art is a waste of time; reducing suffering is all that matters

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Books/Pix/pictures/2012/4/2/1333369354284/Van-Goghs-Self-Portrait-W-008.jpg

But who will reduce your suffering

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ansBui-_w80

trying to think back to that moment when natalie portman changes zach braff's life by making him listen to the shins on headphones, and how a similar technique might improve (or NOT improve - i'm leaving that in as an option) the lives of impoverished people

destroy art & worship the ultimate suffering

for effective altruists your suffering is probably inconsequential and aside from its net contribution to teh whole only matters insofar as it stops you from more effectively reducing the suffering of others

i.e. suck it up there's people dyin

shit i shoulda included a 'cause the utmost suffering' deathmetal evangelist option

grub first then aesthetics

Well what about self-harm

If you could save the lives of two or more people by killing yourself and donating your organs would that be a permissible thing to do

What if a person you save from suffering grows up to be... the Son of Hitler

What if the process of killing yourself in order to donate your organs to save others was itself done as an art project (perhaps somebody filmed you as you were being vivisected)

in that case should arrange to have a sadistic transplant surgeon too

refusal to enjoy ur happy life is a great disrespect to those less fortunate

I find that most of us seem to ultimately care about something close to the concept of ‘wellbeing’ – we want everyone to be happy and fulfilled, and we promote anything that leads to humans and animals feeling happy and fulfilled. I rarely meet Effective Altruists who care about, say, beauty, knowledge, life or the environment for their own sake – rather, they tend to find that they care about these things only insofar as they contribute to wellbeing.

I wonder why they feel the need to couch it in this way, i.e.

(a) We don't care about beauty, knowledge, life or the environment for their own sake.

rather than

(b) We care about beauty, knowledge, life and the environment for their own sake, but they're ultimately trumped by human wellbeing.

As it is, (a) just sounds perversely shallow. It's the "one thought too many" objection in Susan Wolf's "Moral Saints" - if you care about the environment only insofar as it contributes to human wellbeing, then you've introduced a mediating condition that doesn't ring true to depth of love people feel towards nature. They could avoid (a) just by claiming that human and animal wellbeing is the thing that matters most, rather than the only thing that ultimately matters. But that would mean complicating the utilitarian picture.

art, because suffering is our lot in life (philosophio-religio-pessimist option) otm

muddling thru

Really what this makes me think about is whether we define "happiness and wellbeing" (I'm more thinking of the happiness part) positively, as in active affirmations that put us in a state that we think of as 'happy', or negatively, that is, lack of any environmental factors that would cause stress and pain and terror

yeah I feel like one possible logical outcome of this would be, like, opium dens.

(lifespan and happiness - suffering) is a difficult merit function to calculate. The sensitivity of this merit function with respect to a change in art production is also unclear. I am shruggie otis on this one.

To the woman He said, "I will greatly multiply Your pain in childbirth, In pain you will bring forth children; Yet your desire will be for your husband, And he will rule over you." 17Then to Adam He said, "Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, 'You shall not eat from it'; Cursed is the ground because of you; In toil you will eat of it All the days of your life.…

just sayin

i stand with the philosophio-religio-pessimists but have a growing respect for these hardline utilitarians. especially the ones worried about all the people in the future who might not get to live if skynet happens. (that was the previous Aeon article I read. What is this curious magazine?)

Beauty, knowledge, life, and the environment would to me seem intrinsic to true human well-being, not just survival. I mean obviously we have to take care of survival first, but the ideal world is one where everyone has the chance for happiness, (i.e. *thriving* rather than hedonism).

I have trouble thinking through some of their positions - how does this intersect with the law? Like if there were broadly victimless, lowish risk insurance or tax frauds that would give you extra money to give to de-worming charities, would you be you morally obliged to do that?

This EA thing strikes me as weirdly anti-human for a type of humanitarianism.

why is distraction, ie absorption in art, not conducive to this in a brave new world sense?

doesn't minimizing suffering lead to some kind malthussian reverse repugnant conclusion where like - we should kill everyone so no one has to suffer anymore bc life after all is suffering?

xp
Inefficient: opportunity cost of culture-production + substitutability of forms of distraction?

I voted for Shruggie Otis, his art has reduced my suffering in life.

there's the "anti-natalist" thing, mordy.

Schopenhauer otm

i think the singerite EAs care primarily about what could be done about the suffering right now

they probably think it would be nice to be able to develop and pursue happiness or whatever in all these other ways

IF there weren't unnecessary unmitigated suffering that it would be a better use of our time/effort to take care of first

It seems to me that pretty much every cultural grouping of humans in the world devotes some time to making something that could be called "art" no matter how impoverished. Perhaps we should go lecture them about how they're wasting their time when they could be "alleviating suffering." It also seems to me that a life focused singlemindedly on improving physical and material well being is a life of mental suffering.

art reduces suffering this question eats its own tail

some art increases suffering

some things could do both! like junk food, maybe.

i love cheeseburgers but i am wracked by ethical guilt when i succumb to eating one. (though i guess the suffering of animals is being tabled for this discussion)

agree with the "anti-human" vibe I'm getting from this article. EA people quoted treat people as disposable machines who have an outside obligation to function at highest capacity to save other lives ... for what, for the lives saved to be disposable machines, too? cuz life without art, beauty, etc., would be pretty bland, there's probably a reason humans (and neanderthals!) got into this shit in the first place.

it seems like a weird combination of dehumanizing Anglo-American capitalism with "x lives saved" as profits returned. they don't even get into the classic problem of overpopulation ... the more lives you save, the more suffering you create in a world that can't handle everyone at once, particularly with climate change looking like it's irreversible. but these people don't seem to think that far! anyone who willingly devotes themselves to radicalism is going to have some screws loose, I guess.

Having EA explained to me by an adherent would increase my suffering.

I don't think bill gates is a disciple but I suspect his foundation operates on similar principles, which leads to things like nuclear advocacy, which I'm going to assume he's done the research and has seen it as the rational way forward but it just strikes me as the same kind of lack of imagination for something greater that results in shitty windows that makes me worry that we will see shitty but rational cost effective philanthropy dominating just by the sheer weight of his foundation

On the other hand it is really hard to argue against eradicating polio malaria etc

lol nerds

Here’s a simple test to determine if you’re creating art for yourself or for the world.

can i post my percentage on facebook

‘It’s hard to see how a vase or something would really impact culture in any one way, because what does it teach you about life?’

