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Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
23hr ago
Thinking and Feeling aren't so alien to each other.
Right, I'm always trying to explain this to people. The "logic vs emotion" dichotomy is clearly overly simplistic and not really tenable. But at the same time, I think it's pretty clear that different people do think and experience in fundamentally different ways, and we need some kind of language for talking about it, even if we end up not using those terms specifically.
I think that the issue is the network effect and centralization is the problem that attracts the shaping of opinions. Why this place still feels authentic is because of size. Maybe the solution is to have an aggregator of independent smaller forums where the forums are actually independent moderation and actual resource ownership as opposed subreddits that are controlled by reddit.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
23hr ago
Oh, not sure why you removed the Paul Klee section, I was going to comment on it...
Klee was an artist, not a philosopher. Most artists are frankly not very good at talking about their own work. They tend to not actually be that knowledgeable about art theory, let alone philosophy in general. That's why they're artists and not philosophers.
The Klee stuff you quoted seemed pretty bad and uninteresting and I would have nope'd out after a few sentences.
When someone is actually trained as a philosopher, and their work is recognized as philosophy by other philosophers, you can take it on good faith that there is a method to the madness. I quoted that Heidegger comment about poets for example to give an example of one of his more extreme flights of fancy, but at the same time, it's undeniable that Heidegger was extremely well-versed in the entirety of the history of Western philosophy, and (at least some of) his work makes genuine contributions to legitimate philosophical problems. (His What is Metaphysics is interesting and approachable.)
Thus Spake Zarathrusta threw me badly though and I've not returned to it since.
Aaaaa what a tragedy! Zarathustra is a terrible book, it's easily the worst thing he ever wrote. I don't blame people for assuming that it's a natural starting place for reading Nietzsche though. He himself insisted from the day it was published to the day he died that it was his best work. I have no idea why. He was simply wrong about that. I can only assume that he was just trolling and trying to filter people or something.
If you ever want to return to Nietzsche, I would recommend Twilight of the Idols, Gay Science, and Genealogy of Morality in that order. I think that would give you a relatively balanced overview of his project and his main concerns.
But in general I have the sense that much appreciation of continental philosophy actually primarily relies on vibes and not coherent sense-making.
Like I've been saying, you have to make judgements on a book by book, paragraph by paragraph basis. Almost all the specific books I've recommended throughout this thread are approachable and can be read like any other book, and they do make coherent sense, such that you could explain them to analytic philosophers without too much trouble.
And sometimes you get sentences that function on multiple levels, instead of adhering to a strict "semantic meaning vs vibes-based" distinction. So, for example, when Lacan says "woman does not exist; Woman cannot be said", you can "decode" this to get the "literal" meaning of "there is no single paradigmatic successful example that women can model themselves after, unlike how an individual man can aspire to be 'The Man' (people say 'you're the man, man' but they never say 'you're the woman, girl'); social expectations for women are perpetually and irreconcilably split between the Madonna and the whore". This is how many of his commentators interpret him, especially if they're writing a "Lacan 101" type introduction. But you can also choose to just let your mind run free with the poetic, vibes-based associations. I think some continental texts are very much intended to get your brain to trigger both modes of cognition at once.
I have you pegged as "flighty wordcel who is way too interested in austere, self-referential literature and art" and that's meant as a compliment. The profile of your interests isn't super typical here and it adds flavour and depth to the Motte, I don't like it much when people downvote them.
Thank you, I really appreciate that. Some number of downvotes is actually a good thing. If I only ever got upvotes, then that would mean I was just agreeing with the hivemind on everything and I wasn't saying anything that challenged people and made them push back.
Corvos
23hr ago
I was watching some clips from the Thick of It and it seemed slightly… off. The broad plot points and the characters seemed realistic enough but the overt and graphic threats, and the fucky fucky speaking style seemed to be very much written to pander to the audience rather than to be realistic.
(Who would be caught dead saying something like ‘fuck you very much’? It makes you sound like a five year old.)
I know some of us have experience in this environment (e.g. @SSCReader). What do you think? Which bits basically ring true and which bits don’t? Is TToI just outdated?
I have some experience but it’s all student politics on the one hand and dealing with civil service type people and procurement on the other hand.
Movie reviews and demonic modern media
I really like Robert Eggers, his movies are well made and are true to the time period that they are from, the actors are good, you get sucked into eh atmosphere, and there is no modern leftist drudgery. I made the mistake of not posting my unfinished draft and ended up losing 5 pages of progress, so I will try to be brief here. Eggers adapts euro folklore to his brand of extremely immersive cinema; his movie The Northman was the most aryan thing I have seen on a screen in a while; it celebrated values that my own people, a continent away, celebrate. I wrote a review of it here and recommend everything Eggers has made.
The lighthouse
The movie is about homosexuality, I liked it,t but it's my least favorite Eggers movie. It reminds me of david lynch a lot. Worth watching once. I like Eggers when he adapts more straightforward older material that, whilst being simple, conveys a lot of things; in this case, it felt a lot like watching David Lynch in some ways. Great movie, though not the best movie ever, kinda good.
Nosferatu
This movie is amazing; if you removed the cuckoldry from it, it would have been perfect. The dialogue and the setting are something from a weird time where it feels like a European adaptation from the early 1900s. Count Orlok strikes fear with zero jump scares. Bill Skarsgard's portrayal is very real and very scary. I would rewatch it simply because of the immersion. This is a super immersive movie, and it's very polished. It's one of the best movies I have ever seen and is a must-watch in my book.
