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The social obligation to be bad at things

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Re: The social obligation to be bad at things

#81

Post by wbronitsky »

the_af wrote: post #79
wbronitsky wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh boy do I resonate with this. Thank you for sharing this! I remember the first time I saw "Fountain" by Duchamps, which, for the uninitiated, is a urinal, on its side, signed and dated by the artist. For years, decades, I cast it aside in my mind as something silly, something artsy, something that wasn't for me. It was ugly, vulgar, and above all, obvious. For years, seeing replica after replica in modern and conte…

> I remember the first time I saw "Fountain" by Duchamps, which, for the uninitiated, is a urinal, on its side, signed and dated by the artist I totally, completely agree with your point and with the parent post ("I could have created this", "but you didn't"), but... ...you can still, after all of this, conclude that the piece of art is snobbish, artless garbage. In fact I reserve the right to do so. I agree with you…

I agree, and did not mean to imply judgement against anyone who dislikes "Fountain" and other, similar pieces of art.

I don't even know how I truly feel about "Fountain" either; all I know is that it is quite thought provoking for me and has taught me a lot about how I think about and digest the world. To me, even if the art is ugly and snobbish, it still has merit if it helps us better explore our world. The art piece's mere existence allows us to have this conversation about the relative merits of different forms of art, which I believe to be meritorious in and of itself.

I think this has led us to an interesting, if for now rhetorical question: what is art for? Well, at least I'll have something to think about for the rest of the day :)

Re: The social obligation to be bad at things

#82

Post by LouisSayers »

Reminds me back when I went skiing for the first time with my gf at the time.

She had lots of experience skiing and I guess wanted to “show me the slopes”. In showing me how to do the pizza stop, I said “but all the pros do the side to side thing...” so I did that instead.

By the end of the day I was going down all the slopes with her (I still lost my skis a couple times), but she seemed a bit pissed off and I remember her saying “how can you do in one day what took me three months?!”.

She did not seem happy...

Re: The social obligation to be bad at things

#83

Post by hoorayimhelping »

evmar wrote: post #12

I found that, as a person who (sometimes) creates things, my attitude towards other people who create things has significantly shifted. When I was younger I would just see the fault -- the typos, the narcissism, the pointlessness, the already-been-done-better-by-others -- of people's work. But after trying a bit, it sometimes (for the same reasons the OP talks about) creating anything new ends up being really hard in…

The Man in the Arena is almost obligatory at this point:

>It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizenship_in_a_Republic

Re: The social obligation to be bad at things

#84

Post by the_af »

wbronitsky wrote: post #81
the_af wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I remember the first time I saw "Fountain" by Duchamps, which, for the uninitiated, is a urinal, on its side, signed and dated by the artist I totally, completely agree with your point and with the parent post ("I could have created this", "but you didn't"), but... ...you can still, after all of this, conclude that the piece of art is snobbish, artless garbage. In fact I reserve the right to do so. I agree with you…

I agree, and did not mean to imply judgement against anyone who dislikes "Fountain" and other, similar pieces of art. I don't even know how I truly feel about "Fountain" either; all I know is that it is quite thought provoking for me and has taught me a lot about how I think about and digest the world. To me, even if the art is ugly and snobbish, it still has merit if it helps us better explore our world. The art pie…

Thanks for taking this the right way :) It's definitely a conversation worth having. There are plenty of things I consider art that other people despise.

Re: The social obligation to be bad at things

#85

Post by ngerrity »

leroy_masochist wrote: post #36

> I was at a liberating structures event recently, and one of the people I was working with related an anecdote in which he tried a party game as an ice breaker. Many of those are cringe, but this one sounded fun and inoffensive (it was a sentence continuation game where each person said a word following on from a previous one, in an attempt to construct something that sounded like an aphorism). Most people were relu…

I don't think there's anything wrong with not wanting to participate in silly games like that all the time, but if you never try to step out of your comfort zone in a public setting, I think you're missing out on an opportunity to grow as a person. You might just have fun doing something you thought was stupid or you thought you would hate.

Re: The social obligation to be bad at things

#86

Post by throwaway_pdp09 »

wbronitsky wrote: post #48
mikeyouse wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a similar experience after visiting a modern art museum with a creative friend of mine. I jokingly said "Even I could have done that" about one of the pieces and my friend replied, "But you didn't" -- hit me in one of those profound realization kind of ways. I started thinking about all of the effort it takes to envision something, find the resources, build it, work to get it displayed somewhere. Just creating…

Oh boy do I resonate with this. Thank you for sharing this! I remember the first time I saw "Fountain" by Duchamps, which, for the uninitiated, is a urinal, on its side, signed and dated by the artist. For years, decades, I cast it aside in my mind as something silly, something artsy, something that wasn't for me. It was ugly, vulgar, and above all, obvious. For years, seeing replica after replica in modern and conte…

> the simple fact of calling this art was a profound statement, one worth considering within its context. Maybe this piece of art had so much to teach me about perspective, context and expression

Well done. You finally swallowed the bullshit.

