I chuckled. Then I hesitated. Is the author suggesting cultural veganism?
Cultural anorexia: The pursuit of thicker desires in a thinning world
21–30 of 73 posts
Re: Cultural anorexia: The pursuit of thicker desires in a thinning world
#22I don't think that the author has fully outlined the case for cultural anorexia. If I was going to try and prove the premise: that people are now shedding a wide cultural "diet" for one consisting of a few mass produced, single sourced things. But I don't see evidence of that. If anything its the reverse. What I will concede is that locality of the cultural "sources" have gone. You're not going to find your next life…
"for one consisting of a few mass produced, single sourced things."
Clay Shirky made the point that something like the Internet expands the total number of offerings available to one person while decreasing the total number of offerings available overall. He hints at this in his essay on powerlaws:
https://web.archive.org/web/20060208093032/http://www.shirky...
He went into greater detail in a later essay, but that later essay now seems to be offline.
Re: Cultural anorexia: The pursuit of thicker desires in a thinning world
#23I 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…
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.
Starting with the 60s hippies who need a haircut got rather into Indian stuff. In the 80s you had an African wave with the likes of Paul Simon. Peter Gabriel was all over the map. Hardly niche. All of this comes and goes, and comes round again. A lot of the biggest stars at the moment are not from the US/West.
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
Now whether or not there is money in it is altogether a different question. Music has been devalued. You/Friend might enjoy Rick Beato ranting about this subject on Youtube.
This isn't a new thing, if he wants to make money he needs to look cute, even the Beatles started by getting a makeover and going the boy band route. Such is life.
Re: Cultural anorexia: The pursuit of thicker desires in a thinning world
#24I 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…
"to achieve global success", it's unfortunate that that is often the goal indeed.
Globalization kills a lot, look at Khao San Road in Bangkok, in 20 years it changed from small street stalls to big global chains. And the great homogenization will continue. In the first Ringworld, this process is also described, transport booths (in a flash you walk to any destination on earth) made every city the same. The internet and cheap flights have already started this process.
Edit I also remember this being posted here once: "The same damn avocado toast" or something (can't find it anymore), about a traveler that got the same damn avocado toast everywhere he went.
Re: Cultural anorexia: The pursuit of thicker desires in a thinning world
#25One of the often missed features of religions is that of cultural critic and cultivator. A group of people who find works of art that at least don't offend their sensibilities and which align with their didactic goals (child rearing, conversion, etc...) Having an explicit standard for judging art gives a means of determining what is that thick and thin: which pieces of entertainment are just that and which are meant to be shared, reenjoyed, and such.
Not endorsing a specific religion or philosophy here, but how is one to aspire to something more meaningful and deeper when they cannot even distinguish what that is?
Re: Cultural anorexia: The pursuit of thicker desires in a thinning world
#26It’s a class thing isn’t it?
Today poor people are fat but kids in rich families get anorexic because it is a way they can control the agenda. (Being ‘thin’ looks like it is mirroring the high-achieving attitude of the parents which makes them unresponsive for the children, but it ultimately creates a crisis which forces attention to be given.)
Re: Cultural anorexia: The pursuit of thicker desires in a thinning world
#27I 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…
Well, then I'm glad that there are plenty of bands that don't want to achieve global success and are perfectly content to continue doing their thing. I'd much rather listen to those bands (old and new) than the ones striving for global success.
Re: Cultural anorexia: The pursuit of thicker desires in a thinning world
#28I 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…
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. Yes, sure, everything is about a lack of diversity. You might want to look some more into musical theory and where those twelves notes, rhythms and melodies originate from in the first…
+1 for Rick Beato, excellent resource and cool dude!
Re: Cultural anorexia: The pursuit of thicker desires in a thinning world
#29I recommend C.S. Lewis’ The Discarded Image if this article resonates.
Re: Cultural anorexia: The pursuit of thicker desires in a thinning world
#30When I see someone mention human nature in some blog, I stop reading...
Human nature is our species ability to transform nature. A cat, for example, is only doing hunting for immediate consumption. A pet cat is even more limited, just a furrring biological shell, he does not hunt.
So when a human is limited in all his potentials, thinking, planning, building, etc to something like a tool on the market, optimized for some task, when human relations limited to objects of consumption... this will reduce human to just one sided being.
May be this optimization was once necessary some time ago, since labor productivity was low and this high division of labor allowed optimized production, to feed everyone.
At the moment, the labor productivity is so high, that only 10-20% working on something necessary for living. But all work is still done as this optimized instrumental labor, as life depends on it. This is not required anymore.
The solution is obvious.. build more not as an optimized one sided "worker", but as an universal human being, as a free time activity.
Which politically means that the work day should be reduced.. and this is not easy to implement. But if you really want a social change, this is the way to go.