The Second Apocalypse
Miscellaneous Chatter => The Forum of Interesting Things => Topic started by: Cüréthañ on November 23, 2013, 12:54:46 am
-
They need to translate PoN into Japanese ASAP. Might just be a smash hit over there.
I'm assuming this comes in 'honeyed' flavour (http://imgur.com/fN8HqSh)
^^NSFW BTW^^
-
Lol... it will become everything that it is mocked as now. They would make it real in ways we've never imagined, only feared.
-
At this point we just have to take bets as to whether it will be anime or henti first.
-
Honestly, I think the series might work better as an anime than as a live action film.
It does remind me of Berserk actually.
-
Honestly, I think the series might work better as an anime than as a live action film.
It does remind me of Berserk actually.
Almost any quality fantasy series would, the limits of an audience's attention for a single sitting are too narrow to accommodate the sort of scale a story like that would need.
Looking forward to bishounen Kellhus.
-
A preview: Japanese Malazan
http://www.amazon.co.jp/s/ref=sr_nr_n_3?rh=k%3A%E3%83%9E%E3%83%A9%E3%82%B6%E3%83%B3%2Cn%3A507300&keywords=%E3%83%9E%E3%83%A9%E3%82%B6%E3%83%B3&ie=UTF8&qid=1378006560&rnid=2321267051
-
Heh, yeah, i think Bakker's work would please the japanese. And i'm glad i am not the only one that thinks Berserk has a bakker-esque quality (or Bakker's work has a Berserk-esque quality?!).
A preview: Japanese Malazan
http://www.amazon.co.jp/s/ref=sr_nr_n_3?rh=k%3A%E3%83%9E%E3%83%A9%E3%82%B6%E3%83%B3%2Cn%3A507300&keywords=%E3%83%9E%E3%83%A9%E3%82%B6%E3%83%B3&ie=UTF8&qid=1378006560&rnid=2321267051
Woah! Are these the books/novels translated to japanese or a manga adaption of the MBotF? If the latter...WANT!!
-
Woah! Are these the books/novels translated to japanese or a manga adaption of the MBotF? If the latter...WANT!!
I too want a graphic novel adaptation of PON (and Malazan). Also, Legend by David Gemmell, you allusive jewel you.
-
I'm pretty sure it's just the covers. I, too, would like a Malazan graphic novel!
-
What the hell is it with Japan and their sex culture? I mean I'm genuinely curious, I'm not trying to sound like an ignorant Puritan American by any means, because I'm extremely open-minded sexually. I don't think it's "wrong", I'm just curious why it seems like sex -- especially some REALLY fucking niche sex interests -- seem so casual and pervasive in Japanese culture as opposed to pretty much the entire world? And this is coming from someone who's pretty familiar with, at least, the history of Japan, going back to about 1,000 A.D. or so (I love Japanese culture, really, and their history fascinates me more than almost any other nation, but even so, this kind of shit still baffles me). There must be legitimate theories as to why their culture is like this in modern times?
-
There must be legitimate theories as to why their culture is like this in modern times?
I think the most legitimate theory is that it's a media problem, and is not unique to Japanese culture. Meaning it's sensationalist, sex sells, asian cultures are "other," (and the more "other" the better the story for the media) and you have a delightful recipe for some a completely orientalist quagmire.
I mean, reread your paragraph. you are blaming the japanese culture for this (even as you're backpedaling, trying to give yourself cover), rather than blaming the media portrayal and media sensationalization that is going on. We ignore the media portrayal because when we click on the link or read the story, we become complicit within it, we are guilty too, our brains don't like that, so rather than blaming ourselves for being part of the problem, we externalize the problem onto the japanese or their culture and make sure they are blamed; they are guilty.
let's flip to the French. Michael Haneke made a film called the Piano Teacher, and the opening scene has her going into porn shops, into the individual jerk off rooms in the back, and grabbing used cum tissues out of the trash pressing them into her face, and inhaling, smelling them over and over while she masturbates.
But the media doesn't see that, or Funny Games, or Amour &c and go, "Oh my fucking god, what is wrong with these sick french fucks!" the way the media does with examples like the above.
-
I think it just happens to be an generalization thing because of their fucked up laws on what is permisable in terms of pornography.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pornography_in_Japan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pornography_in_Japan)
Go to r/spacedicks on reddit if you don't believe westerners aren't equally fucked in the head. (no don't. really. I went there once by misadventure and nobody needs those kinds of images taking up neural real estate - cuz you can't bleach that shit out)
Interesting old forum thread here (http://forum.gaijinpot.com/forum/living-in-japan/relationships/7869-confusion-about-the-japanese-attitude-towards-sex) with discussion between westerners who actually have experience within the culture.
-
But the media doesn't see that, or Funny Games, or Amour &c and go, "Oh my fucking god, what is wrong with these sick french fucks!" the way the media does with examples like the above.
It is funny to see the reactions that funny games provokes in people. Watched it three times with three different groups of people, and every time I end up being a fucking sadist because I liked it :) Not one of them seem to grasp the point of the movie. I think both versions work, but Haneke makes his film a bit more creepy IMO.
Have not encountered similar provocative reactions since I saw Cannibal holocaust when I was fourteen, and some older guys convinced me it was a real documentary ;D That fucked me up for years.
-
But the media doesn't see that, or Funny Games, or Amour &c and go, "Oh my fucking god, what is wrong with these sick french fucks!" the way the media does with examples like the above.
To be fair, I do recall a time in the US where the French were seen as the sexual perverts.