Re: The social obligation to be bad at things

#87

Post by Godel_unicode »

jmaa wrote: post #51
Godel_unicode wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can I agree with his overall premise but disagree with thinking that scheduling weekly one-on-one's with your wife is in any way a good idea? No. That's the whole point. If it works for them why would it be bad? Let's try and not shame people for having different approaches to things.

Well, depends what he means with "your"; OP specifically, or an arbitrary person? Because I think we are getting dangerously close to shooting down useful criticism and discussion for fear of hurting someones feelings. It's obviously insensitive to say that OP is a bad person because he is doing one-on-ones, but it should be totally acceptable to say "this is weird (from my perspective), I can see several issues with…

Weird is one of those truly terrible words that's used to control people who are different than us. It's nice for the person using it, since it doesn't actually mean anything and is thus impervious to arguments stronger than "nuh uh". It's almost never actually the right word, and should be avoided in favor of more descriptive language. In order for criticism to be constructive, it must be easily understandable by the person receiving it.

"Don't call people weird" seems like a good general principle (unless they self-identify as weird, in which case knock yourself out). I don't understand this compulsion to try and get people to fall in line and stop being weird.

The from-my-perspective and you-do-you parts are the most important parts, why would you leave them out? You're not in charge.

Re: The social obligation to be bad at things

#88

Post by mc32 »

wbronitsky wrote: post #48
mikeyouse wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a similar experience after visiting a modern art museum with a creative friend of mine. I jokingly said "Even I could have done that" about one of the pieces and my friend replied, "But you didn't" -- hit me in one of those profound realization kind of ways. I started thinking about all of the effort it takes to envision something, find the resources, build it, work to get it displayed somewhere. Just creating…

Oh boy do I resonate with this. Thank you for sharing this! I remember the first time I saw "Fountain" by Duchamps, which, for the uninitiated, is a urinal, on its side, signed and dated by the artist. For years, decades, I cast it aside in my mind as something silly, something artsy, something that wasn't for me. It was ugly, vulgar, and above all, obvious. For years, seeing replica after replica in modern and conte…

I believe the original was disposed of and only a photograph of it remains. All the physical versions would be replicas.

Re: The social obligation to be bad at things

#89

Post by matwood »

will_pseudonym wrote: post #40
evmar wrote: post #12

I found that, as a person who (sometimes) creates things, my attitude towards other people who create things has significantly shifted. When I was younger I would just see the fault -- the typos, the narcissism, the pointlessness, the already-been-done-better-by-others -- of people's work. But after trying a bit, it sometimes (for the same reasons the OP talks about) creating anything new ends up being really hard in…

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the d…

There are many variations on this theme, and the message is all the same - it's better to try and fail than to not try at all. And to expand on it further, growth and learning comes from the the struggle and often coming up short. I was about to walk out onto the mat for my first BJJ comp and told my trainer I was nervous about letting him down. He paraphrased the Roosevelt quote above with 'any person who steps into the arena isn't letting me down'.

Another, what I would also consider a variation of the above, is the quote from Michael Jordan, "I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."

Re: The social obligation to be bad at things

#90

Post by eckza »

the_af wrote: post #79
wbronitsky wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh boy do I resonate with this. Thank you for sharing this! I remember the first time I saw "Fountain" by Duchamps, which, for the uninitiated, is a urinal, on its side, signed and dated by the artist. For years, decades, I cast it aside in my mind as something silly, something artsy, something that wasn't for me. It was ugly, vulgar, and above all, obvious. For years, seeing replica after replica in modern and conte…

> I remember the first time I saw "Fountain" by Duchamps, which, for the uninitiated, is a urinal, on its side, signed and dated by the artist I totally, completely agree with your point and with the parent post ("I could have created this", "but you didn't"), but... ...you can still, after all of this, conclude that the piece of art is snobbish, artless garbage. In fact I reserve the right to do so. I agree with you…

I don’t want to wade too deep into these waters, because I will admit that I am not prepared to properly navigate them myself - but I think it’s a common misconception that art is “supposed” to be good, or have a certain quality about it.

Not all art should inspire wonder. Not all art should be of any kind of quality. I am not a big fan of that piece, myself; but one wonders if perhaps, the very intent of creating that piece was to evoke those kinds of feelings, that kind of reaction?

I listen to a fair amount of noise music. Not all of it is even very listenable. A lot of it evokes feelings of dread, discomfort, pain, anxiety. Of course it sounds terrible - that’s the point. It’s a vehicle for emotional catharsis. It’s a thing that makes you feel something, even if they aren’t feelings that most people enjoy. Even if wanting to experience those feelings is not something that most people could relate to.

Just a perspective. I agree with you, that we should be able to speak freely about art, and that it has nothing to do with how you should be perceived as a person if you do not consider certain pieces to have any sort of artistic merit.

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