Post a controversial opinion

Blade Runner 2049 is better than the original.

Emovieji man rides again

The original Blade Runner is super fucking boring and I have no idea why it's such a classic.

Agreed. I watched it on a cyberpunk kick when I was a kid, via Shadowrun and Neuromancer, and I fell asleep during it. It had some cool visuals, though.

yeah i don't get it all, i'm a huge PKD fan & the book isn't one of my favorites, but original movie omits most interesting aspects of the book (mood organ, domestic aspect, the animals, & his humor). this new one was just a beautiful & haunting tone poem, with like half a dozen classic Dickian images, mostly with the hologram girlfriend: grotesquely frozen mid-kiss when his boss calls him, when she super imposes with the blonde woman, the glitching out, and then all of the water, the isolation and desolation, and all of the silences... there's so silence in this movie. the person i saw it with hated it because in their opinion it was narratively simplistic, overly expository, and predictable. it's a simple story, not one of my favorites by PKD, i don't care, it was hypnotic, and more evocative of Dick's work than the original BR.

Joe Rogan enables the far right. That can't be news to anyone.

I think if Greek mythology looks dry and academic now it's cos it's been too minced up by dry academics for centuries

Try reading the Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony by Roberto Calasso!

xp so? the far right > the far left

i don't even think that's a controp, not event on this 'leftist' board.. most ilxors seem to choose to live in cities that are bastions of wealth, work in non-laborous occupations, and of course off-load labor through commerce rather than, say, establish work communes.. possibly not a coincidence?

Why do you post here

choose to live in cities that are bastions of wealth

so do homeless people in NY. does that make them far rightist?

which is to say that when an opinion is based on really stupid reasoning, it stops being worthy of controversy and slips into dismissibility

Why do you post here

― El Tomboto, Sunday, October 15, 2017 12:20 PM (six minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

bc i love everything

Non-controversial opinion: "controp" is a fucking terrible coinage and you are bad if you use it

It is of course almost exactly synonymous with "challop" which is not a bad coinage, for reasons adjacent to the reasons this thread is largely worthless and whatever the challenging opinions thread is called isn't

I live in a bastion of culture. I do feel like a gross hypocrite tho for espousing leftist views whilst having a job.

sleepingbag is a nazi apologist, had no idea

Thank u sleepingbag, u have convinced me to abandon my lower-middle class job in this bastion of wealth and return to my dead-end, pre-degree forklift driving job in a rapidly-dying Midwestern city, u r my hero and have opened my eyes.

Joe Rogan enables the far right. That can't be news to anyone.

By giving voice to crazies like AJ? I'd say that's more in the name of entertainment, besides, he's been hosted by most of the popular leftist media at this point.

Would you wish to shut the likes of him up? Theres an ideology for that

ok here's a more refined one that maybe someone can actually engage with: capitalism is directly + completely responsible for the insane surplus of art and creative work that many of our careers depend on

indirectly, sure. directly? nah.

"insane surplus of art and creative work"

What planet do you live on? I'd like to live there. Sure as hell ain't this earth.

nope

1) art and creative work existed before capitalism and will exist after it
2) hella tons of shit mistaken for "art" and "creative work" these days

sbag

Why do you post here

― El Tomboto, Sunday, October 15, 2017 12:20 PM

bc i love everything

― sleepingbag, Sunday, October 15, 2017 2:27 PM

I have to admit my respect for this riposte

By giving voice to crazies like AJ?

Off the top of my head? Milo Yiannopolis, Ben Shapiro, Jordan Peterson, Gavin McInnes...

He is popularising these people, giving them an audience. I have an old friend whose entry-point to the far-right was Rogan. I see nothing to celebrate about him (though Newsradio was great, obv).

any basis for a "surplus" of creative arts has to be taken with the same grain of salt as assuming a "surplus" of technological advancement - if we're building and inventing new shit too fast for our society to adapt without killing ourselves, that would be a surplus, right? And yet we're not all dead (yet). The idea that any human endeavour is producing a surplus in 2017 seems to me to be inherently reactionary and actually, ahistorical! Tell me a time when we had exactly the right amount of creative arts. I bet it was a time that sucked.

1995 and rong

I always liked to call Joe Rogan Joe Rogaine

"insane surplus of art and creative work"

What planet do you live on? I'd like to live there. Sure as hell ain't this earth.