F1
61-year-old Brad Pitt stars in a rare good summer blockbuster sports action by-the-numbers movie. The director of Top Gun Maverick made a movie that even my mom liked, who, for the record, rarely watches movies. It's a very lighthearted action-heavy flick that, due to not being leftist explicitly, makes for a great movie to watch in the theatres. Real equipment and CGI feel very different; CGI has made movies feel less consequential. Pro wrestling became worse partly because people started doing more extreme things like jumping off the cage, jumping into tacks, jumping off the cage on a table that's on fire with tacks around it. Ultimately, it only made it worse as people tuned in for the story, the usage of more extreme gimmicks worked as an occasional thing, doing it more made people desensitised, and it made everyone look superhuman. It is much more interesting to see Brad in a car than it is to see some 5'2 diverse female lead "save" the universe in CGI slop because one of them is not indestructible.
Watchmen Chapter 1 and 2
Watchmen is touted as peak comic book stuff, and this adaptation is the most faithful one we have seen since the HBO show was just cringeworthy pro-leftist drivel, and the Snyder one apparently took too many liberties. My favorite part is the comic inside the comic, where the dialogues in that comic end up matching what we see in the world of Watchmen through different POVs. Alan Moore, the creator, is a hardcore leftist in whose eyes the world is a nihilistic place; he is competent at his job and can subvert you in better ways than modern ones. The character people root for who have read the comic or seen the adaptation, is Rorschach, who Moore created to dunk on conservatives. He remains the only guy who stood for the right thing by the end.
Modern Media is Demonic
No, seriously, let's consider two superhero stories. On one hand, we have the boys, the current cucked tv show, where there is a literal line where Billy Butcher goes "He is my wife's son", which is supposed to make him look like the good guy. On the other we have All-Star Superman, a story about Superman coming to terms that he is dying and living out his last days on earth. The boys and watchmen have a nihilistic vision of the world where despite all the lawlessness, the word crime is still racism. There are no good guys, power corrupts and all endings are bad. In All-Star Superman, you instead see, also spoiler alert, skip the paragraph is you wanna not know the ending, although the ending makes no difference.
In the comic and its adaptation, Superman lives in eternally fixing the sun to save his foster homeland. There is a very touching scene where he visits his mother, who adopted him as a child, and she can sense he is ill despite no signs. It's a touching little nudge. The world needs people like him to live so that we can have order. Lex Luthor ends up with a death sentence after realising what he has done, the world is saved, and Luthor, before he dies, tries to find penance by helping Lois bear Clark's son by some sort of sci-fi IVF.
Superhero tales are for kids; they are simple. Jonathan Bowden has a good criticism of them, but we have moved to a point where even the ones he read seem like fucking biblical stories. Modern entries are that bad. These stories appeal to young boys. By making every guy in modern adaptations a bumbling incompetent idiot who is playing second fiddle to some girlboss, you go against the very nature of the story. In the case of Watchmen, consequentialist Moore wants to make these qualities look bad, though he still does an ok job with Rorschach. We on the other hand, saw Star Wars, Indiana Jones and fucking LOTR get turned into modern left-wing caricatures.
There are people who make videos on these topics, the best I have seen is this guy Despot of Antrim, there are others like nerdrotic etc, who are not as good. I never watched any of these videos about "Woke Hollywood is killing XYZ franchise". Why bother since I am too reactionary to ever get swayed? I opened one of these based on Jim from blog.reaction.la, and holy shit, modern movies are straight up unwatchable. When I was in my early teens, so the 2010s, these movies still tried being somewhat alright, but the ones today are castration via cinema.
No parent in good conscience can let kids watch modern Disney adaptations where Snow White wants a communist commune, or where Peter Pan gets slapped by a girl in his own movie. We joke about actors being whores, but current cinema is worse than whorehouses given its poisoning of little children. LOTR and Rings of Power could not be further apart. I wrote a glowing review of LOTR, after having spent 12 plus hours plopped on my bed watching all three movies, I felt something warm and glowing inside of me. Watership Down, the book I am reading and the countless folktales and mythical stories we grew up with have to do with the hero who overcomes some evil, and the end leaves him and the world better.
Men and Women are very different, the hero is a mostly male archetype, and I am sick of seeing tampons thrown at it. A concerned father here posted about his neighbour's son, how he felt bad for his mom was making him effeminate. Modern state now tries that with beloved children's cartoons too. This is a long, meandering post. I liked comic book heroes, I really did. Batman: The Animated Series was the only cartoon I ever watched. People making movies are showing me the finger, they defile some things I liked as a child, and their losing money is a good thing. I refuse to relate to a female protagonist. I would as a parent, would not want my kids to consoom product we see being shilled. These people are losing money, which gives me some hope for the world.
Start in St John’s Wood or Primrose Hill, walk down through Regents Park, past the rose garden and the outdoor theater, down through Marylebone and some of Mayfair, then into Green and then St James’ park, then walk down along the Strand, stopping by whatever seems interesting. Then either take the district or circle line west, back to Hyde Park, to Chelsea and South Ken, past the museums (V&A if you haven’t been), all of Chelsea is pretty nice in summer especially if it’s sunny this afternoon.
Or walk down to the Embankment or Westminster pier, take the thames boat (now branded “uber boat” due to sponsorship but its regular public transport) to Greenwich, see the Cutty Sark and the naval college and the date line, have a pint at the Trafalgar, take the boat back.
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