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4Chan's First Feature film is also the first Feature length AI Film.
The Conceit? Aside from a few Joke stills, none of the visual film is AI. It is a "Nature Documentary" Narrated by David Attenborough... It is also maybe the most disturbing film ever made, and possibly the most important/impactful film of the decades so far.
Reality is more terrifying than fiction.
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Notes -
No.
You cannot understand how much India sucks.
Maybe the next generation will. Or the one after that.
Wrong too, but expected.
The specific way India sucks even among very low-income nations, as seen through Western eyes, has little to do with poverty (there are very poor places in the world indeed) – and everything with its spiritual pollution, the lack of taste and disgust that finds root in your religious iconography and fully generalizes to contemporary ideas and beliefs; the physical squalor you can buy your way out of, but the rest, you will happily elevate into prestige. You are blind to the non-materialist dimension of the suckiness. No, I will not elaborate.
You are wrong, so wrong.
Avoid low effort comments. "No, you're wrong" is not an argument.
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Uh, no.
Elaborating is what separates an argument from unbridled booing. And the latter is against the rules.
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I prefer @2rafa 's explanation of your viewpoint to your actual viewpoint, which I am not sure I even understand, mainly due to its vague word salad. I'm sure you have a point but I don't understand it yet beyond what seems to be a visceral disgust you have for India, and something to do with I presume Hinduism.
You want specifics? What I mean by the disgusting lack of taste is inability to notice how, say, stuff like this – the whole (acclaimed in India, allegedly) channel – is garish and, ideally, ought to not exist; how it differs not just from high Western culture, but from mass entertainment too. Its existence is downstream of the same cause as willingness to drink feces from the Ganges; most likely mediated by the same neurophysiological differences. From what I can tell, a typical Indian male sees no problem here, because he involuntarily acts out those same mannerisms and thought patterns, whether as a Western politician – more polished, of course, by virtue of high intelligence and class and usually caste – or a bitter troll on themotte who suffers from lack of success on Tinder; in lower castes, this is often so pronounced and cringeworthy that I physically cannot bear to watch for long. What is the point in explaining it, pointing out cringeworthy inflections and expressions of the body, tacky spice of exaggerated interests, sloppiness of thought? Humans cannot meaningfully debate deep intuitions of propriety and grace, and I do not care to force some mimicry even if it were possible to convince Indians of my "correctness". It's a comprehensive and, yes, visceral sensation of rejection. Another race, another civilization, is entitled to a different set of standards. Indians do not know cringe or disgust, and I suppose that's psychologically better for them. Superpower by 2030 anyway, and Americans, who are also rapidly forgetting what it is to feel cringe, will be friendly to India anyway – because English, because economics, because geopolitics.
P.S. The phrase «spiritual pollution» is something I've taken from an offhand comment, long lost, by a Brahmin, about reasons Brahmins historically and contemporarily tend to live with their own, even at substantial cost, and seek to distance themselves from other Indians: to not be infected, not learn to move, act, think like… this, to cling to what purity they have salvaged. He saw the same thing I see, and I guess this is part of why they insist on bringing casteism even to Silicon Valley. I sure would love if it worked the other way around, «pollution» of civility and taste spreading to all. But probably not.
So if I'm getting you, your view is that the kind of music video you've linked is, in your view, not just distasteful to you personally, but is in fact objectively bad--bad as an adjective here not quite capturing the really badness of it. It's an abomination to proper values and taste. Ruskin would be spinning in-his-grave-bad. And further, the fact that such a video is popular (or this is how we are proceeding, because probably it's popular) is symptomatic of the badness of those who like it or watch it, or for whom it was meant, its target audience. Those people (Indians) are bad, too. But not only do they have poor musical taste, they're actually Bad. I am not using other adjectives here because I don't want to put words in your mouth. (You used garish, tacky, bitter, and one of my most loathed words: cringey or cringeworthy). You further suggest that this is not just a cultural difference between you and them. It's a deep gulf, a difference in fundamental make-up, something neurophysiological that causes them to be that way, a way that to you is revolting. (I am using that word but you didn't. But I think it's a fair assessment of what you are expressing--revulsion.) This same quality (if we can even use that word, maybe condition or state) in these repulsive beings is what also compels some of them to behave in unhygienic and woefully ill-mannered ways. It's just who they are, it's what they are.
