__ posts a lot of photographs, many of which I cannot look at without feeling profoundly sad. And so you turn your face away. Pictures of the those who may be defeated but who are still defiant (all the people you've never heard of, or not wanted to hear of); other pictures of dead bodies, old people and babies lying in the dust, ghost-like. Migrants and refugees, one moment of their despair caught on film.
__ is the rarest of birds, someone's whose integrity shines through.
~~~
Re-reading Llosa's somewhat polemical writing on culture. Well, what do you want: a nuanced critique? He tells it like it is and an old man has the right to cut out all the bullshit. Uncle N, the wise old fox, said to me: after you've turned thirty you should speak frankly, candidly, bluntly if needs be. Ubo, my Jew, would never agree to that; he'd take someone down but through wit and guile and his dazzling, smiling face. Both are old-world people, from a time and place that barely exists any more...
A culture in the grip of cheap hedonism might sink as it sacrifices everything to amusement.
Light sex, light reading; travel lightly. Instant living, the revelatory "now". Religion for dummies. Einstein explained in a 3 minute youtube clip. Buddhism for CEOs. The artists decided that everything was possible. why does that remind you of Arendt: In the camps, the impossible became possible.
The 'image bath,' a form of docile submission to emotions and sensations triggered by an unusual and at times very brilliant bombardment of images..
Scandal, gossip, titillation, fear-mongering. That's what journalism has become. We're all on the internet highway, the road to nowhere.
Where are the intellectuals? Instead, what you have is their pale reflection: scholars and academics who, like so many others, are on the game.
The spectacle is everywhere: in politics, sports, journalism. Religious extremists and the war machine are the ultimate expression of this desire to convey what we knew long ago: the medium is the message. But religion more generally is spectacular, a 'show' (tamasha). the self-righteous must be seen to be religious-the final triumph of nominalism, of appearance over substance. The proliferation of sects and cults and evangelical missionaries foaming at the mouth, their pockets bursting from all the cash that's been stuffed in them by businessmen.
Lighten up, dude.
Excitement, stupefaction, extreme boredom leading to extreme sports, excess, a drug-infused release. Cocaine, ecstasy, heroin..a release from responsibility, expectations, a return to something primitive; to lose oneself in that "oceanic feeling," to drown one's sorrows.
Musical mysticism where, to the the rhythm of raw voices and instruments, both amplified to an inaudible level, individuals are no longer individuals; they become a mass [returning[ to the the primitive times of magic and the tribe.
The world given over to fashion, showmen, advertisers, pimps and circus performers. Frivolity and easy pleasure are the flavour of the day.
There's so much innocence in occupation. No, no, it's more complex than that-it always has to be: we, the occupiers, the oppressors, we're human too. Gives us our moment in the spotlight. Why can't we look sexy too?
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