Isn't there a very famous poem about that?

lol consequentialists

i like that the liberal-capitalist ideal of the artist (teaching people that gays are good, encouraging the altruistic pursuit of money) is so close to the stalinist one (the engineer of the soul)

First, afaics nothing is going to stop people from creating art of some kind. We've been doing it since approximately 30,000 years ago. Suggesting that we stop this activity is like King Knut commanding the waves to turn back.

Second, the argument that the creation of art is squandering some vast amount of resources that could effectively be used to reduce suffering seems very poorly grounded. The resources required to create many forms of art, e.g a dance, a poem, a song, are effectively nil. You don't need anything but your own mind and body. The amounts of money paid for certain art objects applies to such a tiny range of artistic output it is ridiculous to equate this with "art" as a whole.

Third, the idea of diverting economic resources to altruistic uses is quite vague. Who would get these resources and how would they be used to reduce suffering in a community? The only model I can see for such resource use are NGOs such as Oxfam or Red Crescent. If an entire new apparatus is envisioned, I would like to know what it would be.

If NGOs are indeed the model, then it is a highly problematic model as the instrument to address human suffering as a whole.

Lastly, if we are going to stop one human endeavor and divert all its resources to combating suffering, I'd suggest stopping war and disbanding all national armed forces. Just the cessation of war would bring an instant reduction of suffering, without reference to spending military resources for anything else.

NB: If the EAs want to increase happiness, how would ridding the world of art accomplish that?

they apparatuses are named in the article, aimless. i think they are like oxfam etc. but with some modern datacentric junk thrown in to determine effectiveness etc.

i don't think they want to rid the world of art, there's plenty of it already, the question is how to spend your time from here on out given what else you could be doing

there's plenty of it already

this only applies to a consumerist model of art. the joy of making art can never be exhausted.

I vote for EA Sports because Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2010 has reduced suffering in my life

A wholly utilitarian critique of art was already developed under Marxism-Leninism. This seems to be animated by a similar spirit. I don't mind this sort of thinking when it is applied as the expression of a personal ethic. Where it seems out of joint is its implicit claim to a set of first principles that should be applied prescriptively to everyone everywhere. It seems much too spindly for that.

if this movement makes Chris Martin never want to sing again I say FULL STEAM AHEAD

i stand with the philosophio-religio-pessimists but have a growing respect for these hardline utilitarians. especially the ones worried about all the people in the future who might not get to live if skynet happens. (that was the previous Aeon article I read. What is this curious magazine?)

― woof

thanks for linking to that, awesome article

I'm sorry but 'value over replacement altruist' is one of the more disgustingly wrongheaded metrics I've come across in the whole rationalization-of-charitable-giving field

(probly doesn't help that I find sweeping prescriptions about charity vulgar to begin with)

‘I myself was extremely interested in evolutionary biology,’ Wiblin said, ‘and I would have liked to become an academic in that area. But I couldn’t really justify it on the effects that it has on helping other people, even though I found it fascinating.’

‘I myself was extremely interested in evolutionary biology,’ Wiblin said, ‘and I would have liked to become an academic in that area. But I couldn’t really justify it on the effects that it has on helping other people, even though I found it fascinating.’

‘I myself was extremely interested in evolutionary biology,’ Wiblin said, ‘and I would have liked to become an academic in that area. But I couldn’t really justify it on the effects that it has on helping other people, even though I found it fascinating.’

‘I myself was extremely interested in evolutionary biology,’ Wiblin said, ‘and I would have liked to become an academic in that area. But I couldn’t really justify it on the effects that it has on helping other people, even though I found it fascinating.’

‘I myself was extremely interested in evolutionary biology,’ Wiblin said, ‘and I would have liked to become an academic in that area. But I couldn’t really justify it on the effects that it has on helping other people, even though I found it fascinating.’

‘I myself was extremely interested in evolutionary biology,’ Wiblin said, ‘and I would have liked to become an academic in that area. But I couldn’t really justify it on the effects that it has on helping other people, even though I found it fascinating.’

‘I myself was extremely interested in evolutionary biology,’ Wiblin said, ‘and I would have liked to become an academic in that area. But I couldn’t really justify it on the effects that it has on helping other people, even though I found it fascinating.’

‘I myself was extremely interested in evolutionary biology,’ Wiblin said, ‘and I would have liked to become an academic in that area. But I couldn’t really justify it on the effects that it has on helping other people, even though I found it fascinating.’

‘I myself was extremely interested in evolutionary biology,’ Wiblin said, ‘and I would have liked to become an academic in that area. But I couldn’t really justify it on the effects that it has on helping other people, even though I found it fascinating.’

‘I myself was extremely interested in evolutionary biology,’ Wiblin said, ‘and I would have liked to become an academic in that area. But I couldn’t really justify it on the effects that it has on helping other people, even though I found it fascinating.’

‘I myself was extremely interested in evolutionary biology,’ Wiblin said, ‘and I would have liked to become an academic in that area. But I couldn’t really justify it on the effects that it has on helping other people, even though I found it fascinating.’

‘I myself was extremely interested in evolutionary biology,’ Wiblin said, ‘and I would have liked to become an academic in that area. But I couldn’t really justify it on the effects that it has on helping other people, even though I found it fascinating.’

i remember arguing against baking pizza for a school fundraiser when we sucked at baking pizza, but I was overruled, so we baked some awful pizza and maybe made back the cost of ingredients in sales, and i do feel a lot of art does tend to fall in the category of baking sucky pizza, and our sucky pizza, if it was an art movement, was on the vanguard of suckism.

I have calculated that if all the moments annually spent picking one's nose were aggregated and monetized effectively by all 7 billion humans, with the proceeds redirected toward ending suffering, it could feed nearly 1.35 million people or vaccinate 3.62 million children. To say nothing whatsoever about masturbation.

I assume that 'effective altruists' also extend this principle to other areas of human activity: friends, relationships, children, etc. Having and raising a child in the First World is surely a far greater drain on time and resources than writing music or dancing.

xposts

i dunno, i find you can save a lot of time by being a really half-arsed parent

xpost to sund4r: yeah it seems like either their movement or this article has conflated "art" with "romantic individualism"

fwiw, I occasionally style myself a writer, and I am already quite capable of objecting to my own work on the grounds of its uselessness & fungibility thankyouverymuch

Like if there were broadly victimless, lowish risk insurance or tax frauds that would give you extra money to give to de-worming charities, would you be you morally obliged to do that?

