problem_redditor
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User ID: 1083
With regards to The Room itself: Lisa is such a uniquely selfish, manipulative and conniving character with no redeeming traits to speak of, who is pointlessly cruel and vicious to everyone around her just for her own amusement.
In general this is true of the majority of badly written films with badly written antagonists. I'm less convinced Lisa in specific is meant to be a stand-in for women and more an aggressive subtweet of an ex-girlfriend. "According to Sestero, the character of Lisa is based on a former lover of Wiseau's to whom he intended to propose marriage with a US$1,500 diamond engagement ring, but because she "betray[ed] him multiple times", their relationship ended in a break-up."
Coupled with Tommy Wiseau's self-insert character laughing uproariously when his friend tells him a story about an unfaithful woman he knew who got beaten up by her boyfriend so badly that she was hospitalised
See above; this is not surprising given the context of who Lisa is meant to represent. Yes, the movie is self-pitying and half-autobiographical, but I'm not so sure it's supposed to be an expression of hatred for all women.
The other quote you linked seems to be a... not abnormal thing to think after being screwed over during dating and relationships, so I'm not surprised one would put it in a script. In a similar vein many films have "I'm done with men, they're rapacious bastards"-style quotes by female characters who you are supposed to sympathise with, so I suppose I can say that if you contextualise those as making the films inherently anti-male, I suppose you're consistent.
those elements were just the icing on the cake of its nonsensical plot, illogical characters, bizarre dialogue and its creator's misogynistic, narcissistic worldview
I see this crop up every now and then in discussions about the film, and this evaluation of The Room isn't particularly coherent unless you consider virtually all movies that depict women behaving badly and doing things like "lying to hurt people" as misogynistic. Yes, Lisa is obviously the antagonist and is portrayed in a bad light, having an irredeemable female villain isn't enough to declare a film as advocating hatred of women. Is Gone Girl misogynistic? In addition, many films involve a female protagonist taking revenge on the man/men who victimised her (The Invisible Man, I Spit On Your Grave, etc, to name a few); people seem to have zero problems with those despite these films having far more negative portrayals of men than any kind of "problematic" female portrayal.
It's a terrible film, but its "misogyny" is not one of the reasons why.
What are your favourite art hoaxes?
Pierre Brassau was the pseudonym of a chimpanzee called "Peter" whose art was exhibited and shown to critics, as an experiment by the Swedish journalist Åke Axelsson to see whether critics could tell the difference between avant-garde modern art and the scrawling of a chimpanzee. He convinced Peter's caretaker to let him play with oil paints and a brush, and included the paintings he considered the most worthy in an exhibition. The reviews were extremely positive - one went so far as to state "Pierre Brassau paints with powerful strokes, but also with clear determination. His brush strokes twist with furious fastidiousness. Pierre is an artist who performs with the delicacy of a ballet dancer." Here is one of Peter's paintings, and here is a painting from the Bacchus series by Cy Twombly. I have to say, I, too, prefer the chimpanzee.
Then there's Disumbrationism. It was an entire fictionalised art movement created by one man - Paul Jordan Smith. Annoyed with the fact that his wife's realistic still-life paintings were panned by critics as being "of the old style" when she showed them in a local exhibition, he decided to make parody art under the pseudonym Pavel Jerdanowitch, and despite never having any art training or even having picked up a paintbrush in his life he "took up a defective canvas and in a few minutes splashed out the crude outlines of an asymmetrical savage holding up what was intended to be a star fish, but turned out a banana." The painting was initially called Yes We Have No Bananas, but he eventually entered it to an art exhibition under a new name Exaltation.
He ended up receiving a letter from an art journal praising the art and asking him for more information about himself, as well as an interpretation of the painting. So he invented a whole fucking backstory for Pavel Jerdanowitch (which culminated in him inventing the art style he called "Disumbrationism"), stated the painting was about "breaking the shackles of womanhood", and his name slowly became known. He was asked to exhibit the next year, and he painted another masterpiece: Aspiration. This was reproduced in the January 26, 1926 issue of Chicago's Art World, and art critics described it as a "delightful jumble of Gauguin, Pop Hart and negro minstrelsy with a lot of Jerdanowitch individuality." Later he painted Adoration and Illumination, which were also highly praised. He wrote on the latter painting "It is midnight and the drunken man stumbles home, anticipating a storm from his indignant wife; he sees her eyes and the lightning of her wrath. It is conscience at work."