I do think there is a criticism of non-white cultures that Western media likes to jump on though.
-
I've never seen an anal smell bottle inside a vending machine in the US. I just assumed it was somewhere easily found though. From the context of the picture it could have been inside a porn shop. I haven't spent enough time in one here in the US to say if something like that exists here or not.
Guess thats how these stereotypes are perpetuated. For all we know, the picture was taken in the US to being with, or any other country. I also can't tell you if the writing is japanese or some other language.
If the caption had any other country, that I perceive as using a similar writing, mentioned in it, I'd have no way of knowing.
-
For what it's worth, this definitely isn't just Puritanical Westerners being gobsmacked at foreign cultures. Japan absolutely has a more open cultural response to sexuality than many other nations (including Eastern ones), and they also have a greater abundance of sexual substitutes (be it porn, dolls, or, you know, anal smell bottles), because people in Japan are literally having less sex. It's part of the issue behind their decreasing birth rates. See: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/20/young-people-japan-stopped-having-sex
I'm more curious about the historical reasons that led up to their current state though.
-
Japan got World-slapped. Hard.
Their entire culture recoiled and now they step lightly in all things, except reclaiming a Japanese preeminence that they never really had.
-
so why the perspective that the japanese is the deviant approach? And why is there an elevated culture that enjoys the accrual of benefits of being labeled normal?
Who makes the binary and why the reduction into convenient mental slots of thesis antithesis synthesis.
-
Japan got World-slapped. Hard.
If their descent into hentai-porn was the outcome of the Hiroshima bombing, Bakker would love to see the results of the Fukushima radiation a century from now.
-
so why the perspective that the japanese is the deviant approach? And why is there an elevated culture that enjoys the accrual of benefits of being labeled normal?
Who makes the binary and why the reduction into convenient mental slots of thesis antithesis synthesis.
Most likely because thats just how people think?
Its not some great mystery that people in general put themselves at the center. I doubt there is a large japanese presence here currently, so the majority of people here see that culture as other.
The idea that there is an objective "elevated culture that enjoys the accrual of benefits of being labeled normal" is absurd and you know it, and no one ever claimed that there was. Few people put themselves at the bottom and look in wonder and amazement to new things, thinking "wow my culture is so alien and strange". It doesn't make sense, and neither does that question.
Who makes the binary and why the reduction into convenient mental slots of thesis antithesis synthesis.
Everyone, including yourself, makes it. No one can be more or less right since its all opinion. But then we would all sit here in silence and in perfect harmony if there was some objective morality high ground cultural perfection that everyone agreed on and aspired to be like.
Which makes the choice to talk about and acknowledge our differences, or never say anything and pretend like the world all thinks alike. I choose to speak ;)
-
1) so why the perspective that the japanese is the deviant approach? 2) And why is there an elevated culture that enjoys the accrual of benefits of being labeled normal?
3) Who makes the binary and 4) why the reduction into convenient mental slots of thesis antithesis synthesis.
All great questions, lockesnow.
1) Personally, I wouldn't necessarily describe the Japanese as deviant; that seems an unnecessary label for this discussion (though, perhaps, people experience more of a cultural disconnect because of the differences in extremes).
2) Hmm... wouldn't the normal 'yardstick' be defined by whichever culture holds the cultural high ground?
3) Citizens of the Western Empire have a specific predilection for dualism?
4) The convenient mental slots were created specifically to have a shorthand for those types of distinctions; it's like an operational definition (where something is only distinguished as it needs to be in order to be measured).
Japan got World-slapped. Hard.
If their descent into hentai-porn was the outcome of the Hiroshima bombing, Bakker would love to see the results of the Fukushima radiation a century from now.
If I could distill my final thought on this now it would be that, I basically see Japan as a funhouse mirror of the Western Empire. Bomb dropped. They embraced the culture and corporatism of their conquerors and in doing so became some sort of disturbed parody (if they do still retain a rich historical culture).
I doubt there is a large japanese presence here currently, so the majority of people here see that culture as other.
I voice my minority dissent. Japan is still very much a part of my life, both in shaping who I've become through exposure and for the fact that my Mom still lives there and my younger sister returns yearly.
Few people put themselves at the bottom and look in wonder and amazement to new things, thinking "wow my culture is so alien and strange". It doesn't make sense, and neither does that question.
And this perspective seems to require exposure.
Who makes the binary and why the reduction into convenient mental slots of thesis antithesis synthesis.
Everyone, including yourself, makes it. No one can be more or less right since its all opinion. But then we would all sit here in silence and in perfect harmony if there was some objective morality high ground cultural perfection that everyone agreed on and aspired to be like.
Which makes the choice to talk about and acknowledge our differences, or never say anything and pretend like the world all thinks alike. I choose to speak ;)
+1. So say we all?
-
+1. So say we all?
Of course. If anyone didn't, we wouldn't ever hear about it.
-
Sweet, sweet dissent.
-
3) Citizens of the Western Empire have a specific predilection for dualism?
Which human being doesn't have a "me and them" perspective?
Come on, you're smarter than this college-leftist "shallow dumb Westerners and virtuous Others" bullshit.
-
If I could distill my final thought on this now it would be that, I basically see Japan as a funhouse mirror of the Western Empire. Bomb dropped. They embraced the culture and corporatism of their conquerors and in doing so became some sort of disturbed parody (if they do still retain a rich historical culture).
Inasmuch as Japan was 'World-slapped', I'd say it occurred in 1853 rather than 1945. Their emulation of the West (rapid industrialisation, modernisation of the military, openness to foreign trade, the idea that real nations build empires...) started long before WW2. Arguably, it was their 'disturbed parody' of Western imperialism that got them nuked in the first place.