Yeah, these jobs that generate lots of money which is then used for altruistic purposes: where is the money coming from? Are they really sure that large sums of money are being generated in this global economy without exploitation and suffering?

And in order for someone to become a successful, world-beating, big-money artist (whose life is then justified), don't they usually need to go through stages of being mediocre and struggling to improve, of cranking out failed drafts?

It would take a lot to convince me that someone who does not value art wd be at all effective at reducing human suffering

Yeah, these jobs that generate lots of money which is then used for altruistic purposes: where is the money coming from? Are they really sure that large sums of money are being generated in this global economy without exploitation and suffering?

"sure, the guys who build the roads I drive on to get to my lucrative programming job have kids whose clothing comes from a donation box; but it's okay because I'm living off Walmart canned goods and sending half my income to Africa!"

It is in the interests of becoming irreplaceable that a lot of EAs promote ‘earning to give’ – getting a well-paid job and donating carefully. If you score a lucrative programming job and then give away half your income, most of your competition probably wouldn’t have donated as much money. As far as the great universal calculation of utility is concerned, you have made yourself hard to replace. Artists, meanwhile, paint the beautiful landscape in front of them while the rest of the world burns.

as opiates for programmers go i guess this is better than thinking yr apps themselves are disrupting everyone in africa into happiness

funny tho that these guys think they have a lot of evangelizing to do to convince society that making money is a moral imperative and art is a waste of time. uphill work!

Are they really sure that large sums of money are being generated in this global economy without exploitation and suffering?

I'm not sure the idea of valuing something (beauty, truth, the environment) "in itself" or "for its own sake", taken to mean separately from any experience of contemplating, enjoying, or appreciating it, is coherent at all.

The main problem with Effective Altruism, as it comes across in that article, is that it promotes a vision of morally respectable life that is destined to have only a handful of adherents, and therefore a severely limited impact. Encouraging people of means to tithe 10% of their income to good causes is bound to be more effective than telling people that they are morally sub-standard if they don't throw themselves into lucrative pursuits they don't enjoy for the sake of charitable giving.

I mean, this remark--"If you accept the shallow-pond analogy, everyone is morally horrific"--is just kind of a stupid thing to say. (And not only because it's false.)

I've only heard of one person ever doing the ascetic lifestyle, donating income to charity thing, and it was only for a year, but he got written up in the papers. All I remembered was it involved a lot of oatmeal.

kindness is more valuable than art but art is more valuable than reducing suffering. life *is* suffering

eating oatmeal day after day is a kind of suffering and also art!

Haha that is very true!

& it probably goes without saying, but if any of these people choose reproduction over adoption, they should be burned alive, wellbeing of their children be damned

eating oatmeal is art

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2008/08/16/Ronnie-Barker-460x276.jpg

the work of oatmeal in the age of mechanical reproduction

There should be some special award for outstanding achievements in the field of oatmeal-eating (which is incidentally waaaay more cost-effective than the stereotypical all-ramen diet, + your heart will thank you)

Can we add awards for outstanding achievements in adding wheat germ and milk to oatmeal?

I think those fall within the purview of the "Inn-oat-vations" category

I got a big bag of hempseed on clearance earlier this year; that made oatmeal pretty fun for a few weeks

Now if we could just figure out a way to combine oatmeal with canned tuna...

Baked oatmeal loaf, maybe?

Or little cookies. Shoplift a jar of capers for extra flavor!!

ewwwwwwwwww

Sorry, inventing gross foods has become a bit of a hobby for me ever since I took a job stocking groceries :/

I assume that 'effective altruists' also extend this principle to other areas of human activity: friends, relationships, children, etc. Having and raising a child in the First World is surely a far greater drain on time and resources than writing music or dancing.

in my experience this is true

e.g. their rescue animals are 'their children', it's morally wrong for too many reasons to have human babies

or they spend a good chunk of their leisure time watching documentaries about problems to solve, where you and i would be watching scandal

of course their friends are all altruists so they really cash in there morally

"We had a new, fresh opportunity to begin again, a fresh opportunity to explore the music separate from the market place being able to control the definitions of the music and for me that is part of the importance of the 6th restructural cycle musics. That it was an opportunity to clean the mirror, which is the expression in America, to start anew and to create music that would 1. unify the composite spectrum of the creative trans-African musics, 2. that would unify the American musics, 3. that would unify a service of platform to solidify a world culture, and 4. that would be a part of a composite movement for world change and re-evaluation that would encompass the changes brought about in the modern era from nuclear physics, from Einstein, changes that would incorporate mythology, composite mythology changes, that would take into account the new technologies..."

sorry, that's an excerpt from an interview with musician Anthony Braxton

lol the perfect counterargument from the world of artists

http://ddpaa.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Braxton_Work_Full.jpg

it's not much of an argument. I don't know what he's talking about. Apart from just separating market forces from the arts

square utilitarians incapable of computing utility of visionary braxtonian change movements, utile calcutrons fizzle, say 88888888 on lcd readouts

whether or not you're the philosophio-religio-pessimist, i think this whole project is misguided because of how little we know about what creates well-being, however you define it. empirical data is basically non-existent for this in every part of the world except the oecd, which has seen a slight decrease in self-reported happiness (and a more significant rise in depression, anxiety, and suicide) over the last 50 years. physical health is the supposed no-brainer, but the data for it is counter-intuitive: health is inversely correlated reported experiences of happiness. i for one would rather die younger if it means i'd be happier. so at this point i'm definitely going with "suffering is inevitable." if i were a committed effective altruist i would probably become a neuroscientist to try to figure out how to lobotomize people to make them the happiest they can be, or an engineer to automate the industrial processes that our lobotomized citizens will be too stupid to operate.

in my experience this is true

Ha, I was working on the assumption that none of us actually knew people who subscribe to this movement.

know

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Finally we will know!

This poll is really tough on ILX user "art"

We come to understand the multifarious dimensions of human experience on any array of topics through every form of art. Art that survives the generations is open to experience by people who aren't even alive yet. If we are to understand ourselves we must allow for the creation of art.

If I couldn't make art I would suffer more than I already do.

