Is That A Higanbana?

Always be sus of ideas that confuse the value of art with technical skill, talent, or hard work. There's a reason people used to think of it as 'divine inspiration' -- artistic success, is mysterious, arbitrary, and about getting possessed by supernatural organisms

When I saw that Minae Mizumura had written "Art is not democratic. Art is Sublime," I suddenly thought about how remarkable it is that such an opinion is shared by those with egalitarian political values. This does not apply to Mizumura herself, because I don't know what her specific opinions are. Still, it's common to meet liberals with humanist attitudes who have this kind of cognitive dissonance between their politics and their aesthetics.

I don't believe you can truly oppose hierarchical social relations without cultivating a deep contempt for the concept of a literary canon and the ideology of 'classics.'

Mizumura speaks of certain market trends in mass media -- which are difficult to talk to without a separate post -- as representing the opposite of true literary merit, and I agree. I hope that a popular trend based on mass participation emerges and totally vapourizes the world of literature that lingers on from the past.

Perhaps it will be one of those medieval hysteria plagues that made everyone dance...

I thought it over and I now think this is very unlikely to be the reason the person said nao instead of nou

obviously a lot of ink has been spilled on how prefacing statements with "I'm not even gonna TRY to pronounce that!" is way worse than just. trying and getting it wrong

but what really bothers me is when people mispronounce something very badly even though it's written using a phonetic alphabet

that high end literary critic who was like 'we're sorry readers! we were too elitist and have denied the value of writing with a strong PLOT' is such a sell-out mediocrity. Literary criticism and its separate aesthetic values are supposed to create a space where market standards and popularity are replaced with alternative values, and you're just going to say, 'we need to homogenize with what's popular"? Please have a little imagination and don't betray the writers who can only exist in this space!

I think the pop culture image of fascism owes more to orientalism than actual anti fascism, like it's all focused on portraying an excessively cruel world with bizarre pageantry and weird uniforms, and never talks about how normal fascism was for the time, how nazism saw itself as the successor to the American old west or British rule in India

I’m always amazed by YA fictions ability to evoke fascist imagery for their villains to signify they are the baddies while maintaining the most fascist eugenicist politics as the entire thesis of the plot the entire time

also, this kind of tautology prevents you from being able to have insight or perceive new aspects of the world. "art is what they put in galleries" is directly limiting you to your own cultural preconceptions and refusing to imagine them being totally wrong. If you have this attitude, you can't say stuff like 'wild bee hives/termite mounds are art because they have secret aspects that are not for practical use' (I just made that up) because they aren't in galleries or made by artists

the sociological posture to interesting philosophical questions is so damn annoying. "art is what they put in art galleries, math is what mathematicians do". an active turning-away from an interesting question, towards a boring non-answer. people should throw tomatoes at guys who say this

🩷Heraclitus

Favorite Heraclitus

If all things were turned to smoke, the nostrils would distinguish them

All the things we see when awake are death, even as all we see in slumber are sleep

Man kindles a light for himself in the night-time, when he has died but is alive. The sleeper, whose vision has been put out, lights up from the dead; he that is awake lights up from the sleeping

This world,[13] which is the same for all, no one of gods or men has made; but it was ever, is now, and ever shall be an ever-living Fire, with measures of it kindling, and measures going out

Men that love wisdom must be acquainted with very many things indeed.

Wisdom is one thing. It is to know the thought by which all things are steered through all things

We step and do not step into the same rivers; we are and are not.

Time is a child playing draughts, the kingly power is a child's

Mortals are immortals and immortals are mortals, the one living the others' death and dying the others' life.

They are estranged from that with which they have most constant intercourse

Those who are asleep are fellow-workers (in what goes on in the world)

It is pleasure to souls to become moist.

The lord whose is the oracle at Delphoi neither utters nor hides his meaning, but shows it by a sign

The sun will not overstep his measures; if he does, the Erinyes, the handmaids of Justice, will find him out

It is best to hide folly; but it is hard in times of relaxation, over our cups.

To God all things are fair and good and right, but men hold some things wrong and some right

Cold things become warm, and what is warm cools; what is wet dries, and the parched is moistened.

IMO vampire can mean anyone and everyone who doesn't fit into the ideology of work and employment, which includes both feudal nobility and ppl begging for money at opposite ends of the spectrum, it can be exploited or exploiters, whats important is that they do not contribute to the homogenized social order (which is basically good even for the nobility)

I know vampirism is often used as a metaphor for the drain of the aristocracy but I think it would be fun to have more vampire characters who were just some guy before they got turned. You seek out the most ancient vampire in existence and find out he was a 40 year old wheat farmer in ancient Mesopotamia when he was turned 7,000 years ago and he hasn’t been doing much since then.

In the Hungry Ghost realm the rivers are made of sewage

(the drawing is beautiful, so maybe hungry ghosts can't see it...)

How come pics like this never trend.

It's a strange spectacle to see how much the community around skeptical inquirer cares about issues of little relevance to culture or power structures

Some people defend this kind of rationalist ideology by talking about, say, anti-superstition activists in India, but those people are admirable for the specific reason that they are undermining hierarchical power structures

A Western skeptic getting angry about Americans venerating ghosts with offerings --- that's not subversive, and it's worthy of contempt!