This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Interesting and a lot of the story as you tell it I agree with, but there is a bit of a perspective of 'overriding what's natural = bad' in your post that I don't agree with.
I can't reply at length right now, but just a few thoughts:
-We are constantly learning to like things we might 'naturally' dislike, and that's good if we're not blind to how we're being changed. (Kids don't like coffee.)
-Watery, glittery beautiful landscapes (real ones) are essentially unfakeable. Their rarity and the knowledge that they are real healthy ecosystems that have developed over millions of years and offer our bodies and communities good things is part of their beauty. Pictures of the same are available in plentiful supply and these days are entirely disposable. I think the abundance of such images is a large part of how they strike us. Looking at a beautiful lake is a sublime experience but looking at a painting of one usually does little for me; the latter has a copied, possibly manipulative nature that is just as loud as if it were covered in neon graffiti – it overwhelms any latent aesthetic appeal the image may once have had.
-Architectural myopia may be real and bad. But that doesn't mean just making buildings the way we used to is better. There might be learnings from traditional and learned notions of beauty that can be combined into something better that would not read as plain mimicry.
-We live in a world where screen-based imagery is cheap and increasingly has no limit in its abundance or ease of production. Living in this visually unprecedented world is constantly updating our sense of what is visually pleasing, whether we like it or not, and we can constantly learn from this experience. This is the process of becoming visually literate in 2024. Which is different from the process as it was in the time of Rembrandt, and again from the same process in the time of Miro. While I like the Miro image, I also find the idea of being moved to tears by it completely ridiculous, but I accept that it may have hit differently in decades past. Being able to actively learn from imagery around us in its full social context can open up new worlds and communicative possibilities, at least if we are alive to what is happening inside of us and don't just internalise a false ideal (as I tend to think some brutalist architects of the past did).
I find your comments intriguing, because I have the opposite reaction you describe. To me a well rendered painting or drawing of a landscape is often more attractive than an actual landscape. Or if not more attractive, more pleasing in a slightly different dimension. Have you ever felt a desire to be inside a picture: not literally, but to be in the place the picture is depicting? That the art is trying to communicate something higher and better than anything we can actually find our our normal existence? That the artist is taking what is beautiful and good about a landscape but crafting it in a way that no real landscape can match up to, throwing out the small bits of ugliness that is inherent in any landscape we can actually see and replacing it with the ideal? Because that's something like 70% of my aesthetic preferences. I want art to be more beautiful than life, more transcendent, more glorious and inspiring.
What do you see attractive about something like Miro painting? To me there's no real attraction at all. It does not show me anywhere I would want to go, any emotion I would want to feel, any state of being I would want to inhabit. I don't find it repulsive, but I don't see the point of it at all. What's the draw for you?
I'm not immune to the idea of a landscape that draws you in and in the past have liked such. These days I'd mostly prefer the landscape to be quite unusual or presented in the right context. I kind of like the Lo-fi girl videos because they seem especially well calibrated for the mood they are trying to create; I loved Scavengers' Reign because of the continual newness of its alien landscapes and wildlife. Whereas simple beautiful photos of earth's landscapes have been so abused for the purposes of marketing, screensavers, etc that they have in general lost their charm for me unless curated/displayed just so. Or else I feel that they are trying to suck people in to look at them as distraction, instead of in relation to the place where they're displayed (a pet peeve is places that display photos of the cities where they actually are, like a London cafe that has photos of London on the wall, a sure sign that you are in a crappy tourist spot.).
As to why I find the Miro piece attractive, hmm, hard to articulate, but I guess I like its choiceful colour combos, its combination of crisp shapes with rich more naturalistic textures. It feels like it abstractly represents elements of thought being observed, like when you close your eyes tightly or meditate. I find in it a sense of soft motion and microscopic scale interaction, like we're in some kind of primordial soup or subatomic field that could run on peacefully for millions of years. But I ain't gonna pretend this doesn't sound a little pretentious. In the end it just feels like Miro caught onto a certain wavelength and was able to share it at a time when it hadn't been captured so well before.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Yeah, but they're right to dislike it (that's why everyone puts cream and sugar in it). It's actually kind of strange that energy drinks (that are just... better coffee/tea) took so long to appear on the mass-market, since aside from maybe Jolt they were very much a creature of the mid to late 2000s. Which is unfortunate, since there were far more drink companies and varieties to choose from whereas now it's all just Monster.
The thing about beauty is that creating it requires serving others (if not created, simply possessing/being something other people want). Thus, those who think they know best cannot create beauty; that is why the master morality modes generally create ugly things (brutalism, Christian Rock, Steven Universe, etc.). It's just cognitive differences: servants specialize in creating the beauty, leaders specialize in refining it. These modes of cognition aren't equally represented across/between genders.
Well, that and our art is more beautiful (our tools to make it are way better, we can spend more time on it due to post-scarcity, and unlike Medieval artists we have photos and videos as reference material), so much so that it's just background noise. Scream just doesn't really fit on a body pillow the way anime girls with... similar expressions do and I'd actually rather look at the latter than the former. Yeah, something something superstimulus, but all beauty inherently exploits that.
I agree with this. Equally, though, a subservient mode of creation is just going to generate more of what people already like, and ultimately end up disappointing them. I feel like the most genuinely pleasurable experiences come from creators who serve both an inner master and the public too.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link