― Le Bateau Ivre, Sunday, October 15, 2017 1:10 PM (forty-two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

any basis for a "surplus" of creative arts has to be taken with the same grain of salt

― El Tomboto, Sunday, October 15, 2017 1:42 PM (nine minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i don't want to shock you but you are on a website where people are paid to have opinions about the emoji movie and the 73rd fall album

controversial opinion: this, from 2017's Fall album (actually their 82nd), is one of the best things released this year, and one of the best things The Fall have ever released

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sh7_QETK5k

about time someone actually posted a controversial opinion!

1. Art produced entirely before economic systems started shaping cultural expression - like, say, cave paintings - can be great but I'd still rather listen to Led Zeppelin.

2. Art produced in service to socialist ideologies can be boring as hell, o wait let me quote Dudley Randall on this

Telling a Black poet what he ought to write
Is like some Commissar of Culture in Russia telling a poet
He’d better write about the new steel furnaces in the Novobigorsk region,
Or the heroic feats of Soviet labor in digging the trans-Caucausus Canal,
Or the unprecedented achievement of workers in the sugar beet industry
who exceeded their quota by 400 percent (it was later discovered to
be a typist’s error).

Maybe the Russian poet is watching his mother die of cancer,
Or is bleeding from an unhappy love affair,
Or is bursting with happiness and wants to sing of wine, roses, and nightingales.

I’ll bet that in a hundred years the poems the Russian people will read, sing and love
Will be the poems about his mother’s death, his unfaithful mistress, or his
wine, roses and nightingales,
Not the poems about steel furnaces, the trans-Caucasus Canal, or the sugar
beet industry.

3. Nobody is forcing anybody to listen to particular recordings or read particular novels or look at particular paintings. Though we are all trapped here in our cages of capitalism, if we want to look at a particular painting or listen to a particular record or read a particular book, I don't see how it harms you.

I agree that there are a lot of things out there to look at / listen to / eat / drink. Many more than any one person can take in in a lifetime. But I have no idea what it means to say that there's a "surplus." No, not a lot of people can survive by purely creative labor. But that has always been true.

Writers and musicians and visual artists generally either have day jobs (e.g. teaching), exist on patronage, or (the rarest case) are hugely popular and successful in the marketplace, purely for their art. This last group has always been small, and always will be.

there are a lot of things out there to look at / listen to / eat / drink. Many more than any one person can take in in a lifetime.

I would guess this may have something to do with the human population of the earth now exceeding 8 billion, in tandem with a cultural legacy stretching back several millennia, during which time a few billion other humans indulged in the creation of artworks.

maybe capitalism has just produced a deficit of meaning and "creative endeavor" is our desperate attempt to cope with that loss

Off the top of my head? Milo Yiannopolis, Ben Shapiro, Jordan Peterson, Gavin McInnes...

He is popularising these people, giving them an audience. I have an old friend whose entry-point to the far-right was Rogan. I see nothing to celebrate about him (though Newsradio was great, obv).

― Leaghaidh am brón an t-anam bochd (dowd), Sunday, October 15, 2017 3:35 PM (forty-two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Really only Milo & Gavin are alt-right / far-right. Shapiro is just a boring Buckleyite (who left Breitbart last year after his colleagues refused to support Michelle Fields are Lewandowski assaulted her), & Peterson, while I find his obsession with pronouns really irritating, is an interesting theologian & philosopher. It's his audience that's largely odious. I'd put him in the same camp as Camille Paglia, which you know, say what you will, but they're certainly not far-right or alt-right. He's had a ton of liberals & leftists on his show, too.

Joe's Alex Jones podcast was pure entertainment. He got the dude stoned and drunk as fuck and even Eddie Bravo was like "No more weed, Alex."

So yeah, I would agree he's "alright."

maybe capitalism has just produced a deficit of meaning and "creative endeavor" is our desperate attempt to cope with that loss

Nah, people have always done creative stuff. Some have wanted to be compensated for their creative labor with a reprieve from other sorts of labor (either a partial or a full reprieve).

Humans went from hunter-gatherer bands to agrarian societies (relatively low specialization). Only with agrarianism, urbanism, and industrialism do you get the kind of specialization that allows someone to do ONLY creative labor and nothing else.

As cosmopolitan societies developed, so did specialization (e.g., it was okay if somebody just made shoes or whatever - they could still eat, because people valued shoes highly enough to feed the shoemaker).