Eventually he broke the hoax to a news source, and the ruse became widely known.
The Gift by Ishmael Ensemble is a tune I've been enjoying lately. It almost sounds Thom Yorke-esque, like it could've been a track on the album In Rainbows.
Also I've been looking into East Asian classical music lately and some of it sounds incredibly alien and bizarre. Here are two examples: Korean ritual music and Vietnamese court music.
I'm not going to disagree with you. Thing is, labels such as "progressivism" and "social conservatism" are constantly-shifting categories that get defined in relation to the norm, and the agreed-on societal starting point for debate has shifted left to the point that the social conservatives of today are liberals driving the speed limit and the social conservatives of yore are just horrible alt-righter fascists. The conservatism that many espouse over here is no longer inside the Overton Window.
Sorry for the late reply, been flat out.
I don't think they're exceptionally common here - really this forum's social conservatives are not representative of "social conservatives" in general, but there are a couple of users who are more adjacent to it and have opinions on sex and gender which basically justify displacing disproportionate amounts of responsibility to men. This part of their belief system is often not stated outright since TheMotte is generally hostile to this brand of thinking, but it's noticeable that they will shift between an "equality-of-opportunity" standard when it comes to discussions about what rights men should be granted over women (if they don't just elide that entire discussion entirely), while at the same time invoking men's supposed degenerate nature and women's inherent vulnerability in ways which would justify placing extra responsibility and deference on the part of men towards women. There is also a noticeable amount of focus on female safety sometimes in spite of women being a demographic that's far less likely to face violence than men. Especially when it allows them to pull one over on groups like the homeless or foreigners.
Probably not going to @ anyone here, but an example of a well-known social conservative with some appeal to younger men who I appreciate and yet who I think goes much harder on men than on women is Jordan Peterson (granted, his popularity has subsided recently and I haven't kept up with the newer popular conservative commentators). I do appreciate his commentary, I think he gets many things right, and I appreciate his critiques of feminist patriarchy theory. At the same time, his assignment of responsibility is highly directed toward men. As an example of this much of his dating philosophy centers around the idea that women should be picky, and men should adapt to their demands. He says about as much here in this clip, and asserts that if men aren't having success in the dating market, it can never be overly high or unreasonable female demands that are the issue. Women by definition cannot be the problem, and sexually unsuccessful men are at fault for not adapting to their preferences (this despite the fact that male status and attractiveness to women is relative, not absolute, so there will always be a group of men who are shafted by the 80/20 rule). So, men are to be the responsible adults yoked to meet their wants and needs, and this attitude towards men's role in society can be seen in his opinions on many topics. Men are conceptualised primarily through the lens of duty.
When asked "should women, in relationships, submit to men", OTOH, his assertion is that no, they should not. His philosophy on the role of the sexes in society often places obligations on men to cater to the wants and needs of women, children and society, and doesn't really impose very many sex-specific obligations on women in return. I've never seen him say anything even slightly similar to women in general, with the harsh tone of "Improve yourselves, buckettes, because you're shitting society up." Nor, apparently, should women surrender rights for the state of eternal childhood and lack of responsibility they enjoy. It's traditionalism for men and liberation for women, part 3000.
I would say they're not mirror images; namely, that 19th century patriarchal paternalism was far more consistent and reciprocal than things are today. Sure, men were the heads of the household with some legal power like owning the property that came into the marriage and being able to enter into contracts, but that came with a corresponding responsibility - husbands had a legal responsibility to support their wives and any children born out of the marriage, and what was considered "necessaries" for a wife (and kids) was dependent on socioeconomic status. So a rich man could not simply leave his wife in rags, feed her gruel and claim she was technically being supported. The courts would not accept this.
The next thing to note is that the husband, along with taking ownership of all of his wife's property, also took responsibility for all of her debts before marriage. Husbands continued to be responsible for all family debts contracted after marriage as well. A wife could also buy necessaries on her husband's credit (this was called the law of agency), and had the ability to act as her husband's agent. This is important because it means all debt contracted on behalf of the family's maintenance (whether made by the husband or the wife) was held to be the husband's debt. And defaulting on the debt meant he could go to jail. In the 18th/19th centuries, the vast majority of imprisoned debtors in England and Wales were men (all estimates of the sex ratios of imprisoned debtors are over 90% male), and it is likely that coverture was a very big reason why.