If all of this is an accurate, perhaps less lyrical but more succinct crystallization of your views, I think I've got you. I disagree entirely. I also think sideswiping other users of the Motte to make a point is something we might do without and not be the less for it.
I don't think I'm going to convince you of anything and unless you invite that dialogue I won't even try. Please do however correct me if I've misconstrued your intent.
That's all essentially correct (plus their ridiculous nationalism and self-esteem in spite of all that, and clannishness, and opportunistic toadyism, and…) with one minor detail. I accept values relativism just like I accept relativism of tastes. This video (again, this whole channel, and pretty much every Indian entertainment channel) and everything it stands for is objectively bad within my subjective perception and is offensive to my vision of beauty and propriety; just like I find Subcontinental spices deteriorating my food. But it's not illegitimate in some ground truth sense of Cosmic Justice, the way Anglos thought of Indian caste structure or the tradition of immolation of widows. It is simply incompatible with me and people like me. I don't want to «fix» those people to make them more like myself and mine. I just don't want to partake in their unhygienic, high-pitched, gimmicky, r-selected dance of life. When I say that their society sucks in a way they are blind to, in a way going beyond backwardness, and this drives negative perceptions that they optimistically chalk up to their poverty, I speak for more than myself (eg I speak for white girls on Tinder who are too nice to say it out loud but not nice enough for a right sweep), but I do not speak for God. God must smile on them more than on me, if he smiles at all.
There's one more detail. I genuinely respect Indians for a few things, even as those things are tied to the offensive Weltanschauung. Their optimism is pretty enviable, their willingness to share and teach is noble, and their recognition of being imperfect – though vague and not very compatible with my own idea of their specific imperfections – makes them the most enthusiastic thanshumanists on the planet. Solar, hopeful Nietzscheanism comes easier to them than to the annoying and sanctimonious but also imperfect Hajnal line goodbots. If only it could help them develop good taste.
I don't recognize your right to disagree, by the way – it makes little sense, and you have made no argument as to why my evaluation is wrong, only not-so-subtly expressed your condemnation of my immorality, evidently driven by some equally subjective sentimentality.
Edit: I had not watched the video nor read Kulak's essay prior to engaging in this thread. Having checked it out now, I find the gleeful and self-righteous dehumanization appalling. My gut feelings about events showed there are obviously directionally similar, but I do not think indulging in such reactions to feel better about oneself and worse about Indians is appropriate. I am not a Westerner beholden to "one race the human race" creed or anything like that, it's just ugly to gratuitously mock humans who are in no condition to help themselves, about as ugly as the object level content of the video. It's also obviously counterproductive if you want to sway the immigration discussion (even bringing up Koko the gorilla etc. – incidentally, no, Koko didn't have the IQ of 75 or any other figure, she was just an ape), and this angle is a cope to cover up base meanness and engagement baiting.
Thank you for your response. It's true, I've made no argument, but I gave a reason why I felt to do so would be pointless. There's no reasoning one's way forward in this. You're dug in.
Still, I respect that you own up to a subjective viewpoint and stand by it resolutely. Few do.
I also admit to sentimentality, and a staunch view that Kulak rejects in his blogpost (or whatever we are calling substack posts), namely I think that we are all God's creatures, that we have value inherently as humans. And I believe this is true even when I personally find any particular person irredeemable. To me it the dismissal of an entire race, or large group, is outside my ability to sympathize. I just don't get it. Is not individual interaction relevant? Do you have no (Indian) friends or acquaintances whose benevolence (or whatever) gives you pause in your wholesale rejection? Is it so easy to categorize people into groups and be done with it?