I'm not sure one can really tie such big changes in national worldview to a single historical event, though. There were incidents all through the 19th century suggesting that hiding from the world wasn't going to work for much longer.
-
Lol. First off. Yay! Welcome back, even if it's just for a post. I'm glad you've survived this journey through the trackless steppe.
Perry, 100%. Perhaps, the ratio of acceleration (perhaps analogous - if you're familiar and only in a relative sense - of McKenna's exponential novelty assertions) after the Bomb makes it especially apparent in my eyes but I don't actually have a personal perspective of living that history.
I'm not sure one can really tie such big changes in national worldview to a single historical event, though.
I wouldn't even try, friend. Just offering the description of my grip on the elephant ;).
-
Lol. First off. Yay! Welcome back, even if it's just for a post. I'm glad you've survived this journey through the trackless steppe.
Thanks! :) I can't promise to post very often. Or, for that matter, very coherently. But I'm back at least until Christmas.
Perhaps, the ratio of acceleration ... after the Bomb makes it especially apparent in my eyes but I don't actually have a personal perspective of living that history.
Well, me neither. I think that feeling of ever-accelerating change post-WW2 is pretty much global, though, not anything specific to Japan.
I wouldn't even try, friend. Just offering the description of my grip on the elephant ;).
Well, give me that and hold this bit of it instead. It keeps dribbling on my hand. :P
-
3) Citizens of the Western Empire have a specific predilection for dualism?
Which human being doesn't have a "me and them" perspective?
Come on, you're smarter than this college-leftist "shallow dumb Westerners and virtuous Others" bullshit.
Sorry, Auriga.
I got half-way through jamming out and making breakfast for the house and I remembered that I hadn't and had wanted to respond to you.
Lol, I have to disappoint sometime but no, I don't think I'm so simple as to fall under that type of distinction.
lockesnow asked who makes the binary and I offered - in so many words - that it arises, possibly, from the influence of dualism in Western philosophy as opposed to alternatives found in Asiatic philosophies (which are much more tolerant of paradox).
Which human being doesn't have a "me and them" perspective?
There are number of developmental theories, which incorporate egocentricism into the lower rungs of conscious development, relegating any "us and them" perspectives to immature (in the sense of growth) stages of thought?
Does it result in a gestalt shift in perception? I don't know yet, I'm still an immature larva - but I definitely try and cultivate a perspective of acceptance and openness in approaching all novelty (including difference in personal form and appearance). If I have "us and them" type thoughts, I make a point to try and remind myself of that bias so, at least, I might work towards affecting a change in my habitual perspective and attitudes.
Lol. First off. Yay! Welcome back, even if it's just for a post. I'm glad you've survived this journey through the trackless steppe.
Thanks! :) I can't promise to post very often. Or, for that matter, very coherently. But I'm back at least until Christmas.
Journey as you will. Strength on it. I will enjoy this correspondance of cause that is your presence while it happens.
Perhaps, the ratio of acceleration ... after the Bomb makes it especially apparent in my eyes but I don't actually have a personal perspective of living that history.
Well, me neither. I think that feeling of ever-accelerating change post-WW2 is pretty much global, though, not anything specific to Japan.
You'd probably be right? It is an interesting circumstance to ponder.
I wouldn't even try, friend. Just offering the description of my grip on the elephant ;).
Well, give me that and hold this bit of it instead. It keeps dribbling on my hand. :P
Eewww ;).
-
What about the american attitude to sex? The constant metaphors mixing up penises with guns. The vicious humiliation of women. The fact they talk out loud during sex. Their fucking porn! Jesus fucking christ. Too much for my introverted european soul. Every major movie or celebrity seems to get a porn version. Violent aggressive stuff. Circumcision being the norm. The power dynamic porn where its all about what people will do for money. In american porn its usually people saying 'you like that?' as if we're all so sinful and its so shameful. I guess this stems from the puritanism.
British porn seems to be a bit more cheery. The men seem a bit more submissive when talking to the women. There's a lot of 'oh what are you going to do?".
I'll stop now.
-
The vicious humiliation of women.
If this misogynist theme bothers you about American porn, you'd probably have a heart attack from Japanese porn.
-
I'm being somewhat sarcastic and acting like a shocked prude. We can probably all agree that porn is not one of humanities greatest achievements, whatever the particulars of the cultural psychology it exhibits.
While we're on the subject I wonder if anyone else thinks the same as me - it seems like to a certain extent we've gone from a state of
ignorant puritanism to a kind of mass hedonism, so today instead of being ridiculously over the top of the evils of sex and masturbation, we are ridiculously intolerant of anything that ISN'T hedonistic?
I was reading Freud recently and noticed a short passage where he says that a patient might very simply quell their recurring neurosis if they would stop masturbating. No professional would be allowed to give such advice these days without being censured. In fact if you look at people asking for advice on google, they're always encouraged to do it and told its perfectly healthy, like they need warned off the idea that pleasure isn't the highest goal in life. You're allowed not to do it but only as part of the narrative of personal choice, only if that's what makes you feel better.
I definitely see myself as a kind of reactionary against this tendency. I don't want to go the other way and become a total puritan, but I think today our societies are hedonistic almost to the point of totalitarianism. It really is an unconscionable sin to make a stand against it. The present is a lot more Brave New World rather than 1984.
-
The vicious humiliation of women.
If this misogynist theme bothers you about American porn, you'd probably have a heart attack from Japanese porn.