Now? The male end of the responsibility is still being socially upheld under a veneer of female helplessness and victimisation, and at the same time, women are equally as capable as men and all of that agitprop distinctly non-agentic framing that emphasises their need for special protections shouldn't impact your evaluations of their suitability for leadership positions that require one to exercise agency. You don't want to be a misogynist, do you?
I would note that feminist treatment of women as perpetual children and men as perpetual adults is highly selective and inconsistent. They'll selectively absolve the woman of all responsibility and place all fault on the man when these poor darlings are "pumped and dumped" and taken advantage of and supposedly manipulated into sex acts that get retroactively interpreted as predatory once the outcomes of the sex don't result in what they want. They will put out pieces of special pleading explaining how women's special circumstances justifies them being treated more lightly when dealing with them in multiple contexts, sexual, professional, criminal and so on. The same people who pull such shenanigans will generally not acknowledge that women's lack of agency and unique delicateness should ever affect how they get treated when they are in the running for leadership roles or positions which require one to take on a huge amount of responsibility. There is no consistency here, it's all "Who, whom".
The even more irritating thing is that much of these same beliefs are also sincerely held by social conservatives (including many users in this space), who tend to typecast women as "potential victims" and men as "potential problems"; they view women through a lens of what others can do for them and men through a lens of what they can do for others. They are exceptionally paternalistic towards women, have a tendency to place all responsibility and blame upon men, and will virtually only recognise "innate sex differences" in ways which justify special and preferential treatment for women. The acknowledgement that men and women are not the same only ever gets used in one direction, and this hypocrisy seems to be common in mainstream political thought on gender.
Perhaps I'm missing something but are you talking about Insite? Because that was the first such sanctioned facility in all of North America, and AIUI how that went was somewhat different: Insite was started in 2003 as part of a three-year pilot study, with a special exception to the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act applying to it so it could function as a safe injection site. The exception was slated to expire in 2006, but it was granted yet another three-year extension so more research could be conducted. Health minister Tony Clement eventually stated there was a lack of health benefits and denied it yet another extension, meaning Insite would close, but a constitutional challenge was brought by the operators and proponents of the facility.
The case eventually reached the Supreme Court of Canada, which ruled that the benefits for already-existing users were clear and that failing to extend the exception would violate the rights of its clients as outlined by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, specifically the Section 7 rights to not be deprived of life, liberty or security in accord with the “principles of fundamental justice”. Note that the Court did not establish a positive right to safe injection sites, but did make it so that once InSite was established, depriving its users of that benefit would be a violation of their s7 rights. Because of that ruling, BC is now obligated to continue exempting Insite.
Case in question is Canada (AG) v PHS Community Services Society.
Seconded - I used to play piano, and Arabesque no. 1 was one of my favourite pieces to perform. It's almost unbelievably beautiful.
I can barely listen to recordings of it though, because so many interpretations of the piece play it way too fast.
Of course; there are obviously many load-bearing institutions that can't be burned to the ground without many disastrous ripple effects. But there are also a great number of institutions and/or subfields - including many of the Truth-producing academic fields and news sources which are most crucial to the spread of the ideology - which are not hugely critical to baseline functioning, and are kept alive in part through public money that frankly shouldn't be going towards producing propaganda-disguised-as-science with infinite degrees of freedom. Arson of these institutions is a public good, in my opinion.
It's Edmund Burke vs. Thomas Paine for the 50 millionth time. "Slowly and carefully prune away the rot" vs "Revolt and replace the institutions entirely". Jesse/Trace are advocating for the former, and interestingly enough much of the current conservative crop falls into the latter mindset, despite Burke being probably one of the most central figures to Anglosphere conservatism.
Not to go all Hlynka, but the modern right somewhat dovetails with the left in the sense that they have largely shifted from a Burkeian mindset to a Paine-like one overtime. I partially think this is the right seeing how successful revolutionary, scorched-earth tactics were on the left, and realising that advocating tactics characterised by stability and moderation don't work when you're fighting with people who really would like to (possibly violently) overhaul society. But more broadly, I think revolution is attractive to a general political coalition when they're heavily ousted from institutions and placed on the back foot, whereas gradual change that prioritises stability is preferred when these coalitions' beliefs are tolerated within said institutions - the risks and costs of overhauling the system in such a case just outweighs the potential benefit of marginal status gains. The likes of Trace are attempting to appeal to a gradualist version of conservatism that looks like a worse and worse value proposition as time goes on and the left's Long March through the institutions becomes increasingly apparent.