This premise is faulty, ergo stupid, ergo quit trying to make artists feel worse than they do for doing the irrational and personal. It's bad enough when ill meaning people belittle the creation of art, for well meaning people to do it too is just cruel.

surfing is all that matters

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

http://www.vulture.com/2014/12/why-do-we-like-having-sex-with-artists.html

So this pervasive “muse complex” isn’t the only reason why artists are attractive to us. Last winter, Bret Easton Ellis had Kanye West as a guest on his podcast, and part of their conversation centered around the reality of being someone who creates things. Kanye mentioned that he felt particularly self-aware of the artist’s tendency to oscillate between periods of inflated ego and periods of self-loathing. It’s an intense life — there’s the pain of creation, padded by periods of downtime where one feels compelled to escape reality. And stereotypically, sex and drugs have been sedatives for that intensity. But that oscillation can make for a charged romantic relationship. One minute the artist appears so amazing and confident that you can't help but open your legs, and the next minute they suddenly plummet and become vulnerable and insecure, and need you to open your arms to comfort them. In my experience, despite the fact that artists think they want to be with someone smart and critical, who challenges them — deep down most really just want to be babied. And this is why the artist is appealing not only to those seduced by rebellion and celebrity. It’s also attractive to the nurturing type. Some people love a fixer-upper.

Art, at its best, aims to be a transcendent experience. As does sex. And maybe this is naive to say, given that art is now largely a business, but I’ve always found it attractive to think that artists might be more in touch with generating transcendence than the average person, and therefore must be better in bed. (I might have to sleep with more artists in order to prove that theory.) There’s just something sexy and fascinating about someone whose daily routine deals with the sublime, and who aims to create something out of this world. It’s like wanting to fuck God, kinda. Also, objectively, artists are good with their hands, so ...

Now explain why we don't like having sex with effective altruists.

Jesus, I don't find those people attractive at all.

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/11/still-poetry-will-rise/507266/

everything's coming up poetry!!!!!

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/11/magazine/a-time-for-refusal.html?smid=tw-share

teju cole

Evil settles into everyday life when people are unable or unwilling to recognize it. It makes its home among us when we are keen to minimize it or describe it as something else. This is not a process that began a week or month or year ago. It did not begin with drone assassinations, or with the war on Iraq. Evil has always been here. But now it has taken on a totalitarian tone.

At the end of “Rhinoceros,” Daisy finds the call of the herd irresistible. Her skin goes green, she develops a horn, she’s gone. Berenger, imperfect, all alone, is racked by doubts. He is determined to keep his humanity, but looking in the mirror, he suddenly finds himself quite strange. He feels like a monster for being so out of step with the consensus. He is afraid of what this independence will cost him. But he keeps his resolve, and refuses to accept the horrible new normalcy. He’ll put up a fight, he says. “I’m not capitulating!”

this is true

oppression has given birth to the best art

and people are forced out of the mainstream

they cope by creating art bigger than herself and her country

it's like on one hand you've got all these regrettable deportations, ostracizing of muslims, normalizing of hatred, rollback of the last chance we had to avoid the climate change tipping point, the theft of the supreme court

but on the other there's probably going to be some really FIERCE punk rock, so basically it's a tossup

i don't think of it that way at all

recent history has not shown the arts to be highly able to mobilize in that regard anyway

but i have been thinking a lot this week about art's capacity for negativity, for being a source of a sense of possibility that lets people set themselves against the world as it is or orient themselves within it without losing themselves

you're not gonna break through to mouth-breathing trumplets who are suddenly emboldened to act out their pathetic revenge fantasies, not with a profound portrait of differences and common humanity or whatever

they have no imaginations, their inner horizons are as constrained as their outer ones

and no one would think that art substitutes or compensates for necessary concrete political action and moral confrontation

but art nurtures our imaginations and we need our imaginations to survive

all of that supremely otm

oh j, i didn't mean to come off like that, sorry. i was just making a smartass comment in opposition to something totally different, spoken by people who have never heard of ILX. "but art nurtures our imaginations and we need our imaginations to survive" is completely otm.

well i wouldn't have held it against you if you did, i think it is a valid perception that has to be recognized, that art dwindles in the face of those things. people who value art as a source of possibility know this, though.

'art is a useless generosity. but let us not be too horrified by this.'

- sartre

"Great art comes from generosity," Pearl Jam guitarist Stone Gossard said last year, recalling the genesis of Temple of the Dog. Gossard and Pearl Jam bassist Jeff Ament, who played in Mother Love Bone, were devastated by Wood's death. Cornell wrote the songs for Temple of the Dog "from as pure a place as you can find," Gossard continued. "And then he reached out, letting us in."

https://thepointmag.com/2017/politics/aggressive-humanism-center-for-political-beauty

The most compelling political performance artists in Germany do not like to be called “artists.” Nor do they prefer the label of “activists”—a term they reserve for gradualists, clicktivists, and the letter-writers of Amnesty International. Founded in 2009 by the philosopher Philipp Ruch, the Center for Political Beauty makes its base of “operations” (Aktionen in German) in Berlin, with changing groups of volunteers and partners throughout Europe. Its members, who wear suits and charcoal war paint, are organized into “assault teams” aiming to establish “moral beauty, political poetry and human greatness [Großgesinntheit].” They call themselves “aggressive humanists.”

I make paintings to be able to think in a way I can't in any other form. In my way I feel like I am contributing to the continuum of painting and the extension of the painting language. Whether or not those things are valuable against the struggle to abate suffering, I can only say that painting in specific moves me in a way that music moves me. These aren't the only art forms obviously but they are the ones I can speak to the best. I think the capacity to be moved and the engagement with that capacity is a form of relief and human existence would be greatly diminished without it.

art and suffering are both a waste of time; subtweeting President of the United States Donald P Trump is all that matters

http://www.vulture.com/2017/12/jazz-icon-sonny-rollins-on-giving-up-playing-and-his-legacy.html

Even though you can’t play anymore, it must bring you some satisfaction to know that you gave people so much through your music.

Not really.

Why not?

I’m thrilled when somebody tells me that listening to my music gives them some solace or peace, but I played music for myself, too. I was getting something out of it. So I don’t consider my musical gifts as any kind of servitude. It wasn’t giving of myself, because I got too much out of it. I had to play music. I had to. It’s something I wanted to do when I was a child. That’s like a gift to me. It’s not me giving. Do you understand what I mean?

I think so. You’re saying that your playing music wasn’t an act of giving because it didn’t come from a purely altruistic place.

Yeah, that’s right.

rings true for me

Lots of ppl believe this nowadays I think.

