I appreciate your thoughts on the nightmare that is in progress. In response, I am sharing this, hoping it adds a useful dimension (pardon the length). I cannot recommend immersing one's self in Tolstoy's masterpiece highly enough for some human perspective at this moment in our collective history.
At that time when Russia was half conquered and the inhabitants of Moscow were fleeing to the distant provinces, and one popular militia after another was rising to the defense of the fatherland, we, who were not living at that time, involuntarily imagine that all Russian people, great and small, were taken up only with sacrificing themselves, saving he fatherland, or weeping over its loss. The stories and descriptions of that time all speak without exception of self-sacrifice, love of the fatherland, despair, grief, and the heroism of Russians. In reality, it was not like that. It seems so to us only because all we see in the past is the general historical interest of the time, and we do not see all those personal, human interests that the people of that time had. And yet in reality the personal interests of the day are so much more significant than the general interests that as a result the general interests are never felt (or even noticed at all). The majority of the people of that time paid no attention to the general course of things, but were guided only by the personal interests of the day. And those people were the most useful figures of that time.
Those, however, who tried to understand the general course of things and wanted to take part in it with self-sacrifice and heroism, were the most useless members of society; they saw everything inside out, and everything they did to be useful turned out to be useless nonsense, like Pierre’s and Mamonov’s regiments, which looted Russian villages, like the lint that young ladies plucked and that never got to the wounded, and so on. […] In historical events what is most obvious is the prohibition against eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge. Only unconscious activity bears fruit, and a man who plays a role in a historical event never understands its significance. If he attempts to understand it, he is struck with fruitlessness.
"It got censored by one of these garbage bots whose output is dictated by the utterly stellar work of corporate “fact-checkers” on the grounds that it was a misattribution."
Are you allowed to say what platform this took place on?
Also, I am more and more of the opinion that academia in the West has been dead for a long time, and modern intellectuals are by and large wraiths and ghouls parading around in its flayed skin.
Culture-jamming has a long, noble, hilarious history and it does promote unlicensed thinking. But it has weaknesses. Realistically, you can only elicit something from people who are already uncomfortable with prevailing bullshit. It's also vulnerable to recuperation through firehose marketing—i.e. using it to create a "rebel sell". Small groups and efforts are easy to pick off, too. I'd love to see what a mass movement rickroll could create...
“Every word, if it does not have to be a direct lie, is nonetheless obliged not to contradict the general, common lie. There exists a collection of ready-made phrases, of labels, a selection of ready made lies” - Solzhenitsyn
Happened to come across this shortly after reading and wanted to share that this is not entirely unique.
I appreciate your thoughts on the nightmare that is in progress. In response, I am sharing this, hoping it adds a useful dimension (pardon the length). I cannot recommend immersing one's self in Tolstoy's masterpiece highly enough for some human perspective at this moment in our collective history.
At that time when Russia was half conquered and the inhabitants of Moscow were fleeing to the distant provinces, and one popular militia after another was rising to the defense of the fatherland, we, who were not living at that time, involuntarily imagine that all Russian people, great and small, were taken up only with sacrificing themselves, saving he fatherland, or weeping over its loss. The stories and descriptions of that time all speak without exception of self-sacrifice, love of the fatherland, despair, grief, and the heroism of Russians. In reality, it was not like that. It seems so to us only because all we see in the past is the general historical interest of the time, and we do not see all those personal, human interests that the people of that time had. And yet in reality the personal interests of the day are so much more significant than the general interests that as a result the general interests are never felt (or even noticed at all). The majority of the people of that time paid no attention to the general course of things, but were guided only by the personal interests of the day. And those people were the most useful figures of that time.
Those, however, who tried to understand the general course of things and wanted to take part in it with self-sacrifice and heroism, were the most useless members of society; they saw everything inside out, and everything they did to be useful turned out to be useless nonsense, like Pierre’s and Mamonov’s regiments, which looted Russian villages, like the lint that young ladies plucked and that never got to the wounded, and so on. […] In historical events what is most obvious is the prohibition against eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge. Only unconscious activity bears fruit, and a man who plays a role in a historical event never understands its significance. If he attempts to understand it, he is struck with fruitlessness.
War and Peace, Volume IV, Part one, IV
"It got censored by one of these garbage bots whose output is dictated by the utterly stellar work of corporate “fact-checkers” on the grounds that it was a misattribution."
Are you allowed to say what platform this took place on?
Also, I am more and more of the opinion that academia in the West has been dead for a long time, and modern intellectuals are by and large wraiths and ghouls parading around in its flayed skin.
RE: rickrolling.
Culture-jamming has a long, noble, hilarious history and it does promote unlicensed thinking. But it has weaknesses. Realistically, you can only elicit something from people who are already uncomfortable with prevailing bullshit. It's also vulnerable to recuperation through firehose marketing—i.e. using it to create a "rebel sell". Small groups and efforts are easy to pick off, too. I'd love to see what a mass movement rickroll could create...
“Every word, if it does not have to be a direct lie, is nonetheless obliged not to contradict the general, common lie. There exists a collection of ready-made phrases, of labels, a selection of ready made lies” - Solzhenitsyn
Happened to come across this shortly after reading and wanted to share that this is not entirely unique.