Personally, despite differing with conservatives on many things, I espouse a lot of heterodoxy that's anathema to progressives and would happily warm my hands on the embers of the torched institutions.
Since @aqouta said he went to Sun Yat-Sen's mausoleum, I assume he's talking about Linggu Temple's nine-story pagoda instead, which is nearby said mausoleum in the Zhongshan park.
Working right now so I'll keep this short - if you're in Nanjing, have you yet seen the Chaotian Palace, Jiming Temple and Nanjing Fuzimiao (Confucius Temple)? If you're interested in the historic stuff these all seem like no-brainers. Also might be fun to walk on the Nanjing city wall.
Well, my job as a tax accountant continues to depress the shit out of me and I want to complain about it. Still burned out, still exhausted, the works. Can't bring myself to concentrate or focus on anything for a particularly long period of time. Pretty sure I'm making more mistakes and taking longer than I otherwise would.
During the month I had to rescue a client running a failing business who couldn't pay some of their accumulated tax debts and had a history of defaults on their monthly payment plans meant to pay off that debt, last time I called the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) they had previously denied the client another payment plan leaving them effectively stranded with no feasible way to pay off the debt in short order. The tax office contacted us regarding possible legal action during the month and I had to handle the negotiations with the ATO, eventually I got them to establish a new payment plan for the client and even managed to negotiate a fairly low monthly payment instalment.
How do you bargain with the tax office when they hold all the cards? The answer is that you don't have to; you only have to bargain with the tax office representative on the other end of the phone. I called to negotiate a payment plan at 4:00 PM, they picked up at 4:20 PM, and at that point they were very intent on handling my call and not stretching the entire affair beyond close of business. I had some other strategies up my sleeve to deploy if necessary, for example if they pushed back I was gonna say “sorry let me retrieve that for you” every time they asked for info, and then leave them in silence for 5 minutes so I could prolong the call way beyond 5:00 PM. But they agreed to my terms much more willingly than I was expecting.
In my firm we have a monthly wrap-up presentation where we can nominate people who performed well during the month for a token firm award. Guess how many nominations I got for establishing a payment plan for the firm's single most debt-riddled client? Zero. It's not a very serious thing, the "award" offers no material benefits, but it would be nice to have any kind of reminder that my efforts were appreciated every now and then. Welp, just a signal to try even less hard next time.
Right now I've got a trip to Vietnam planned in the second half of April. This is the only thing I'm looking forward to at the moment.
but unlike @problem_redditor I don't think it gets away with anything, for the past decade it's been my go to 'this is why you need at least some direction in video games' example.
Proteus is a game that's certainly not for most people and I think it could absolutely grate on a player (it's not my preferred style of game either, I'm a very extrinsically-motivated player); it's just fine-tuned to a hyper-specific target audience which it seems @coffee_enjoyer falls into, which is what made me recommend it.
In general I’m just a fan of very targeted experiences that don’t reek of overengineering. From the start there are no pretensions that it's going for any kind of mass appeal, and I respect a game that firmly markets itself to a specialised niche without compromise, far more than I do a game that seems to be trying to achieve several mutually exclusive goals in an attempt to be a widely acclaimed hit. Most open world games in my opinion are juggling contradictory goals of telling a linear story and maintaining a constant stream of content while at the same time still trying to maximise player freedom, and as a result they very rarely deliver on most of what they promise. At the very least Proteus actually does successfully achieve what it is going for, whether the experience it's optimising for appeals to you or not is a different question. There's a difference between a bad game (i.e. one that doesn't achieve what it intended to) and a game that does what it set out to do but isn't catering to you.
Yume Nikki is actually another great example of an exploration-based game without any clear direction, can't believe I forgot that one. I can't say I like that game, but I certainly appreciate it.
I believe what you are looking for is the 2013 indie game Proteus. There is no extrinsic goal or gamification at all, and the entire point of the game is to wander around a large procedurally generated world with strange fauna and sights to see. It's a world made solely so the player can explore it.