Lol. +1.
I'm being somewhat sarcastic and acting like a shocked prude. We can probably all agree that porn is not one of humanities greatest achievements, whatever the particulars of the cultural psychology it exhibits.
Well, it certainly seems to suggest that a bunch of us will never reproduce.
While we're on the subject I wonder if anyone else thinks the same as me - it seems like to a certain extent we've gone from a state of
ignorant puritanism to a kind of mass hedonism, so today instead of being ridiculously over the top of the evils of sex and masturbation, we are ridiculously intolerant of anything that ISN'T hedonistic?
Just thinking aloud but wouldn't mass hedonism correlate with the prevalence of popularly disseminated conceptions like atheism, nihilism, materialism, etc?
I was reading Freud recently and noticed a short passage where he says that a patient might very simply quell their recurring neurosis if they would stop masturbating. No professional would be allowed to give such advice these days without being censured.
To be perfectly honest though, there are plenty of professionals giving advice (or worse prescribing things or perpetuating erroneous research paradigms) under the guise of following the "censuring constraints" today and we'll always look back on monuments like Freud (and be so looked back upon) because he's an example of how we can find ourselves so far astray in our hypotheses while still adhering to the "science" of the day (and largely because we haven't taken the time to destroy his hypotheses, specifically, with modern data) (Freud is also still popularly mentioned in academic philosophy).
I definitely see myself as a kind of reactionary against this tendency. I don't want to go the other way and become a total puritan, but I think today our societies are hedonistic almost to the point of totalitarianism. It really is an unconscionable sin to make a stand against it. The present is a lot more Brave New World rather than 1984.
Lol - how dare you dictate the pleasure I take out of the world? I work hard for my remote, my 100g of bandwidth for simulcasting all my favorite porn on four different screens, and my truckload of KY.
Jeez.
Seriously, though, I'm not sure I care to dictate others either, however, the argument can be made that porn diminishes our social agency (among other things) because it effective mediates a certain number of participants from civil unrest ;).
-
I've met so many examples of the "how dare you TAKE AWAY MY PLEASURE by not fanatically approving of it and showing proper deference at all times, don't you know this is actively oppressing me and destroying my individuality!?!?" attitude.
Freedom to do - ok, but what about freedom from? Freedom from addiction and disease? Only if you chose this as part of your
individual narrative of pleasure and positivity. That seems to be the message today. It's probably responsible for a whole other kind of misery than "if you masturbate you'll go blind and if you take drugs you'll go gay and kill your parents" was.
Nice point about porn making us infertile. I guess there's probably an unconscious desire to erase sex itself through pushing it beyond healthy limits? Like that Louis CK joke about eating your way from obesity back to skinniness.
-
Freedom to do - ok, but what about freedom from? Freedom from addiction and disease? Only if you chose this as part of your
individual narrative of pleasure and positivity. That seems to be the message today.
"If you don't partake, you don't receive the benefits of society" type messages?
Nice point about porn making us infertile. I guess there's probably an unconscious desire to erase sex itself through pushing it beyond healthy limits? Like that Louis CK joke about eating your way from obesity back to skinniness.
Lol, you took that to it's extreme conclusion (still coherent) but I meant that in the sense that those of us who literally "don't go out on Friday" (or whenever), don't get laid. The more time you spend milkin' them roots, the less time you spend actually propagating the genes (though, this leads to what you took as my point).
-
JamesA01, I agree with you 100%.
Us post-modern First World people basically live in Huxley's Brave New World (harm/care morality, ironing out human differences, pleasure as the only good).
One sign that Huxley describes our present world so much more than Orwell is the way people usually see "Orwellian" oppression around them so much more easily than they see the signs of Huxley's dystopia. People still recognize Orwellisms everywhere - Right and Left (these days, significantly, it's probably more the Right, but both sides think they see Orwell in their enemy) speak all the time of doublethink and crimethink, the term "Orwellian" in general to describe self-censoring speech. They call out Ministry of Truth style propaganda, endless surveillance, regular two minutes of hate, having always been at war with Eurasia, etc.
But nowhere nearly as often are people able to identify Huxleyisms around them. Like fish unable to identify the water.
(Huxley is both more relevant and less recognized, because the typical modern liberal's response to Brave New World would basically be "What's wrong with it? What's wrong with everyone being sated and content all the time?")
I meant that in the sense that those of us who literally "don't go out on Friday" (or whenever), don't get laid. The more time you spend milkin' them roots, the less time you spend actually propagating the genes (though, this leads to what you took as my point).
From an evolutionary viewpoint, what matters is producing offspring. Getting laid on every weekend, unless it results in reproduction, is about as genetically successful as jerking off. (That is, not at all.)
-
I've met so many examples of the "how dare you TAKE AWAY MY PLEASURE by not fanatically approving of it and showing proper deference at all times, don't you know this is actively oppressing me and destroying my individuality!?!?" attitude.
Yes, the "DONT U DARE JUDGE ME, DAD!!!11" morality is pretty much the new norm in the post-modern West.
The idea that anything should be tolerated, and that only things which harm the individual's precious feelings are worth worrying about - what Jon Haidt called harm/care morality - is the most trivial moral standard imaginable.
-
One sign that Huxley describes our present world so much more than Orwell is the way people usually see "Orwellian" oppression around them so much more easily than they see the signs of Huxley's dystopia. People still recognize Orwellisms everywhere - Right and Left (these days, significantly, it's probably more the Right, but both sides think they see Orwell in their enemy) speak all the time of doublethink and crimethink, the term "Orwellian" in general to describe self-censoring speech. They call out Ministry of Truth style propaganda, endless surveillance, regular two minutes of hate, having always been at war with Eurasia, etc.
