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Remember, these are just random opinions of some random person.. Education, institutions, politics, technology, sex, work, art, and media. This seems like a very random categorization of "things".. Why is food or religion or violence or consumerism there?
Not that there's no innovation in niches, but those never reach the highlight. A friend of mine is a musician, and was fairly popular in his circles, but has almost a decade ago renounced all pandering to the audience, started playing incredibly complex music, polyrhythms, fractal melodies, uniquely tuned instruments - and has since lost almost all of his audience and the income which came from music. But - and this is important - he's never been both happier and more virtuosic as a musician, it fulfills him like more popular music never did.
Unfortunately, he'll probably never be as appreciated as before and must have other sources of income.
Edit: this is him and a single, weirdly tuned guitar: https://nikopotocnjak.bandcamp.com/
Anorexia means without appetite. We are demonstrably full of hunger for culture. But the quality and nature of that culture is changing rapidly with modern tech. I think the author's metaphor is better framed around nutritional value. Modern culture is rich in and dominated by junk. Consuming it builds junk values and junk ideas.
What the author (Luke Burgis) refers to as "thick" desires are, to me, simply the age old depth of human values - messy, complex, emotional. And he paints the countervailing ethos as "thin" - one dimensional man (to use Herbert Marcuse's term).
But I am not sure his food metaphor works as vibrantly as he would like, to describe culture, and in some places I think he gets it backwards. Also, one should more sensitive throwing around words like "anorexic" without thinking what that condition entails.
When I wrote Digital Vegan, it's original title was going to be something like "Digital self-defence" [1]. But I wanted to avoid too strong a combatative metaphor for that book. The Cody Brown quote that is the final title came late, in recognition of the hostility towards those wanting more control over their diet, whether digital or culinary, and the courage needed to take a principled stance.
But control, or the lack of it, and compensatory behaviours is at the heart of many problems. I had been reading Susie Albach's Bodies about dysmorphia, abuse and self-perception. The relation of these to technology had a big influence on me. However, reading about teen suicides, now linked to social media and having in some ways supplanted eating disorders in focus, led me to add this to the preface:
" Throughout this book I use the metaphor of food and consumption to talk about technology. In no way do I mean disrespect or to trivialise the serious conditions of anorexia, bulimia, avoidant eating, or obesity. Indeed, I believe that many forms of technological and material abuse share the same root causes. "
Whether we build ourselves and our culture "thin" or "thick" revolves around our ability to control what we take in, our knowledge of how it affects us, and our own extant self-image in relation to what we seek out.
[1] Thats phrase has been knocking around the cryptoparty scene since 2010, and Snowden uses it in "Permanent Record".
I think the issue is more about the lack of true diversity. Look at music for example - to achieve global success, bands all over the world need to start using western rhytms and melodies, losing the very things that made them unique. Not that there's no innovation in niches, but those never reach the highlight. A friend of mine is a musician, and was fairly popular in his circles, but has almost a decade ago renounc…
The moment you do stuff because you enjoy it and not to get paid or satisfy other people then your quality of life goes up.
This is why I get paid to do something I hate (software eng) and live a quiet existence doing what I love. Which I’m not even going to mention on here. Not even my family knows what I love.
I think the issue is more about the lack of true diversity. Look at music for example - to achieve global success, bands all over the world need to start using western rhytms and melodies, losing the very things that made them unique. Not that there's no innovation in niches, but those never reach the highlight. A friend of mine is a musician, and was fairly popular in his circles, but has almost a decade ago renounc…
In the case of a musician one such way (besides teaching) is playing in "cover bands" ("playing everything": Top40, Classics etc.) which paid astonishingly well on a gig to gig basis (from weddings to little local fests) once you are a bit established and known (even locally).
I was very young (17) when I started to do that (as a drummer) mostly because I "needed" some money for "better" equipment ;) At first I hated it but after a while I appreciated the actual discipline it required and it taught me practical musical communication skills through my time playing with a lot of different musicians. So, that it in a unexpected way did not only helped me out financially but also in becoming a more well-rounded musician (i.e. "paradoxically" recognizing my own style/preferences/tastes/musicality in a more nuanced way in all that noise of hypes, genres and sub-genres ...).
So, yeah the best case scenario is doing what one loves and getting paid for it but it isn't black and white either, I definitely at some point could have "sold my soul to the devil" to make more money (professionalize it) but I was actually quite satisfied with just not being constantly broke :D Once I met my basic needs (after establishing what they actually are: e.g. not more and better equipment) everything beyond I tried to consider a luxury, a bonus which worked out well for me (still enjoying doing music and the community that this brought with it) in that turbulent time of youth/early adulthood.
Edit: What a lot of people don't recognize: a handful of the musicians I met, later went on to become "successful". Well, in hindsight they struck me as highly obsessive and obviously for everyone around them fighting with some serious inner demons (addiction, depression, childhood traumas ...). For them to finally "made it" can only worsen their situation. Imagine having achieved what you wanted all along, being financially independent, you now literally have no (outside) reason anymore to be unhappy this can just only further estrange you from your environment. I think we are all familiar with the excesses of fame. "To be not successful" is way easier to handle for some highly vulnerable artists (doing great music) because they at least have a better chance to stay "grounded". I mean those driven personalities by exploring boundaries become really fluid, that's what also attracts a lot of audience, unfortunately: We marvel at the sight of the end result: "pearl" (which got produced by an extraordinarly amount of stress).
I think the issue is more about the lack of true diversity. Look at music for example - to achieve global success, bands all over the world need to start using western rhytms and melodies, losing the very things that made them unique. Not that there's no innovation in niches, but those never reach the highlight. A friend of mine is a musician, and was fairly popular in his circles, but has almost a decade ago renounc…
That’s pretty standard across everything. The moment you do stuff because you enjoy it and not to get paid or satisfy other people then your quality of life goes up. This is why I get paid to do something I hate (software eng) and live a quiet existence doing what I love. Which I’m not even going to mention on here. Not even my family knows what I love.
I think the issue is more about the lack of true diversity. Look at music for example - to achieve global success, bands all over the world need to start using western rhytms and melodies, losing the very things that made them unique. Not that there's no innovation in niches, but those never reach the highlight. A friend of mine is a musician, and was fairly popular in his circles, but has almost a decade ago renounc…
This is probably more related to chasing fortune and fame, rather than objective exceptionalism in skill building that you see online.
I think the issue is more about the lack of true diversity. Look at music for example - to achieve global success, bands all over the world need to start using western rhytms and melodies, losing the very things that made them unique. Not that there's no innovation in niches, but those never reach the highlight. A friend of mine is a musician, and was fairly popular in his circles, but has almost a decade ago renounc…
That’s pretty standard across everything. The moment you do stuff because you enjoy it and not to get paid or satisfy other people then your quality of life goes up. This is why I get paid to do something I hate (software eng) and live a quiet existence doing what I love. Which I’m not even going to mention on here. Not even my family knows what I love.
...at least write a nice novel/biography/whatever to be found together with the bodies decades later :) Create some enjoyment opportunity for others too, don't keep it all to yourself :P