Cultural products didn't feed or clothe anybody, so they were produced on a volunteer basis (as leisure activities), or were part of religious observance (altarpieces, etc.), or were supported by patronage from elites (who viewed their support of the arts as a status symbol).

To me, the fun question is not "how large does a society need to be to support a poet?" but "how large does a society need to be to support a poetry CRITIC?"

mmmm, i think you're conflating technological advance with sociological advance. 21st century society to me is less defined by freedom from the _need_ for subistence labor and more by a society that has no idea what to do with its citizens.

i also don't agree with your distinction between "religion" and "culture".

21st century society to me is less defined by freedom from the _need_ for subistence labor and more by a society that has no idea what to do with its citizens.

Is it the society's job to figure out "what to do with its citizens"? In my view that gives society too much agency and the citizens themselves too little. Surely it's individual people's job to figure out what to do with themselves, not wait to be told, no?

i also don't agree with your distinction between "religion" and "culture".

Okay, fair point. But in my view, either way, the central question for the artist is the same. I.e., "Can I please just do this for a living?" Can I just do this thing that I'm good at, and get paid for it, rather than laboring in the fields all day and coming back to the hut to do it for fun? Can my creativity help me avoid spending all day in the coal mine or tractor factory, or whatever?

If I'm a stained-glass artist in the age of the great cathedrals, I want to get hired as a glassmaker to a cathedral. There are relatively few secular sources of income, and cathedrals need a fuck-ton of stained glass. Whether I'm religious or not, it seems like the best place to put my efforts. I'm not going to work all day in a wheat field or shearing sheep, and then go home to do stained glass in my spare time. Maybe I'm convinced that what I'm doing glorifies the Lord, Maybe not. I want to be remunerated for my artistry.

If I'm a skilled blues guitarist in 60s/70s London, I'm going to want to be in a band with a record deal. Working all day for an accounting firm, or in the shipyards or whatever, is a bummer, no matter how pleased I am with the licks I lay down when I get home. I want to be remunerated for my artistry.

No interesting difference, whether it's religion or culture.

jftr, no one in the age of great cathedrals was doing stained glass part time at home for fun. stained glass artists were trained as apprentices in stained glass workshops and entered a guild upon attaining mastery. and it cost money to get your place as an apprentice. but I take your point, even if the social mechanisms differed.

"Is it the society's job to figure out "what to do with its citizens"? In my view that gives society too much agency and the citizens themselves too little. Surely it's individual people's job to figure out what to do with themselves, not wait to be told, no?"

i guess that depends on if you think of humans as being fundamentally rational actors, in a sort of david hume sense, or not. certainly democratic society is based on this belief, but in my view the predicted supremacy of reason never really panned out. people create, in my experience, not because they want to, but because they're driven to, either for its own sake or towards some other end (becoming famous, getting laid, etc.).

society doesn't ever necessarily tell its citizens what to do in so many words - when it does it can expect stiff resistance - but it does shape the boundaries of our expectations, it does tell us what we can and should dream. it instills its values into us. i'm unimpressed by the (basically rationalist and hume-ian) values america continues to attempt to instill.

The "far right" are not libertarian capitalists.

Xp sleepingbag

Like that's a destructive ideology too but that's not what Joe Rogan is enabling when he gives a platform to Gavin McInnes or Milo Yiannapolous.

I was waiting for someone to point that out (without even getting into the whole history of pre-/non-capitalist art).

I mean, there was truth to that argument. Even Marx admitted that capitalism was the engine of mind bogglig innovation and social progress. That's why it was supposed to give rise to the conditions of its own undoing...

Why for people make things if no $$$, waste of time dood.

It's capitalism has given fuckers the free time to craft the artisan pieces that we're tripping over in the st tbh

Ok in ilxtopia ppl will all join into worker communes where we make tractors or whatever, and then carve cunning figurines in our spare time, great, carry on lads

It doesn’t sound that bad tbh, if someone would just all that up (maybe stet?) I’ll go ahead and try to cram my gear into my pack.

Bespoke tractors fyi making tractors, or anything really, is just performance art now that we all only basically live off silicon valley intellectual sweat iirc

Maybe the Russian poet is watching his mother die of cancer,
Or is bleeding from an unhappy love affair,
Or is bursting with happiness and wants to sing of wine, roses, and nightingales.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/images/mayakovsky.jpg