This is the second video in my Abominable Ideas in Art series, and based on a group of articles I wrote a few years ago. Here I tackled the ubiquitous and self-righteous notion that all art is political. People assume this is a progressive idea, but because it places art (all art and art history]…
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The most important thing to understand here is that the sanctity of the individual is the most universal and comprehensive — you could even say collective — way of thinking about political and economic systems because everyone is an individual. Some people would want to scream “Libertarian”, but some libertarians seem more concerned with the…
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The conversations we are told we so desperately need to have, have already been had, and better, before I was born. Science races forward so fast that the science fiction of my youth has been outstripped in many instances — consider the Starship Enterprise didn’t even have computers that could run Windows — and the…
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After jettisoning the news for 3 weeks, I’ve started a YouTube channel and produced 1.5 videos.
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By now I’ve seen every documentary Adam Curtis has put out, and his latest 6-part series is available on his own channel on YouTube. It’s of the same high standard as are his previous works. I’ll link to all of them for convenience at the bottom of the post. Part 1: Bloodshed on Wolf Mountain.…
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Why politics are the enemy of art.
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What quackery is this?! Is your pronoun going to be “that”, or is “that” already taken? No woo-woo here, folks. I’m not saying I don’t have a shape, color, or gender, or that those things don’t have importance, I merely point out what should be so obvious that everyone takes it for granted. It is…
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I’m retiring from politics. I’d managed to avoid engaging in the political quagmire for months on end, largely because I publicly pledged to do so after the media and politicians created an extremely volatile, self-fulfilling prophecy of racial discord, hatred, distrust, and violence, all in the name of advertising clicks and other ulterior motives. I…
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I’ve railed against conservatives on this blog. When authors of a study dared suggest that political affiliation was dependent on “predispositions” rather than choice, I fumed: That kind of milquetoast thinking is just finding excuses for social cowardice. We know that social change has demanded great sacrifice, because those who have power, whether they are…
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I’m old school on reality. Well, technically, I’m kinda’ old period. And white. And male. You could say I am a remnant of a bygone era. I still believe that reality should be sought, and accepted, and that to do so is healthy and necessary. We should defer to the greater argument. There are a…
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[This is a re-post of an article I wrote 3 years ago, and which sadly has become increasingly relevant, so much so that one can’t even articulate why it is relevant today without risking being censored for doing so. Censorship is no longer the bad word it used to be, or something liberals oppose on…
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I vowed on September 26th not to say anything on my blog about politics until the election was over. I succeeded, and it’s a lot harder to NOT speak out than it is to vent. The election lingers, but the voting is over. I just have a small observation or two. The vast majority of…
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At least until after the election, folks. The political atmosphere has been in the red for months, and as election time gets closer, it’s likely to spill over into an eruption of anger and lashing out. Well, that’s if the last election is anything to go by. And there are still people I’ve had no…
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Russel called me names, and I hit him. Hit him in the gut. What did he call you? Brown eyes. I’m sure you’ve heard about Jane Eliot’s infamous Blue eyes/Brown eyes Experiment, hearkening back to a time when we were permitted as a society to conduct social experiments on students for the greater good of…
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Everything I was taught as a child was good is now bad.
America is bad. The pilgrims are bad. The founding fathers are bad. Cowboys are bad. Christianity is bad. Christopher Columbus is bad. The police are bad. The free market is bad. White people are bad. Men are bad. The nuclear family is bad. Heterosexuality is bad. Individuality is bad. Independence is bad. Rational thought is bad.
In the art world painting is bad. Originality is bad. The old masters are bad. Skill is bad. Beauty is bad.
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We live in a time of extraordinary moralizing. You may have noticed a no-holds-barred competition to see who is the most morally pure, and who isn’t, either by birthright or by belief. There’s always some of that going on. When I was growing up it issued from the religious right. Nancy Reagan famously advised to…
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These days everything is controversial and there’s little certainty about anything. Take for example the endless battles over what constitutes a healthy diet [consider Jordan Peterson and his daughter only consume beef, salt, and water]. A big part of this is, I suspect, because somewhere along the line people stopped believing that it is essential…
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Museum Curator forced to resign
over “toxic white supremacist beliefs”!
Last month I made a pact with myself to not write or comment publicly about things which are happening in the world right now. Part of my rationale was to spare myself getting involved in the toxic miasma, both in terms of time, energy, and mental well-being. But there’s something darker lurking. It is not…
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“There is no covid-19” ~ David Icke These days we all have to deal with conspiracy wackos, some merely eccentric, and then there’s the ones that call you “sheeple”, tell you that you “believe everything your government tells you”, and “you don’t know the truth”. We learn to avoid certain topics: the shape of the…
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We humans are really flubbing this new decade. It’s moving a little beyond just being insulting and enervating. Now it’s starting to hurt. Above you can see the prognosis for the next 5 days in terms of pollution where I live, juxtaposed with a close-up of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes the COVID-19 disease. The…
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[I wote this yesterday morning when the power was out. My info on the Wuhan-flu is thus a little behind in numbers, but otherwise still relevant.] Within a minute of waking up this morning the power went out. Turns out something happened to a power cable by the superstore around the corner. That might have…
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Suddenly I realized how ridiculous it is to expect people to care. People are too subsumed in their own lives, responsibilities, worries, and so on to be expected to even have the wherewithal to care about you or me or this or that person, or group of people. Asking people to care is like asking…
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Gotta’ love me some pollution! I’m an expat who’s lived in Asia for about 15 years, and in some of the more polluted parts. I’m also rather health conscious and trying to level up my diet and exercise regimen. I feel like I’ve got some obstacles that might be making that a bit more of…
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If you can’t beat ’em. Ban ’em! While Facebook and Instagram ostensibly banned “far right extremists”, banning people one doesn’t agree with itself resembles a “far right extremist” tactic. Banishing the opposition grates against my more progressive sensibility. Censorship is a tool historically associated with abuse of power, silencing dissent, and squashing the underdog. The…
Read MoreA few days ago MoMA uploaded a video of their “salon” on the topic of “White Male”. It could have been called “White Male: The Enemy” and the content would not have needed to change. I find this sort of thing in 2019 not to be the more enlightened, open-minded, generous, just, and progressive…
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A radical new approach to chess. Deciding winners by jury instead of by checkmate? I’d probably stick with the old version. The new variety, outlined in the blog-post I’m sharing below, seems be a bit nebulous for this old dog. Somehow this reminded me of the art world, but don’t mind me. I shall shuffle…
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Just going to share this without comment, which doesn’t mean I’m endorsing it or taking any side for or against. I think I’m afraid to formulate an opinion. Sometimes I wonder if I’ve slipped into some parallel dimensions where, well, everything seems backwards or like a parody. I am perhaps softening up to the idea…
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