Anyone who says they are a musician just to make other people happy is an asshole.

Otm

humans spend a lot of time on this planet doing bullshit, creating art seems pretty low on the entropy scale. as for reducing suffering, hey go for it, Batman.

seems like if you are a musician or an artist, thats what you do because that's just what comes natural. it's something you enjoy doing and you would probably do it even if there was no material reward because you enjoy the process of the work itself. in fact you enjoy it more than the final product. i think this is where a lot of self-hatred and self-criticism comes in. maybe the thrill of creation is far more interesting than the finished piece. i know that many, many times, once i'm done with a painting or song or whatever, it's dead to me. i look at it and i just see the imperfections, i just see the stuff i should be fixing. my mind instantly snaps into wanting to do the creative process itself.

i don't think anybody sings a song or draws a picture and thinks "wow, this is really impressive, i need to show this to the world because of how impressive it is". that seems like a convenient myth to sell the suffering artist, and it's a bullshit myth that still has plenty of currency. this expectation that you are "doing it for the fans" and to just make art or music because you like isn't really enough, you have to fit into this pre-defined role. your role as artist is to create the product and these roles are part of that product. the act of creation itself must be justified by its marketability. it is not enough to find joy in the creation, you have to provide product, you have to do it for the right reasons. whenever any musician is asked about live performing, they must declare over and over again how it is done for the fans, how thrilling it is to receive adulation, etc. validating the consumer role, etc. it's culture-wide and so annoying (and probably a result of the critical class being often untrained and inexperienced in the art processes they are describing).

imo if you find real joy in the creation of art then chances are that a genuine joy will be reciprocated in its appreciation, which could very well lead to suffering reduced.

suffering is a waste of time. producing art (including skillful medical outcomes, products that make everyone's lives easier, and other helpful shit) is all that matters

Otfm!

I knew how important it was to show your art to other people when I realized how many doors other artists work have opened for me.

Are you David Gilmour’s nephew y/n

No.

People should have fewer opinions.

quit being part of the problem

controversial opinion: making art that celebrates suffering is definitely a waste of time

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/dec/20/uzbekistan-islam-karimov-to-be-memorialised-by-british-sculptor-paul-day

People should have fewer opinions.

― brimstead, Sunday, 17 December 2017 22:00

quit being part of the problem

― bob lefse (rushomancy), Sunday, 17 December 2017 22:14

That might be one of Brimstead's few opinions.

so we are born with no consent as to what body we are born into, what biology we will have to contend with for our time on this planet, what physiology and mental issues will weigh on our daily decision making and sensory experiences, sexual makeup, pigmentation, hair, geographic location, socio-economic status, demographic status, inherited credit card debt, inherited tax debt, etc. on and on and on. we should do our best to respect this non-consent and not blame people for things factually and materially beyond their control.

as for opinions, people also have no choice as to where they are born, what education system they will go to, how all the above factors will play into their education, thus we cannot consider that language is a 1:1 translation for every person who uses it. because understand and performative factors can be at play, what a person is thinking can be different from what a person is speaking. for that matter what the receiver is hearing can be influenced by all manner of factors (perhaps temporal such as it being a rainy day & them being in a bad mood) in addition to their own birth lotto experience of reality.

as such their interpretation is a temporal first attempt at interpreting what was said, into attempting to know the truth of what the other person was thinking. humans are imperfect beings, they cannot 100% everything digitally like a computer, so mistakes are made and you could argue the entire concept of discussion is a tug of war battle against meaninglessness. since time is not a static thing but certainly experienced linearly we can imagine these opinions on a line stretching infinitely long. the more opinions you add the less they are in control of defining a narrative. by this logic the more time you spend attacking someone's opinion or ego the more you are watering down your own. each opinion defines a truth and people will be more open to perhaps adopt parts of yours if you aren't being aggressively possessive of it. imo the best way to encourage discussion is with positive and creative opinions.

crows are too smart for their own good. they get bored and do things like play games of 'chicken' with approaching autos as they languidly pick at road kill carcasses in the street.

^ was meant for the controversial opinions thread

http://johnlutheradams.net/global-warming-and-art-essay/

https://atomikaztex.wordpress.com/2015/07/10/how-is-the-artist-or-writer-to-function-survive-and-produce-in-the-community-outside-of-institutions/

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/03/22/the-time-for-art-is-now/

I'm in Vienna btw ^_^

ty for that article

https://newrepublic.com/article/120363/bertolt-brechts-love-poems-review

Think of Bertolt Brecht and you do not think of Eros. A fervent Marxist playwright with a handful of masterworks—Drums in the Night, The Threepenny Opera, Mother Courage and Her Children, Life of Galileo, The Good Person of Szechwan—Brecht was also the most revolutionary drama theorist of the twentieth century. His misnamed “epic theater” posited a smashing of theater’s fourth wall and a dispelling of the emotional abracadabra drama casts over its audience. A round-the-clock communist for whom literature was the manifestation of socio-historical pressures, Brecht believed that art should function as the instigation for revolt. Art must be useful, must serve the gritty aims of practicality. No self-important prettiness, no “willing suspension of disbelief,” no Aristotelian catharsis. Brecht would rather you not be so bourgeois as to feel anything; instead, think about what you’re seeing and then go depose your tranquilized leaders.

https://thepointmag.com/2018/examined-life/switching-off

Brodsky was invited to give a speech to a class of graduating seniors at an East Coast liberal arts college. Unsurprisingly, he avoided the inspirational pabulum that normally stuffs commencement speeches, opting instead for a commentary on the practice of “turning the other cheek” as a means of combating social evil. The speech does not give clear directives—it barely qualifies as advice—but it does complicate Gessen’s picture of the late Brodsky as a mere “propagandist for poetry.”

Brodsky gives an account of the standard interpretation of the lines of scripture that inspired this doctrine of passive resistance and then goes on to mention the ending, which is less commonly quoted. The idea is not just to turn the cheek to the person who strikes you—you are also supposed to give him your coat:

No matter how evil your enemy is, the crucial thing is that he is human; and although incapable of loving another like ourselves, we nonetheless know that evil takes root when one man starts to think that he is better than another. (This is why you’ve been hit on your right cheek in the first place.) At best, therefore, what one can get from turning the other cheek to one’s enemy is the satisfaction of alerting the latter to the futility of his action. “Look,” the other cheek says, “what you are hitting is just flesh. It’s not me. You can’t crush my soul.”