I share your sentiments about this by the way - I find that many open worlds have so many gamified elements and nudge you in the right direction so much that it barely even feels free anymore. Sure, you can deviate from the main quest markers if you want to have some fun, but you always know you're going to be returning to the main story, and the world is generally such a content desert that it barely gives incentive to explore. Sure, you can circumvent the quest markers and skip major sections of the story, but you'd only do that on a first playthrough if you want to have a significantly worse experience and miss most of the properly fleshed-out content in the game. This was my exact issue with Breath of the Wild - it felt very gamified and on-rails, and the open world not only seemed irrelevant but was also fairly unrewarding. And don't even get me started on the goddamn weapon durability system.
Games like Proteus are also empty. But games that are explicitly all about exploration and vibes get away with liminality and emptiness better than stuff that tries to meld it with a plot and a combat system and collectibles does. The latter frames itself in a goal-driven way which leads you to approach its open world in the same manner, the former does not. This is why "gamifying" open worlds barely ever works.
Top level posts really should have more effort put into them, but yeah it also squares with my own experience. The most fervent liberals I have seen in real life are the white boomers/Gen Xers in my organisation, who are so intent on their commitment to progressive ideology that they will wax lyrical about representation in their organisation and complain about how Trump is a slippery slope towards dictatorship every two weeks in front of the entire office (as a matter of fact, at the time of writing this I have just got off work after being forced to sit through one such diatribe).
Their viewpoints are so ridiculously canalised they can't even entertain how anybody in the organisation could ever possibly disagree with them on good-faith grounds. To them, it's just Being A Good Person, and the fact that the majority of America voted for Literally Hitler isn't something they can reconcile. They need a form of validation to cushion their own sense of self, and the establishment news media is there to provide them a comforting blanket that can shield them from the ugly realisation that they failed to win hearts and minds, that they are out of touch with what matters to the majority of people.
There's a reason why King Sejong is the most beloved monarch in Korea, and he did even more than that - not only did he invent Hangul in an attempt to improve literacy, he also hugely supported and encouraged many other technological advancements. Most notably, he established a royal scientific institute called the Hall of Worthies meant to house Joseon's greatest minds, and offered a series of grants and scholarships to incentivise bright young scholars to attend. At one point he appointed Jang Yeong-sil, a nobi, as court technician. Jang would go on to make one of the world's first standardised rain gauges (the cheugugi), which would get used all over Korea, as well as a self-striking water clock. Upon Sejong's request, he also made a faster and more efficient form of metal movable type called gabinja in 1434, a number of years before Gutenberg developed the technology in the Western world.
Sejong also ordered that one thousand copies of farmers' handbooks be printed so as to improve agricultural output, and he also published the Nongsa jikseol, which was a compilation of farming techniques conducive to Korea's environment that documented the best planting methods and soil treatment and so on for each region. In addition, he was the king who granted the nobi class parental leave, and did strangely democratic things like poll the public on reforms such as new tax systems. It really does sound like fiction about a benevolent monarch, except it's real.
Regarding Hangul's use over the years, Sejong actually did manage to get it into popular culture if I remember correctly. Hangul continued to be used among the peasantry throughout the years in applications such as popular fiction, apart from a short-lived period in 1504 when it was banned by the monarch Yeonsangun of Joseon, an infamous tyrant who did so because people wrote letters in Hangul criticising him. That ban did not last for long, and eventually Yeonsangun was dethroned via coup, exiled to Gangwha Island (where he soon died) and his sons were forced to commit suicide. Later in 1506 King Jungjong abolished the ministry related to Hangul research, but Hangul saw a resurgence in the late 16th century and novels written in the Korean alphabet became a major genre of literature. I'd say Sejong largely accomplished his goal.
Joseon in general was a shockingly scholarly society. I visited South Korea recently and went to the National Museum, and 90% of what I saw from Joseon was just books on top of books on top of books, with the occasional world map and astronomical chart thrown in. They were dedicated record-keepers, and the Annals of the Joseon Dynasty are the longest continuous record of a single dynasty in the world, stretching from 1392 to 1865. This scholarly focus even affected their art to the point that there was an entire genre of folding screens (chaekgeori) which just consisted of still-life paintings of bookshelves - honestly that part of the museum is wild.
EDIT: wording
People are emotionally primed to associate particular styles with particular positive or negative things. If you see something in a tudor style you probably think of a wealthy old neighborhood or a european tourist trap-- both of which would be pleasant places to exist in regardless of what architectural style they were built in. If we built all our prisons, hospitals, and corporate offices in the same style it would take a bit of the shine off of it.