1984 is definitely the more disseminated text of the two (though, weirdly enough Huxley was circulated among my teenage peers far earlier than Orwell). Brave New World, Island, Doors of Perception, Heaven and Hell, and The Perennial Philosophy... Good times.
Also, I think Huxley is the more challenging of the two and Orwell enjoyed a more contemporary issue (whereas Huxley predicted something that happened after 1984 long before it occurred).
(Huxley is both more relevant and less recognized, because the typical modern liberal's response to Brave New World would basically be "What's wrong with it? What's wrong with everyone being sated and content all the time?")
This. +1.
I meant that in the sense that those of us who literally "don't go out on Friday" (or whenever), don't get laid. The more time you spend milkin' them roots, the less time you spend actually propagating the genes (though, this leads to what you took as my point).
From an evolutionary viewpoint, what matters is producing offspring. Getting laid on every weekend, unless it results in reproduction, is about as genetically successful as jerking off. (That is, not at all.)
Well... the chances of producing offspring are as close as possible to zero in only one of those conditions.
The idea that anything should be tolerated, and that only things which harm the individual's precious feelings are worth worrying about - what Jon Haidt called harm/care morality - is the most trivial moral standard imaginable.
Well said. One of the most trivial, anyhow.
-
You may be interested to note then that in high school, Brave New World was required to be read by every student, while 1984 was not.
-
Lol... your high school maybe ;).
We read some pretty lame stuff at my high school. Though, I remember reading Animal Farm over two periods because it happened to be on the bookshelf next to my desk in grade 10 English while I was supposed to be reading... I don't know, Kill A Mockingbird or some such.
Lmao.
-
Lol... your high school maybe ;).
We read some pretty lame stuff at my high school. Though, I remember reading Animal Farm over two periods because it happened to be on the bookshelf next to my desk in grade 10 English while I was supposed to be reading... I don't know, Kill A Mockingbird or some such.
Lmao.
Yeah I read most of 1984 during my German final exam in high school, because it was sitting under the desk of the kid in front of me. Didn't do so well on the exam though.
-
What the hell is it with Japan and their sex culture? I mean I'm genuinely curious, I'm not trying to sound like an ignorant Puritan American by any means, because I'm extremely open-minded sexually. I don't think it's "wrong", I'm just curious why it seems like sex -- especially some REALLY fucking niche sex interests -- seem so casual and pervasive in Japanese culture as opposed to pretty much the entire world? And this is coming from someone who's pretty familiar with, at least, the history of Japan, going back to about 1,000 A.D. or so (I love Japanese culture, really, and their history fascinates me more than almost any other nation, but even so, this kind of shit still baffles me). There must be legitimate theories as to why their culture is like this in modern times?
It reminds me of the catholic school girl phenomena - so sexually represed that when it comes out, it comes out under high pressure and shoots way over various boundaries. And geez, even my analogy sounds dirty...
-
The vicious humiliation of women.
If this misogynist theme bothers you about American porn, you'd probably have a heart attack from Japanese porn.
*cries*
-
I'm being somewhat sarcastic and acting like a shocked prude. We can probably all agree that porn is not one of humanities greatest achievements, whatever the particulars of the cultural psychology it exhibits.
While we're on the subject I wonder if anyone else thinks the same as me - it seems like to a certain extent we've gone from a state of
ignorant puritanism to a kind of mass hedonism, so today instead of being ridiculously over the top of the evils of sex and masturbation, we are ridiculously intolerant of anything that ISN'T hedonistic?
I was reading Freud recently and noticed a short passage where he says that a patient might very simply quell their recurring neurosis if they would stop masturbating. No professional would be allowed to give such advice these days without being censured. In fact if you look at people asking for advice on google, they're always encouraged to do it and told its perfectly healthy, like they need warned off the idea that pleasure isn't the highest goal in life. You're allowed not to do it but only as part of the narrative of personal choice, only if that's what makes you feel better.
I definitely see myself as a kind of reactionary against this tendency. I don't want to go the other way and become a total puritan, but I think today our societies are hedonistic almost to the point of totalitarianism. It really is an unconscionable sin to make a stand against it. The present is a lot more Brave New World rather than 1984.
The stand seems as much an extremism. I mean, by what metric do we measure how exactly far you want to go against this? Might be ten feet, might be ten miles (so to speak), who knows?
Indeed often such stands seem to be a push for a blank cheque 'How much are you saying this should stop' 'Well, that depends on how I feel at any given moment'. How much is asked for? Nobody knows.
-
Strange that those who most wish to control others often feel that they themselves are so oppressed...
-
I'm being somewhat sarcastic and acting like a shocked prude. We can probably all agree that porn is not one of humanities greatest achievements, whatever the particulars of the cultural psychology it exhibits.
While we're on the subject I wonder if anyone else thinks the same as me - it seems like to a certain extent we've gone from a state of
ignorant puritanism to a kind of mass hedonism, so today instead of being ridiculously over the top of the evils of sex and masturbation, we are ridiculously intolerant of anything that ISN'T hedonistic?
I was reading Freud recently and noticed a short passage where he says that a patient might very simply quell their recurring neurosis if they would stop masturbating. No professional would be allowed to give such advice these days without being censured. In fact if you look at people asking for advice on google, they're always encouraged to do it and told its perfectly healthy, like they need warned off the idea that pleasure isn't the highest goal in life. You're allowed not to do it but only as part of the narrative of personal choice, only if that's what makes you feel better.