The moral stakes of this struggle are high precisely because they are personal. The objective isn’t to appeal to your bully’s sense of compassion or pride or guilt (for these are all easy to suppress), but to “expose his senses and faculties to the meaninglessness of the whole enterprise: the way every form of mass production does,” and emerge with your spirit intact.

This lecture reveals another dimension of Brodsky’s ethics of refusal. Switching off is not about wallowing in silence or withdrawing into blissful ignorance; it is about making sure that the static doesn’t deafen you to music.

That is a really good read, thanks for sharing! I particularly resonated with this:

In Brodsky’s view, politics was one level of human existence, but it was a low rung. The business of poetry, he thought, is to “indicate something more … the size of the whole ladder.” He held that “art is not a better, but an alternative existence … not an attempt to escape reality but the opposite, an attempt to animate it.”

At the same time, art can serve either function, right? Escapism or animation. Unless you want to be a snob about the definition of art and say that escapist art isn't "real" art. For my part, I think there's something to be said for a healthy dose of escapism.

Very into this, will be tracking down all the Brodsky to read now.

Whoever considers the maxim "life is suffering" to be pessimistic is in a serious state of denial. (I think this describes the majority of Western civilization tho)

joseph brodsky vs. jerry garcia

'Art is to console those who are broken by life'

Vincent van Gogh

Vincent van Gogh, L’Oliveraie, Saint-Rémy, 1889 pic.twitter.com/8eemtDF7gT

— esteban tara (@lespaul55_57) May 21, 2018

my daughter (last year of hs) had an assignment in her philo course recently, "do we need art in order to protect ourselves from the truth?" I am glad I didn't have to answer that question when I was 17.

do we need art in order to protect ourselves from memes?

memes ARE art u savage

Euler, do you know which texts (if any) she was assigned relating to that question?

https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2018/06/the-generosity-of-innovation/564050/

Mark Applebaum, a decorated Stanford University professor of music composition and theory, opened his heady and playful talk about tradition versus progress with a piano improvisation of a tune, “Buffalo Wings,” that he’d written. His performance made for an electrifying crescendo of complexity, but afterward, he pointed out all the ways his “invention” relied on things that had come before. Others had dreamed up the piano, diatonic tonality, and the 12-bar blues riff. Which meant for Applebaum, a lot of jazz improv is itself traditional or any of the synonyms that word might take: conservative, conventional, customary.

Much of his career is, by contrast, progressive to a degree that verges on stuntwork. Applebaum’s achievements include building an electro-acoustic contraption called the Mousetrap that he alone knows how to play, composing a piece to be performed by three frantically gesturing orchestra composers without any actual musicians making sound, and inventing a notational system modeled on the Copenhagen subway map. He said that he feels acute tension every day between whether to devote his energy to tradition or to progress, and he argues that this same tension surfaces across not only art forms, but also spheres of public life: politics, consumer culture, parenting, and so on.

Which is more noble: the strange and new, or the familiar and tested? To help answer the question, Applebaum envisioned all of music as a grid of squares, with each square denoting a kind of composition: music with lyrical melodies, music that emphasizes syncopation, or music using a quarter-tone system, for instance. All of those examples, he’d say, are on one side of the grid, the “traditional” half. Music with lyrical melodies are plentiful already; the world doesn’t “need” more. By contrast, creating a concerto to be played by both instrumentalists and a florist—yes, a flower arranger—hadn’t been done before Applebaum did it. The world got something new.

And so, through this logic, the experimental is philanthropic. To prize progress over tradition is a form of generosity. A questioner in the audience raised the obvious counterargument: Isn’t truly experimental stuff kind of self-indulgent, rather than selfless? Absolutely, Applebaum replied, but so is all artmaking. And to say progress is giving and tradition is taking isn’t to say that one is better than the other. Unless you’re an aesthete, all of life necessarily must involve a balance between what you do for yourself and what you do for others.

A flautist and a florist and a falangist walk into a bar...

i would be shocked if some John Cage student didn't arrange something for flower arrangement 50+ years ago

declaring "Music with lyrical melodies are plentiful already; the world doesn’t “need” more" lol this guy is utterly clueless. art is at least 50% interpretation. i guess quantizing types of music out in a grid doesn't allow for such insight.

you should give stanford a call, let em know they got a dud

https://harvardmagazine.com/2012/11/writers-and-artists-at-harvard

“I tried each thing; only some were immortal and free,” wrote our graduate John Ashbery. He decided on the immortal and free things, art and thought, and became a writer who revolutionized the transcription of consciousness in contemporary poetry. Most art, past or present, does not have the stamina to endure; but many of our graduates, like the ones mentioned above, have produced a level of art above the transient. The critical question for us is not whether we are admitting a large number of future doctors and scientists and lawyers and businessmen (even future philanthropists): we are. The question is whether we can attract as many as possible of the future Emersons and Dickinsons. How would we identify them? What should we ask them in interviews? How would we make them want to come to us?

They could start by lowering tuition to under a trillion dollars per class

Let's not get silly

It's beautiful to watch aesthetes imagine Art exists outside material reality

Doesn't this still seem like an standard at which to hold artists? As soon as the question shifts to art, we're immediately supposed to be thinking in terms of immortal geniuses, as though that's the timespan at which artists prove their worth.

* an odd standard

It's a dead standard which is why seeing it out in the wild is such an obvious reactionary alarm

Would pay good money to read a transcript of Emerson's responses to an interview with Harvard admissions.

https://www.vulture.com/2018/11/jerry-saltz-how-to-be-an-artist.html

Don’t use art jargon; write in your own voice, write how you talk. Don’t try to write smart. Keep your statement direct, clear, to the point. Don’t oppose big concepts like “nature” and “culture.” Don’t use words like interrogate, reconceptualize, deconstruct, symbolize, transcendental, mystical, commodity culture, liminal space, or haptic. Don’t quote Foucault, Deleuze, Derrida. Those guys are great. But don’t quote them. Come up with your own theory. People who claim to hate or have no theory: That’s your theory, you idiots!

lol

who is this cunt exactly

otm tho

the third policeman undertakes virtually the entire proceedings in a liminal space iirc

i would suppose it doesn't refer to it as such

'come up with your own theory' is otm but incommensurate with the nonsense list of banned words earlier vomited

That linked piece reminds me, it is time to repost a bit of advice I posted long, long ago and remains as fresh today as the day it was extruded.