I think you've got the causality here entirely backwards - the reason why traditional architecture is associated with wealthy old neighbourhoods or European tourist traps is because traditional-style properties are capable of commanding high prices and/or an influx of tourist money, resulting in them being high-SES neighbourhoods. That association can only exist, however, because people like these buildings in the first place.
Furthermore in Sweden many towns are built in traditional style, and there have been a few studies evaluating architectural preferences in such places, and the overwhelming majority still prefers older buildings. The study I linked in Part 1 of my post on the preferences of Karlshamn residents is one such example; it evaluates the residents of a town that is primarily traditional in style - you can look up photos of the town - and finds that they also prefer traditional small-town architecture. There is also the fact that scenes that deviate far from the rule of nature are literally harder for the visual cortex to process and cause more discomfort as a result, and modern buildings are less naturalistic and more unpleasant (as noted by that very same study).
On a personal note I can say I very much enjoy all traditional vernacular architectural styles, even those I've only recently stumbled upon - for example I like Korea's hanok and temple architecture, Vietnam's Nguyen Dynasty palaces and tombs, and India's Himalayan kath-kuni buildings, they are not represented very widely and you don't come across them often, but even on first glance they were hugely pleasing to me in a way modern architecture has never been. I suppose you can add an epicycle and say they recall other forms of architecture I have positive associations with, but taken alongside the above reasons for skepticism I think this fails as an explanation.
Old styles haven't stayed static-- they've been constantly improved on. The apartment complex I live in probably would have looked like a set of hideous industrial buildings when they were built in the first half of the 20th century. But since then, they've been decorated and improved in a variety of little ways-- decorative green window shutters, trees that have grown to maturity, tasteful black railings on staircases, etc. All of those things were technically possible to do when the property was first built, but it took time for people to understand how best to work with that style and incorporate the most effective decorative elements. We're not just seeing the prettiest old buildings, we're seeing the prettiest versions of old buildings.
I don't really understand how this is relevant to an argument regarding aesthetic merit though. Yes, old styles of architecture have been constantly iterated on and improved overtime, and modernist styles could in theory be prettier if we changed all kinds of things about it. But as they currently stand, these buildings are evaluated as less pleasing by the public compared to traditional architecture. How long these respective styles took to develop is not what's in question here. I mean, if you turn the clock forward 200 years perhaps modernism will have mutated into something people really enjoy, but that timeframe isn't necessarily relevant to your average urban-dweller today who will live and die in one of these blocks. All it means is “hey, maybe we shouldn’t have thrown out literal thousands of years of accumulated wisdom in a poor attempt to implement the design equivalent of Year Zero”.
I would also add the Joseon Dynasty to that list, seeing that it lasted for 505 years (1392 to 1897) and was probably the most technocratic, bureaucratic state in East Asia with a lot of checks on royal power. Kings were expected to answer to the public whenever a disaster occurred, issuing formal requests for critique, and early on in Joseon history an oral petition system for grievances was established - a drum was placed in front of the royal palace to be struck if someone had a complaint, and this allowed ordinary illiterate citizens to personally appeal to the king once other forms of redress had failed. The lowest class (nobi) were allowed maternity and paternity leave, and there was even a society for the disabled, the myeongtongsi. There was a system of three offices specifically meant to police the kings and the officials for corruption and inefficiency, and often they gained more power than the monarchy itself. A lot of technology and advancement was invented during Joseon as well, the most famous of those being Hangul, but "[i]n the first half of the 15th century, around 62 major accomplishments were made in various scientific fields. Of these, 29 came from Korea alone compared to 5 from China and 28 from the rest of the world". It certainly fits the definition of a Korean golden age.
With regards to China, you're missing out on the obvious Zhou Dynasty, which lasted for a mind-boggling 790 years (1046 BC to 256 BC) with an impressive level of imperial continuity. Though this depends on how you define "golden age" since the Zhou kings had lost much power by the Warring States period.
EDIT: added more
I definitely think there is some merit to modern interior design principles - I enjoy bright open spaces as much as the next guy - but I find it most visually pleasing when these principles are integrated with older, more rustic styles of design. For example, here's Eunpyeong Hanok Village in South Korea, built in 2014. The interiors clearly crib from modern design with how open and airy they are, but they incorporate traditional stylings into the buildings' interiors seamlessly to make a space that looks inviting. Of course this is adapted for the Korean environment and can't be generalised - localised approaches involving the vernacular style of any given area are always needed, much of this wouldn't necessarily work in the European context.