I definitely see myself as a kind of reactionary against this tendency. I don't want to go the other way and become a total puritan, but I think today our societies are hedonistic almost to the point of totalitarianism. It really is an unconscionable sin to make a stand against it. The present is a lot more Brave New World rather than 1984.
The stand seems as much an extremism. I mean, by what metric do we measure how exactly far you want to go against this? Might be ten feet, might be ten miles (so to speak), who knows?
Indeed often such stands seem to be a push for a blank cheque 'How much are you saying this should stop' 'Well, that depends on how I feel at any given moment'. How much is asked for? Nobody knows.
I'm not trying to enforce anything. I'd just like to a see a discourse in culture that offers people a way out. Loneliness + increased pressure to float into sickness and ruin through aggressive hedonism seems - at least to my dumb analysis - to be one of the biggest traps facing people today.
-
Loneliness + increased pressure to float into sickness and ruin through aggressive hedonism seems - at least to my dumb analysis - to be one of the biggest traps facing people today.
I was going to reflexively poo-poo the idea that there's this massive and unprecedented social pressure towards what you term "aggressive hedonism", until I remembered what university was like when I was there: if you wanted a social life, it was pretty much mandatory to drink as if you had the liver of Dionysus. That was a decade ago and, from everything I've heard, it's only gotten worse since.
I'm still not convinced this is a really new phenomenon, though, or that it's genuinely the huge problem you seem to think it is. Classical Greek and Roman texts contain references to worries that young people are drinking too much or are generally too blindly hedonistic. It seems to be a constant narrative (at least in sufficiently complex societies) that we old farts (and those of us who are old farts at heart) see the next generation as descending into nihilistic hedonism.
And yet... we have not yet sunk into mindless decadence. Looked at from the present, the overall trend of history is towards people's lives improving. Yesterday's hedonistic (even sometimes downright selfish) pushing of moral boundaries opens the way for today being (IMO) objectively better for most people. I sure as fuck don't want to go back to the Victorian era (children working as virtual slaves in mines; men allowed to rape and beat their wives with no legal repercussions; levels of violent crime that make today look like a pacifist utopia; public hangings for what today we consider minor crimes...), nor even to the 1950s (homosexuality illegal; women and non-Whites second class citizens; censorship and possible legal punishments for criticising or lampooning Christianity...).
The fact that my country's current (Conservative!) prime minister wants my transsexual aunt to be able to legally marry her partner (whom she has loved and lived with for decades) is awesome, as far as I'm concerned. That his political heroine, Margaret Thatcher, would have been appalled at the idea just makes it more awesome. Of course, Queen Victoria would have been appalled at the idea of Margaret Thatcher (a female prime minister), and the Romans would have been appalled at the idea of a queen (another Boudicca!) reigning over Britain...
Being appalled at the antics of the next generation seems quite natural and normal. It doesn't necessarily herald the downfall of civilization, though. :)
-
Loneliness + increased pressure to float into sickness and ruin through aggressive hedonism seems - at least to my dumb analysis - to be one of the biggest traps facing people today.
I was going to reflexively poo-poo the idea that there's this massive and unprecedented social pressure towards what you term "aggressive hedonism", until I remembered what university was like when I was there: if you wanted a social life, it was pretty much mandatory to drink as if you had the liver of Dionysus. That was a decade ago and, from everything I've heard, it's only gotten worse since.
Was it really? Or was that just your biased perception/judgment of it? My experience in college was that so long as you had a vessel which could hold liquid in your hand, you were functionally a full participant, regardless of the volume you actually drank. Now granted, participating would behaviorally probably induce greater consumption just by subconscious signally and cues but I drank very little in college, only in my senior year, and that was because I socialized with roommates that year who did drink and party. My prior three years I had enjoyed a high and mighty above-it-all perspective of 'disgust' at my fellow collegiates who were obviously engaging in aggressive hedonism and I was just too mature for it. And I don't think I even realized for years afterward that it was me that was the problem, that I was the guilty party, that my externalizing all blame onto others absolved me neatly of any complicity within my own situation. Looking back more dispassionately, many people drank and drank excessively in college and their was a definite culture of drinking, but I was also hyper noticing every outlier because those outliers were the only evidence I wanted to acknowledge.
So even though the vast majority of people I ever interacted with at most college parties over four years were only drunk or mildly drunk, my internal narrative of that experience was that everyone was insanely over-the-top excessively hedonistic and horridly inebriated. For years I held on to the belief that it was alcohol insanity, and yet I only ever encountered fewer than five true examples of what I believed was going on. Interestingly, I encountered more than four times as many people who weren't drinking at all during the same time frame, but all this evidence was completely dismissed, even if they outnumbered the other extreme by more than 4:1 and were far more significant a representative example than the opposite. It also meant I did not note just how many girls were attending parties but not drinking or drinking very very minimally, because I was too caught up in a self-flattering blue-balled and extraordinary narrative about drunken sluts as a means to explain my lack of success in the sex. It's amazing to me just how easily I fell into misogynistic traps because I believed myself to be such a champion of women and women's rights, but somehow it was them that was the problem when it came to romance, not me, I never questioned myself in those days.
this seems apt, somehow, may just be a wierd one am free association though, the punchline is at 1:10ish, the visual response to 'not really, I could only get non-alcoholic beer' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-sDIDlka80&list=PL7347F458A669656A&index=2
-
First off: Clone High is awesome. What a lost treasure.