How To Write Good

No one likes to be called "uninteresting", whether or not they know what that means. That's why so many people who might post here don't. If you think about how many people there are, and then you think of how many people post here, I think you'll see what I mean. Fear of being "uninteresting" keeps a lot of people from letting their light shine and that's a shame.

That's why I want to help all of you write things you can be proud of, things you want to show off to the whole wide world wide web. So, let's get started, ok?

First, use small words. No one likes big words, so use lots and lots of small words. Don't use any words that most folks can't figure out right off. With big words they have to read what you wrote more than once to see what you meant. If you put a lot of big words in there, there is a good chance they'll just get all balled up any way, even if they read it over and over. Then they'll just get mad at you or give up. Short words are easy. Every one likes them. They are good friends. Use them.

Make your sentences short, too. Lots of people run out of breath when a sentence is too long. Then they have to stop right in the middle for a while and that's not a good place to stop. They can lose their place or forget what came before. Using lots of short sentences lets their minds rest a tiny bit while they wait in between. This helps. I don't know about you, but my mind gets tired real quick and maybe yours does, too!

Don't be clever. Most folks like new ideas to be simple, the kind they can get a good grip on right off the bat. But what people really like is to read ideas they have already thought before. That makes it super easy to think them again. Thinking a thought for the first time is always the hardest. So keep those new ideas out of your posting if you can help it. This works out great for Reader's Digest and it will work for you, too.

By now you might be thinking, "Hey! This is easy!" And you'd be right! But if you want to write the best you can, keep reading because there's even more to come!

I bet you never stopped to think how much more exciting it is to read a posting where the writer is real excited about what they're writing. But it's true! Excited writers write exciting stuff. And the best way to let the reader know how excited you are is to use lots of exclamation points! They're cheap, so don't worry!

Here's another smart tip from the writing pros. Write about what you know best. That way you don't get all balled up with looking up new facts about things you don't already know all about. That's just hard work and you might even get mixed up and write it all wrong and not even know it! Why should you risk looking stupid, when you can write about something where you know all there is to know about it? That way you don't even have to think twice about what to say. You can just say it, and that's that.

Write like you talk. Good talkers just grab you by the ears and don't let go. The same goes for good writers, except they grab your eyeballs. If you write like you talk, you'll find the words will just come squirting out of you and onto the page. And right up into your reader's eye, too! That's what you want.

Use colorful words. It's hard to say what words are colorful, but I think you'll know them when you see them. They're the words that zap you and make your teeth hurt, that float as pretty as butterflies, that make your mouth water and your gums tingle. Think of as many colorful words as you can and fling and hurl them all over what you write. Your readers will be hypnotized.

The last thing I have to say is - have fun! Writing doesn't have to be so hard it makes you sweat like a pig. It can be a breeze! So, what are you waiting for? Let your juices flow and you'll write the kind of real good postings that won't be pushed off into the Dunce Corner of ILX. So, lick that pencil and get started today! I can guarantee, you won't be sorry.**

**The author of this piece does not actually guarantee that you won't be sorry.

short sentences is legit a good tip tho

dunce corner of ilx is a fuckin hallowed spot imo

there are horses for courses and sentence lengths that suit the thought to be expressed.

A few of those words are fine, but 'liminal' should be banned.

I also very much agree with "Don't quote Foucault, Deleuze, Derrida," although that's getting a little bit ideological for a question on writing advice.

it’s true tho that lots of bad writers try to hide in big words and long sentences

is it

even more bad writers hide in gnomic universal-truth bullshit

How to Write Good?

It’s How to Write WELL dumbass

Well! Look at Mr. Big Britches telling me I don't write so good.

I don't think Saltz is wrong. Art writing can be and often is excruciating reading, and keeping it simple would do more people more good, most likely.

When it becomes a stylistic dogma, clarity is no less ideologically bankrupt than complacency in obscurity. There's something to be said for writers who acknowledge that language is opaque and that words are intractable, endowed with a life of their own. And insofar as this school of thought (Jean Paulhan called it 'terrorism') is routinely pilloried in the name of transparent communication ('rhetoric'), especially in our current era and doubly so in the English-speaking world, it awakens the contrarian in me.

How to Write Good?

It’s How to Write WELL dumbass

uh, it is, isn't it?

I assumed it was tbh

The part about exclamation marks is sincere, everything else is satire.

haha!

but seriously, haha

even as a fan of dizzyingly long sentences i have to confess that going through my drafts changing half of the commas to full stops improves my writing tenfold.

https://www.e-flux.com/journal/45/60100/international-disco-latin/ been a while since i read this article but it was good iirc.

how to artist: have parents/family with money/clout, unless you're 'an exception to the rule'

https://i.pinimg.com/236x/30/0b/ac/300bac7815ef0aad0f57f326a8e690d9--los-simpson-the-simpsons.jpg

But who is it that is willingly writing porn here?

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/07/29/rediscovering-natalia-ginzburg

From these griefs, suffered when she was just beginning to write, Natalia learned that unhappiness, though it feels quite powerful, doesn’t always help one write well. As she said in her essay “My Vocation” (1949):

When we are happy our imagination is stronger; when we are unhappy our memory works with greater vitality. Suffering makes the imagination weak and lazy. . . . A particular sympathy grows up between us and the characters we invent—that our debilitated imagination is still just able to invent—a sympathy that is tender and almost maternal, warm and damp with tears, intimately physical and stifling. We are deeply, painfully rooted in every being and thing in the world, the world which has become filled with echoes and trembling and shadows, to which we are bound by a devout and passionate pity. Then we risk foundering on a dark lake of stagnant, dead water, and dragging our mind’s creations down with us, so that they are left to perish among dead rats and rotting flowers in a dark, warm whirlpool.

Change the “we” to “women,” and that’s basically what Virginia Woolf said in “A Room of One’s Own,” twenty years earlier. Women, if they want to be artists, should stop sloshing around in their emotions. No doubt that statement disappointed many female writers at the time Woolf made it, and it is probably not popular even today. (I wonder what the male-female ratio is in those courses on writing “personal essays.”)