I have lived since around the age of 21 in cultures not my own (a country in Africa, Japan) but I somehow assume you, as well, have had firsthand experiences on the ground, as it were, with, possibly, Indians, that have allowed you to form this worldview, or Weltanschauung as you say (though you use that to describe the other, not yourself.)
What do you have against a good curry, by the way? That seems an odd point to fixate on. What are you views on cilantro (not Indian, but disliked by many, particularly in Japan)?
I ask these questions but you've earlier expressed a desire to avoid elaboration or extended discussion on this topic, so if you don't want to say anymore, fine. Also if this response also doesn't pass muster, well. I'll try again, but a bit occupied at the moment.
It is relevant of course, I can make exceptions, and many Indians are kind and good to me and even good by my own standards. There isn't such an entity as racial spirit that compels every person of Indian descent to keep some essential properties. I also believe that some Indian subgroups are, on average, relatively free from properties I despise, even better than certain Western subgroups.
What of it?
This whole discussion of collective responsibility is tedious, just inane rumination over the core Hajnali thesis about individualism and denial of everything meaningful to the notion of human groups. Suppose some staunch defender of Western values on this site speaks to the effect of (as has happened before): "you're okay personally but Russians as a whole are weird aliens and the world would be better off with your nation nuked, like von Neumann had said". They can make elaborate arguments about the deeply corrupt Russian political culture that has probably left an indelible mark on the gene pool, the cruelty, the delusion, the impossibility to intervene in a more targeted manner, whatever. The fact of the matter is it's a – sensibly articulated – rejection of what my people have amounted to collectively, and my people absolutely do have a collective existence, effective collective will, and collectively maintain, at great cost, a certain direction, arguably against the better judgement of a large plurality of themselves; inasmuch as they are a people, these things are true. Inasmuch as I am a part of my people, it is true regarding myself. What does it benefit me that I am graciously exempted as an individual, if a large and organic part of my individuality is clearly shared with those condemned, and is causal to their fate? I can even bear the judgement, but I will not… I do not need acceptance premised on alienation from myself. Some do. Indians, on average, probably do not.
Indians, too, are a people. As a people, they have a collective identity (and sub-identities) and collective properties emergent from distributions of individual traits, which have effects above and beyond the first order effect of raw distributions. This amounts to the India we know and discuss. An individual Indian can be an outlier in traits, and even a conscious defector against this not literally existing as an entity, but effectively very powerful, shared Indianness. (Likewise for a Chinese, a Russian, a Jew, an American Black, anyone). Then again, an individual Indian can be even more contemptuous of his people's culture and way of life than I am. That way of life exists, is rooted in what Indians collectively are, maintains itself; India is not just 1.5 billion randomly spawned individuals. Westerners can sugarcoat it or trivialize it or outright deny it, but they're blind and delusional to do so, mere adaptation-executing machines, products of their own way of life and religion and selection, and I don't see why I should partake in their obsolete self-deceit any more than I should enjoy Indian cartoons. I suppose the claim you make is that not doing so would be Bad. Okay.
I don't want to discuss taste.
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@2rafa wasn't describing the same viewpoint though - her explanation was still couched in entirely materialist terms. Having "taste", as I understand it, would entail being able to appreciate how even something that is perfectly sufficient on a physical level can be insufficient on an ethical/spiritual level.
It's not the first time he's levied this accusation, for what it's worth.
No, she was much more clear and readable, for one, and made reasonable points that could be supported. I appreciate that link, by the way, it was an interesting read. Am I correct that DLtD is formerly Ilforte? I remember that name from the reddit days, but I really need to start a notebook where I keep track of who is who and what post has made me remember them.
That is correct.
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Lol, I just followed that link and saw the following:
The idea that Indians have no taste seems so silly to me as a fan of Indian music that I'm not sure where even to start here.