I was going to reflexively poo-poo the idea that there's this massive and unprecedented social pressure towards what you term "aggressive hedonism", until I remembered what university was like when I was there: if you wanted a social life, it was pretty much mandatory to drink as if you had the liver of Dionysus. That was a decade ago and, from everything I've heard, it's only gotten worse since.
I'm not sure it's as prevalent as you think - though I'm also not sure it's as much social imitation as lockesnow seems to suggest below. But where there are people actually fulfilling the improbable Dionysian extremes, they're really doing so. And alcohol isn't the worst drug being abused, in my opinion.
I'm still not convinced this is a really new phenomenon, though, or that it's genuinely the huge problem you seem to think it is ... censorship and possible legal punishments for criticising or lampooning Christianity...).
+1.
But we're not settling into mindless decadence at all. The top tier is simply being culled for access. Prevalently, across the world, the bar of minimum education is dropping while the competitive merits necessary for grad school programs are becoming increasingly ridiculous (and realisticly, we'd probably have to acknowledge that compared to the growing numbers of enrollment overall, students who actually want to push the envelope like you suggest are rarer still). Even grad school diplomas are simply becoming the next generation's high school diploma in terms of social mobility.
Or we could talk the trickle-down effects of institution privatization.
But as you and I both mentioned: the bottom line is that where you have the YOLOs living one life, they're living it harder and more irresponsibly than the last generation, furthering their own doomed evolution and tugging at the rest of us with their ignorance.
Being appalled at the antics of the next generation seems quite natural and normal. It doesn't necessarily herald the downfall of civilization, though. :)
Truth. And I'm not necessarily diving in here to wipe my brow with my handkerchief.
Was it really? Or was that just your biased perception/judgment of it? My experience in college was that so long as you had a vessel which could hold liquid in your hand, you were functionally a full participant, regardless of the volume you actually drank.
I think it's a bit of both as I wrote. In a third aspect, I actually think that people are more accepting now of people who don't indulge than kids are in my high school experience and now hearing from friend's who've become teachers. There are all kinds of people attending university. And I think the serious people, do take the experience seriously. There are all kinds of observable divides concerning the crowd most likely to abuse drugs, including alcohol. Hell, even certain programs can be distinguished from others as socially necessitating more drinking over less; and there as well there are outliers.
My prior three years I had enjoyed a high and mighty above-it-all perspective of 'disgust' at my fellow collegiates who were obviously engaging in aggressive hedonism and I was just too mature for it ... It's amazing to me just how easily I fell into misogynistic traps because I believed myself to be such a champion of women and women's rights, but somehow it was them that was the problem when it came to romance, not me, I never questioned myself in those days.
Cool thoughts, lockesnow. It's interesting as I read your post, all I could think about were more of my own biases.
For instance, I entered university as basically the youngest you can be as a mature student (at least in Ontario) after I'd dropped out of high school. So all that I notice now in attending university is how little life these children, really, in body but mind especially, have lived. The vast majority of these students are shouldering life-long debt, or worse, thoughtlessly wasting their parental benefactor's time, and just being handed the ample opportunity to both succeed and fail (though, most of them can't grasp the concept of holding your educators responsible for your consumer-academics, so..) at one of the most important experiences of their lives.
It actually blows my mind - I was an adult nearly everywhere in the world when I started, and I still fucked up large in past years.
But then if you think, University and College students were once required to learn a few languages, read a bunch of original texts, perhaps an instrument or something martial (of body movement)...
Do we all agree that james has a standing argument, I don't think we can really contest the results of promoting that sort of lifestyle, regardless of actual levels of embodiment?
I'm certainly not innocent of having partaken in extremes in my life.
I'd just like to a see a discourse in culture that offers people a way out. Loneliness + increased pressure to float into sickness and ruin through aggressive hedonism seems - at least to my dumb analysis - to be one of the biggest traps facing people today.
If I can take a mild stance on what you might have been saying before we got caught up in the institutional experience: You're suggesting, I think, that our sociocultural conceptual structures don't facilitate very many conversations like this - that can get real, so to speak - and instead offers all types of chemical experiences (be that "purchasing" to satisfy the constant barrage of propaganda on our devices, the prevalent availability of "feel-good" drugs, which in some cases is motivated by demand - but let's focus on prescriptions and socially mandated; alcohol, nicotine, and to a lesser extent, coffee and refined sugars, the fictive ideals fed to us to shape our expectations, etc) to mediate any consideration of that fact that we're living creatures and we've got issues.
Also, people often seem to forget that the prevalence of the hermit is a strange and novel phenomenon. Not the hermit, necessarily. But the sheer level of human disconnect individuals in the Western Empire are capable of boggles me.
If the devil deceives, its greatest triumph was not convincing the world it doesn't exist, but convincing us to trade our living, breathing agency for words on a screen (as much as this can be a very potent tool).
-
I'm being somewhat sarcastic and acting like a shocked prude. We can probably all agree that porn is not one of humanities greatest achievements, whatever the particulars of the cultural psychology it exhibits.
While we're on the subject I wonder if anyone else thinks the same as me - it seems like to a certain extent we've gone from a state of
ignorant puritanism to a kind of mass hedonism, so today instead of being ridiculously over the top of the evils of sex and masturbation, we are ridiculously intolerant of anything that ISN'T hedonistic?
I was reading Freud recently and noticed a short passage where he says that a patient might very simply quell their recurring neurosis if they would stop masturbating. No professional would be allowed to give such advice these days without being censured. In fact if you look at people asking for advice on google, they're always encouraged to do it and told its perfectly healthy, like they need warned off the idea that pleasure isn't the highest goal in life. You're allowed not to do it but only as part of the narrative of personal choice, only if that's what makes you feel better.