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2019/09/23/whats-the-point/

And what is that truth, the truth of art, that freeing blade, that slaking drink in the desert of the world? It’s this: You are not alone. I am not I; you are not you. We are we. Art bridges the lonely islands. It’s the string that hums from my tin can, over here looking out of my little window, to you over there, looking out of yours. All the world’s power over us lies in its ability to persuade us that we are powerless to understand each other, to feel and see and love each other, and that therefore it is pointless for us to try. Art knows better, which is why the world tries so hard to make art impossible, to immiserate artists, to ban their work, silence their voices, and why it’s so important for all of us to, quite simply, make art possible.

^ michael chabon

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/18/health/dorothea-buck-dead.html

By concealing both her psychiatric history and her forced sterilization, Mrs. Buck was able to enroll in 1942 in a private art school in Frankfurt, where she learned pottery. She worked as a sculptor and taught art from 1969 to 1982 before being overcome by the lingering revelations of mass murder of mental patients by the Nazis, and by what she found to be continuing mishandling of the mentally ill in modern-day Germany.

“These hidden medical crimes and the unchanged degrading and inhuman German asylums disturbed me deeply, although I could have used my concentration for my artistic work,” she wrote on her website. “As a sculptor, I lived on public commissions in Hamburg, which could only be gained through competition. When, in 1965, my last bronze objects were placed, I stopped this work. As long as there was no elementary humanity, art seemed less important.”

artists are pitting bots that steal artwork to sell t shirts against disney's copyright practices this rocks lol https://t.co/tkMWjNLqtA

— leon (@leyawn) December 4, 2019

omg

https://www.artforum.com/diary/sarah-nicole-prickett-and-kaitlin-phillips-on-2019-art-basel-miami-beach-81599

why is everyone such a giant piece of shit

EDIT: out of the thousands of people mentioned and quoted in that piece, a handful are not a giant piece of shit. why is nearly everyone such a giant piece of shit

everything about that is terrible

i also can't stand either writer who reported it so i'm not sure why i read it lol

i think a partial yet not satisfying answer to your question karl is "cocaine"

everyone is, in some way, tripping balls with huckabee

why is nearly everyone such a giant piece of shit

they weren't born that way, but they are bent that way

tried to read this but it was increasing my suffering

even iggy pop comes across as just another old white guy who just fucking die, in the article

I lol’d + googled “richard mumby”

There are a ton of reasons to hate on my town but I do luxuriate in the remarkable distance it puts between my family and whatever that article is about. Like, we have some free museums open to the public, and you can catch an opera at the Kennedy Center. AFAIK there’s no dinners for everyone who spent $50,000 at Balmain, or big ideas about exhibits devoted to Britney. Just nerds and trained killers and spies, for miles around.

Lesson: Beaches give people the worst ideas

So then, I guess you must you live in Alexandria, or right near it.

Xpost Don't shit on Bette Midler yo

El Tomboto can and prolly will answer this but no, El Tomboto emphatically does not live in Alexandria

I was mistaken. That's what I get for playing at Where's Waldo with an ilxor.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/06/t-magazine/romantic-relationships.html

Q: Can you help with art suggestions for my severe fear of engulfment when it comes to being involved with someone romantically? This leads me to miss out on opportunities to be with really great guys with whom I connect initially. — Elizabeth, New York City

A: In some ways I am the wrong person to answer this question, as all my life I have willingly gone headlong in search of engulfment. Of course there’s fear. If nothing is at stake — if there’s no risk of grief and desolation when you come out the other side — how can you ever really feel anything? To be wholly dissolved and lost, whether in another person or in the presence of a work of art, in a spiritual encounter or in a greater cause: This can be dangerous, but also freeing — an escape from the prison of the self. You should not be able to walk away unscathed, which is to say, unchanged.

Nothing to do with the thread subject, but you can put a hell of a lot of skin in the game and risk plenty of grief when you come out the other side without seeking "engulfment". That sounds rather unhealthy to me. The words to describe what I seek are more on the order of "complete engagement with and commitment to" my relationship.

i think a primary objective of much art, and a silver lining of darker art, is reduction of suffering by reminding us we're not alone, or simarly, "the only one"

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/18/opinion/sonny-rollins-art.html

When I go to the museum and I look at a piece of art, I’m transported. I don’t know how, or where, but I know that it’s not a part of the material world. It’s beyond modern culture’s political, technological soul. We’re not here to live forever. Humans and materialism die. But there’s no dying in art.

wow

eating breakfast is a waste of time; reducing coronavirus infections is all that mattera

tom morello, 1992 pic.twitter.com/jBHKMJKVZ1

— chelsea (@cheIseahaynes) June 6, 2020

is sex important or is reducing suffering all that matters
is ilxor.com important
are hot dogs important

has hip hop helped reduce suffering of those who feel suppressed, powerless, trapped, unheard

the cure helps me especially when I was younger

i like that tom morello quote tho it does little to explain audioslave

well, in 1996, there was no indication they were going to happen.

I know ilx likes to ride for this dude and ratm is alright but his singer-songwriter material is some of the most execrable music I have ever heard

why are you always such a wet blanket, paul ponzi

perhaps he is suffering

does that mean that we have to

yes, if are we sentient

One man's suffering is another man's reverse schadenfreude.

his singer-songwriter material is some of the most execrable music I have ever heard

Singer-songwriter music is a pestilence.

except when it's the best stuff ever

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/08/magazine/what-do-we-mean-when-we-call-art-necessary.html

The prospect of “necessary” art allows members of the audience to free themselves from having to make choices while offering the critic a nifty shorthand to convey the significance of her task, which may itself be one day condemned as dispensable. The effect is something like an absurd and endless syllabus, constantly updating to remind you of ways you might flunk as a moral being. It’s a slightly subtler version of the 2016 marketing tagline for the first late-night satirical news show with a female host, “Full Frontal With Samantha Bee”: “Watch or you’re sexist.”

I LOVE music. I’ve essentially dedicated my life to it.. but no song has ever changed the world, not even “We Are The World”

— mrk (@MerkSays) June 17, 2020

false

What the hell is “changing the world” anyway

true

You must ain’t never heard “OLD TOWN ROAD” 🙄

— OG $ILKY PSALM ONE 👩🏾‍🔬 (@PsalmOne) June 17, 2020

I have heard tell of a guitar that kills fascists.

Are you suggesting that this is not so?

lol this thread is an ilx first mention for “Effective Altruism”. The original article has disappeared, so THANK GOD for the Internet Archive Wayback Machine.

https://web.archive.org/web/20140322045146/http://aeon.co/magazine/living-together/art-is-a-selfish-waste-of-time-says-effective-altruism/