Not only that, but even a cursory glance at Indians' extensive history of writing and arguing about what constitutes good taste shows that, far from having no notion of taste and considering it to be arbitrary, they are in fact probably one of the ethnic groups that believes most heavily in taste being something that follows lawful intuition. Indeed, they perhaps follow this idea excessively, hence the numerous attempts in Indian writing to argue things such as why one performer's rendition of a raga follows the raga's essence more closely than another's, or why some given language adheres more closely to a Platonic ideal of grammar than another language does.
Who "they"?
Indians.
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Derivatives of Indian culture in the form of Western Buddhism and other enlightenment-oriented philosophies are actually quite popular in the West, so I don't know where you are getting this idea that Westerners think of India as being spiritually polluted. Maybe in the 19th century the majority of Westerners did, but that has not been the case for a long time now. Likewise, the average Westerner who has any awareness of Indian art generally does not consider it to be spiritually polluted. I mean, the most popular and influential rock band in history was made up of Indophiles.
Your idea that Indian religious iconography is characterized by lack of taste and disgust does not resonate with me whatsoever. Sure, there is much in it that strikes most Westerners as weird, such as the elephant God. But it just seems weird to me, it does not seem to me like it lacks taste and it certainly does not arouse any disgust in me. And, not that this has any bearing on your argument about what the typical Westerner believes, but to me personally, when I think about it objectively, the crucified Jesus seems at least as bizarre as anything I've seen in Indian iconography. It is only familiarity that makes the crucified Jesus seem un-weird. And as for European paganism, with its various sacrifice rituals and stories about divine rape, I wouldn't say that it is objectively any less strange than Indian paganism.
If anything, it is the guru-learner relationship which is common in Indian religion that arouses some disgust in me, because of its authoritarian style, not Indian religious iconography.
I am not convinced the 19th century Westerners were any better – there was Theosophy (and eventually Jiddu Krishnamurti) after all. You do like to project your abstract sentimentalities on sleazy Indian grift, see what isn't there based on advertisement, just as you like giving money to horny, filthily materialist gurus with harems, who in turn spin their depravity into a sign of some higher Enlightenment with a few easy turns of the tongue. Even your idea of what might be disgusting to me has already been sanitized: Ganesh, rather than lingams and yonis and Kali and the repetitive psychedelic excess of temple architecture.
But I don't really care if modern Westerners, whether average or Indophilic ones, have the capacity or interest to notice the difference between the actual Indian – personality, art, taste, ethics – and the one imaginable based on some handpicked artifacts and a ton of charity and mind-projection.
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Affluent and educated Indians simply have no retort to the core criticism of many people on the DR about India, which is that it is the only place in the world in which the rich are so permanently content with public squalor.
You cannot simply appeal to ‘socioeconomic development levels’. No. African countries with small fractions of India’s median income have much cleaner capitals. I was in Central Africa again last week. Kinshasa is much cleaner than Mumbai or New Delhi. I work, on occasion, with senior African officials across many sub-Saharan countries. One of the first things they’ll do, even the most corrupt ones, as they increase state capacity and collect more tax money, is beautify public spaces, hire people to clean the park opposite the national parliament, that kind of thing. I have walked through shanty-town level African neighborhoods where the working class is and you will see boys picking up litter, sweeping streets and so on. Of course, sheer poverty means these places are still squalid by first-world standards.
But they are much cleaner than even middle class neighborhoods of Indian cities. Even wealthy ones. If you are a wealthy Indian you have probably been to Soho House in Mumbai (a few years ago at least it was one of the places the wealthy younger people hung out, probably less fashionable now). Even there, the street outside was dirty, garbage everywhere, unswept, sandy. Street cleaning has been solved, we have machines for it now, India can afford them (many other cities with much lower median income than Mumbai manage it). This squalor is a choice.