I definitely see myself as a kind of reactionary against this tendency. I don't want to go the other way and become a total puritan, but I think today our societies are hedonistic almost to the point of totalitarianism. It really is an unconscionable sin to make a stand against it. The present is a lot more Brave New World rather than 1984.
The stand seems as much an extremism. I mean, by what metric do we measure how exactly far you want to go against this? Might be ten feet, might be ten miles (so to speak), who knows?
Indeed often such stands seem to be a push for a blank cheque 'How much are you saying this should stop' 'Well, that depends on how I feel at any given moment'. How much is asked for? Nobody knows.
I'm not trying to enforce anything. I'd just like to a see a discourse in culture that offers people a way out. Loneliness + increased pressure to float into sickness and ruin through aggressive hedonism seems - at least to my dumb analysis - to be one of the biggest traps facing people today.
Seems like words vague enough to encompass as much or as little as one wants to in discussion.
A length of string. It's too long!
The usual gig here is that yes, the words are vague, but the speaker really does know them - but since the listener doesn't, he'll just have to trust the speaker when the speaker says not to do this, or that, or the other. Always just trusting, in that manner.
With more precise descriptions, the listener could judge for himself.
-
Was it really? Or was that just your biased perception/judgment of it?
Well, this is embarrassing. :-[ Just goes to show how one can completely change the implications of a post by cocking up a single crucial word. I had meant to say that that was how it subjectively appeared to my naive 18-year-old self. The important bit should have read "...until I remembered what university seemed like when I was there...", but I was typing with my 18-year-old self at the forefront of my mind and consequently what I actually typed was his reality rather than the view I now have looking back with eyes that are over a decade older.
(Does this mean "seemed" is a decade wiser than "was"? Or just a decade more jaded? :P )
Did the fact that the rest of my post seemed to be taking almost the opposite tack not clue you in, though? That first paragraph was setting out my reasons for not reflexively dismissing jamesA01's argument (because he might be where I was then), not for actually agreeing with him (and the rest of the post surely makes it clear I don't agree with him, no?)
But that might sound like I'm putting the blame on you for misunderstanding. I'm not. You didn't misunderstand the words I wrote. I just wrote the wrong words.
FWIW, I recognise a lot of my younger self (except for the sex bit) in your description.
-
Was it really? Or was that just your biased perception/judgment of it?
Well, this is embarrassing. :-[ Just goes to show how one can completely change the implications of a post by cocking up a single crucial word. I had meant to say that that was how it subjectively appeared to my naive 18-year-old self. The important bit should have read "...until I remembered what university seemed like when I was there...", but I was typing with my 18-year-old self at the forefront of my mind and consequently what I actually typed was his reality rather than the view I now have looking back with eyes that are over a decade older.
(Does this mean "seemed" is a decade wiser than "was"? Or just a decade more jaded? :P )
One hypothesis of childhood amnesia falls under the category of context-theory. In a sense, cues, in our internal and external environment act, as a specific schema (a key) which allows us to remember, recreate, reembody (this is another, momentarily irrelevant point of contention) a 'memory.' In the case of childhood amnesia, it's thought that we can rarely, if ever, achieve a 'copy-cue' of the exact childhood context that went into the encoding of our childhood memories (or even close too - much of this seems may reflect changes in bodily perspective).
Lol - within this frame (which is to provide dramatic example), I'm simply suggesting that our being cued to remember 'past-selves,' schema that have structural access to only that 'semantic knowledge' that they had structural access to at the time, can momentarily dictate our perceptions and behavior.
-
Strange that those who most wish to control others often feel that they themselves are so oppressed
And what's wrong with wanting to control your surroundings?
Harm/care morality ("don't you dare judge anyone!!!1") is the most childish moral standard imaginable.
-
In the case of childhood amnesia, it's thought that we can rarely, if ever, achieve a 'copy-cue' of the exact childhood context that went into the encoding of our childhood memories (or even close too - much of this seems may reflect changes in bodily perspective).
If I'm understanding this correctly, the implication is that we can't remember what happened to us very early in life, at least in part, because we're effectively not the same person as we were then?
Lol - within this frame (which is to provide dramatic example), I'm simply suggesting that our being cued to remember 'past-selves,' schema that have structural access to only that 'semantic knowledge' that they had structural access to at the time, can momentarily dictate our perceptions and behavior.
The corollary being that, when we try too hard to remember, we run the risk of momentary possession by our own former self?
And what's wrong with wanting to control your surroundings?
I never claimed there was anything inherently wrong with that. I was merely making note of the implied hypocrisy.
-
If I'm understanding this correctly, the implication is that we can't remember what happened to us very early in life, at least in part, because we're effectively not the same person as we were then?
In a very literally sense; the schema reflecting our childhoods was "formed" or 'encoded' from a different height, with linguistic musculature and skills reflecting a much reduced language capacity from the vocabulary we exercise today, the hormonal content of our bodies, certain parts of the brain itself continue growing well into mid-20s and certainly among the teenage years.
The corollary being that, when we try too hard to remember, we run the risk of momentary possession by our own former self?
Not even when we try too hard, just when we hit upon the concert of 'cues' relatively close to a 'copy-cue' for a memory. Depending on the richness of encoding, 'cues' can trigger intense experiences like what you described, feeling literally "taken back" to certain moments, or self-identifications, which can consequently prompt old behaviors or habitual thoughts.