiful things these days in the public realm? Beautiful schools, libraries, railroad stations, hospitals, parks, museums, even apartment buildings? Yes, there are always a handful of examples, sandwiched between generic shitty modern buildings or awful pastiche. But not enough. No one’s thinking big. You have to inspire people.
I was watching some shitty talk show appearance by the astronauts who are supposed to be going to the moon again with NASA next year. The commenters on the YouTube video (who I presume watch a lot of talkshow clips) were saying it was the most applause they’d ever seen on the show, the audience were standing up and hollering and cheering and so on. People want to believe in something real. Yes, a return to religiosity would be a good thing, but there also has to be real progress, real improvement, something in the kingdom of earth or whatever the biblical term is that inspires and drives people, that suggests some kind of civilizational progress. ChatGPT is good, but right now it’s unclear how it’s going to improve most people’s lives and if anything most people who look into LLMs get panicked about becoming permanently unemployed.
If I was president I’d organize a huge World’s Fair for the 250th anniversary of America’s founding in 2026. Host it in New York, in Flushing Meadows park where the last big one was, around that giant sphere that once symbolized all the possibility of the late 20th century. Invite all the great corporations, every state, other countries, to come and present their vision of the future. Make it free to visit. Hire Robert Stern to design it in a vaguely mid-century Americana style. Have all the classics - the house of the future, the car of the future, the plane of the future etc. It wouldn’t solve the country’s problems (“the controversy over drag queen story hour in the California state pavilion continues…”), but I think it would be mostly fun and hopeful.
Beauty is wasted on the public. It's how we end up with statues that literally look like excrement. Anything for "the public" is such a nakedly corrupt process, it can't help but produce ugliness. And when individuals try to beautiful the public themselves, some megacorp comes along and inverts their charitable efforts with propaganda.
Learn to make beautiful things yourself, for your family. Especially for your children, which you should have. I was talking to someone a few weeks ago about the power and magic that a father's craftsmanship has for their children. Her dad made her all sorts of furniture that she treasures to this day. My wife refuses to let go of a frankly terrible desk that her father merely refinished. I remember being astounded at the relatively simple picnic table and swing set my father made for us. My kid adores the first shitty pine box I practiced making on my tablesaw.
It sure beats filling your home with cheap Chinese bullshit. I swear being surrounded by cheap bullshit manufactured by an evil strategic enemy hellbent on sabotaging your homeland is just bad for your soul.
I agree mostly, but thinking random Chinese factory workers are "an evil strategic enemy hellbent on sabotaging your homeland" might well be just as bad for the soul.
Maybe. Or maybe you can't see the forest for the trees.
Subsisting off the substandard castoffs of an open enemy is the behavior of the conquered. Reject it.
Who is the conquered here, me choosing to pay a tiny amount of my American salary for a perfectly adequate product (rather than outfitting a machine shop in my garage) or the Chinese worker earning ten dollars a day to produce it?
I'm not sure what world you are living on when you consider the tat sold by randomly arranged letters on Amazon "perfectly adequate". Living in a home where every day something is breaking in some way big or small wears on the soul. You can feel the decline. The erosion of order in favor of chaos.
Instead of consooming and giving the store away to our strategic foes, maybe try investing in yourself, and creating something beautiful. That was the headline topic. Creating beautiful things. You cannot do it when you are locked into a consoom cycle. And it adds insult to injury when it's to the benefit of an institution which hates you.
I recently bought some suction cups on Amazon for $10 to hang stuff in my shower. They stick well and I'm perfectly satisfied with the product.
Now, I could have bought injection molding equipment (guess where it's made?) and rubber (guess where it's made?) and steel wire (guess where it's made?) and made some suction cups myself to increase my status in the eyes of terminally online right wingers. But why would I spend thousands of dollars just to make a basic household item like that? And anyway I've got my gym in the garage so I can't set up an injection molding shop. You guessed it, Chinese iron which hasn't given me any problems.
I really am not sure what world you are living on when you grouse about things breaking all the time and unbridled consooming. I don't remember when I had to do a repair beyond changing a lightbulb (made in China LEDs are brighter, better, and longer lasting than anything in from the 90s), nor do I remember the last time something I bought on Amazon broke, unless you count the time I washed my wireless earbuds.
Were you seriously consooming Amazon "tat" at a prodigious rate before you decided to RETVRN? Or do you just imagine that this is how the out group lives?
You seem to think I'm telling you to make everything, when I'm actually telling you to make something. Preferably beautiful.
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I admire your zeal, and I’ve got to admit this made me laugh pretty hard.
When I look around living out here in California, I think there’s nothing out here for me. Living here as a right-winger leaves me feeling like it’s a me against the world proposition. There’s no hope for “reforming” things, apart from waiting around and watching the whole edifice fall apart completely before things can begin anew.
You don’t think your ideas are a little too romanticized and applicable only in your private family domain?
Maybe. They may be.
However, like you, although to a lesser degree, it feels like the entire fucking world is falling apart around me, and I am but one man. I can waste my life's energy fighting the tide in the public square (and losing), or I can pick a set of principles and try to live them society be damned. If I'm super extra lucky, maybe it will instill a similar set of values in my children. And if I win the metaphorical lottery, maybe it will inspire a few people in proximity to me. I'm not one to hope for much more than that.
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Both of you, for you both labor so that your betters can live off you like a tick.
But for real, it is both of you. Even from a non-socialist perspective, you have given up on 'niceness' in exchange for convenience and cheapness; you live the TV dinner equivalent of a life wherever you choose to do this.
Sometimes that is what it is, you don't have the time or spare attention to not live the takeout McDonalds experience, but you should always be mindful on what exactly you are doing and why. From time to time get yourself some craft instead of some kraft. You would not believe how pleased I am with myself for that last line
Kraft means power, and not having to make every little thing yourself and keep a wood shop and metal shop in your garage is what power is.
I appreciate the pun, but there is no flex in living that prol mdf furniture life.
When you pay IKEA 100 for 10 worth of material and labor, you are getting fleeced. Better to pay 1000 for 500 worth of materials and labor.
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Not everything in life has to be bespoke as long as it's not actively abrasive.
If anything, having a baseline of C+ makes one appreciate A+ more when you have an opportunity. Hedonic treadmill and all.
True enough, but most people seem to think that difrent flavors of C+ are A+. They're out there livin that premium mediocre life.
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