India fills me with a certain horror that the rest of the developing world does not. You see, I can go to Singapore and see what a Chinese civilization that is rich looks like. It may not be to everyone’s taste, but it is pleasant enough, competently managed and a high-quality place to live. Even the Arabs, when they have money, create a passable or moderately livable society. There are good parts of South and even Central America. Africa is very poor, but as I said, I am encouraged. Only in India are the rich content with public squalor. I cannot understand why. I don’t think even you know, exactly, I’ve engaged on this issue with the many intelligent Indians here and I get the sense that it’s not something they really think about, even though to me it is obviously, by very very far the biggest issue with their country.
I don’t condone the ridiculous racism of the 4chan troll, Indians are by and large decent immigrants to the West. But the question of India’s squalor looms over every stamped visa.
When I get the "oh, you spent a month in India? How was that?" small talk, scenes like this, and a hundred others flash through my mind before I politely lie: "it was fine", and change the subject. The pristine western retail stores with literal rubble half-blocking the entrances.. The designated landfill streets.. The street curs gnawing at their severed paws in the middle of the road.. The absolute state of the power infrastructure (live? wires pulled down to street level and woven into clothesline). The constant smell of rot and pollution and feces. I could go on.
It's not so much the squalor. It's the squalor plus dressing up in shirt and tie, working in an air conditioned office and pretending there's no problem at all.
The truthful* novel set in 1970s India, written by a Midwest US writer who visited Calcutta in 1970s notes that western world used to have pretty horrible slums too before Victorians got disgusted with them and bulldozed them all & built sewers...
*half of the horror is basically just the things noted in this thread ..
We have (very early) photographs and sketches of what rich parts of Victorian London looked like, though. Sure, horse manure on the streets was a fact of life, but even then sidewalks were a lot cleaner and better kept than they are in major Indian cities today. Nobody is complaining that slums are dumps; this is a universal fact of life. The mystery is why the nice parts of Indian cities where average residents make US-middle-class salaries are such.
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We have no way of measuring a person’s aesthetic or (full) ethical value through educational and visa selection processes. This is the problem underlying immigration where immigration looks good on paper. Are Indians smart, hardworking, and nonviolent? Yes. But this is only part of the value of a human being. We must also care that a human has a high ingrained sense of empathy without the threat of punishment, and that a person can sense visual beauty and the invisible value of beauty. These are almost terminal values: an ideal world must consist of empathetic humans who love beauty, because these qualities are necessary for an optimal world according to Western values (love-filled people in a beautiful world).
When I look at videos of India there does appear to be people whose eyes never rest momentarily to notice the ugliness and poverty surrounding them. They do not seem to feel the pain of guilt when they rip off tourists (an eternal complaint about gypsies, whose extraction is Indian). It is as if their inner life is too locked in to the ratrace of personal interest. Cognitive science has begun to understand the role that eye movement plays in a person’s inner life, and the way that some Indians stare at people sets off a threat detection alarm to Westerners.
I do not know the best way to measure the full ethical dimension of a person for the purposes of immigration but looking at how they live is certainty better than ignoring the question altogether. And maybe better then this would be looking at what happens in their brain when confronted with suffering strangers, or scenes of ugliness, and looking at infant behavior for AI-determined signs of empathy.
Indians appreciate public beauty so long as the cost of maintaining such beauty is borne by others. It is the tragedy of the commons writ visibly large on a societal scale.
The irony of course is that indians are actually perfectly happy, and even proud, to live in clean public spaces. The Indian elites in quaint English cottages are hardly violaters of personal space and public cleanliness like travelers or junkies; Indians do not lower property values by their presence.
No, the observable difference is in civic consciousness: Indians make no attempt to clean up their public spaces in India, because such huge costs are immediately wasted when the tide of humanity washes its excreta upon the shores of civilization to bleach in the sun with each passing day. Is it a fundamental moral deficiency, or a total collapse of state structures? A convincing case can be made for both, but when considering how much elite (and frankly non elite as well) Indians are net acretive outside of India, there must be something uniquely terrible about Indias structure that ruins the country so.
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