Currently, I live in a gleaming white block of an apartment building, and frankly I have to say the interiors feel a bit alienating sometimes. It's hard to hate it because it's been my home for years, but it sometimes comes off as quite sterile and bland, and while it's technically designed in a way that's meant to let in light, in spite of this I almost always keep the blinds closed. The sunlight can get harsh. Many traditional East Asian buildings tried to solve this problem by softening the sunbeams through panes of paper, creating a warm diffuse glow, but modernist buildings do nothing of the sort - the light that filters in through the massive glass windows in the midday is brain-boiling, and I dislike having to pull down the blinds every single time noon rolls around.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not strictly in favour of retvrning completely and building everything in perfectly authentically old-style ways, I think there's something to be learned from some modern ideas of design, but as a standalone aesthetic package it just doesn't work for me. I primarily wish we had hybridised these traditional vernacular forms with up-to-date concepts in a more seamless and natural manner - more like a natural progression of the style, instead of simply disposing of all the architectural forms that had developed locally for thousands of years. To see these rich and varied traditions quickly disappear in mere decades feels like a travesty.
problem_redditor
30d ago
The answer is that my partner studied design, and given how much he's talked about Bauhaus in the past I'm trying to see if his positive view of them is warranted.
I am quickly discovering that the emperor has no clothes.
I know of continental philosophy and have read some of it; I just don't like or assign any weight to that philosophical tradition at all. Frankly it comes off to me as consisting of a lot of very broad and often borderline metaphysical statements made without any empirical or logical basis, and their philosophy almost feels completely arbitrary, with their terms being so poorly defined that interpretations of their texts bifurcate depending on one's reading of them. Many philosophers from the analytic tradition had a habit of defending claims and properly defining terms so as to minimise uncertainty, I wouldn't say that is the case with prominent continental philosophers like Hegel or Heidegger. Much of it falls into the category of not even wrong.
The concept of being (sein) is just the word for the concept of existence and presence in the world. Becoming (werden) is the state of constant change. Being and becoming are related in the sense that being is a point in, or snapshot of, the state of becoming. Heidegger's Lichtung, the "clearing", elucidates the concept of ontological Being through an analogy of a light in a clearing where beings are revealed as beings, where beings nevertheless obscure each other leading to concealment which results in the ability to form misconception and self-deception. I don't feel like I learn anything particularly meaningful about being through this, I feel as if I'm hearing somebody's kooky unfalsifiable ruminations about what it means to exist, and to extend these concepts to design (e.g. calling grey "the fateful point between coming-into-being and passing-away" because it is in between white and black) elevates the whole endeavour to monumental levels of meaninglessness. There is no lens through which these statements can even be whatsoever critically appraised or evaluated.
Not entirely sure that's the case, really. In general, I think the percentage of ideologues in Hollywood is higher than people think it is, and that these pieces of "fanservice" for the audience are actually the stated beliefs of many of those involved (see: the clip of the Disney executive producer effectively stating she had a not-so secret gay agenda which she inserted into films wherever she could). The ratio of true believers to cynical grifters is probably much higher than is usually acknowledged, especially once taking into account the fact that truly believing something is a great way to gain the corresponding benefits of that belief system. Even when they conduct fanservice, they are basing it on what they would personally want to see.
That's odd because I view The Room as a bit of a nonsensical Rorschach test of a film where you could pick out any number of statements to prove any number of things. There are a number of scenes which try to model differing worldviews, I think, and there are even some hackneyed attempts to try and deepen Lisa's character a bit (e.g. introducing her mother Claudette, who pressures Lisa to stay in a relationship for money against her stated wishes, causing the affair in the first place). Wiseau is not very good at trying to represent these other perspectives, but the point he wanted to convey is also incoherent enough that it's difficult to tease out exactly what it is. Pretty much the only larger-scale point I can glean from the entire thing is that Tommy Wiseau is amazing and he should never have been betrayed, and if he had killed himself that would have shown her.
It feels a little voyeuristic, honestly. Like watching someone have a low-level mental breakdown over the deterioration of their relationship.
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