Do we really want out?

[you]

The missing physical component must play a part. The western mind's increasingly stimulated to a far greater degree than the body. Everything's coming in as abstracts and concepts.

I'm going to ignore the issue of the broad claim regarding the 'western brain'.

Of course reading media reports is more than just vicarious to events. They are reports. You re-gard the event. You're not part of it.

---

But are they 'abstract and concepts'? I think media has moved away from concrete tone (Economist for instance) and more moved to a very emotional narrative heavy 'human angle'.

But this in itself is, I'd argue, a further step away from events and more to do with mediated 'empathy'.

For example, a 20 minute read about a certain person's crisis, although it feels empathic, might not be. In dire situations many simply do not have time to feel, to think, to ruminate on the emotions of it all - at all. This is, I argue, one of the ironies of 'human angle' media narratives - that what one takes as empathy is actually a synthetic narrative, diegetic, a mirage.

 

[version]

I'm going to ignore the issue of the broad claim regarding the 'western brain'.

I just made that comment to bring it back to Shaka's point that a lot of what's being discussed in this thread is specific to western liberal democracies and that we shouldn't take ourselves for the world.

 

[you]

I just made that comment to bring it back to Shaka's point that a lot of what's being discussed in this thread is specific Western liberal democracies and that we shouldn't take ourselves for the world.

No we shouldn't, you're totally right. There are heavily mediated experiences beyond the west of course.

I made that comment because I felt the line read as western culture being somehow more cerebral than others and less attuned to the body than others. Which isn't correct, and then there is the heavy demarcation between mind and body...

 

[Leo]

There's clearly a marked difference between having your apartment block shelled and watching the shelling on your laptop though.

I was speaking in broader terms, about events in general, not specifically about war or violence.

 

[version]

I made that comment because I felt the line read as western culture being somehow more cerebral than others and less attuned to the body than others.

Yeah, that wasn't what I was saying. I would never say that.

 

[Mr. Tea]

inb4 Tea pops up and says "Uh, I think you mean snug!".

There are few greater pleasures in life than feeling simultaneously smug and snug.

 

[Mr. Tea]

There are few greater pleasures in life than feeling simultaneously smug and snug.

Delivering a brutal zinger to some hapless rube on Twitter while curled up on the sofa with a cuppa and a cat.

 

[version]

Delivering a brutal zinger to some hapless rube on Twitter while curled up on the sofa with a cuppa and a cat.

You sound like Ian Dunt.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Oh that's not good at all.

Maybe I need to rethink my life.

 

[HMGovt]

Pulling the duvet over your head and your feet in, so the monsters can't get you.

Blair witch project famously did this, albeit with a video camera, recording oneself to retreat from threat and horror, invoking modernity to ward off ancient evil. Watching Russian tanks getting popped from a drone's eye view is a variation on it.

 

[shakahislop]

Yeah I think as far as experiencing world events go, there is something watered down and pasteurized about experiencing them through any kind of media, as if the mediation itself sifts away some of the raw qualia of the would-be direct experience, and may add certain intellectual context.

i find for me there's a huge difference even between watching the news and reading the news. they provoke totally different feelings. i find watching video much more immediately emotional. whereas reading the news is a more dispassionate activity, more detached, a different perspective. i mostly read, and i'm always struck by how different any particular event seems when i watch it instead (usually in hotel rooms coz there's a tv, or at my mum and dad's house).

there's then again another form of mediation, a newer one, which is the analyst or personality who can pull together lots of different strands (of world events, cultural change, whatever) into a convincing worldview. i think these people really thrive on the podcast format. these are some of the most influential people i think, for internet-age people anyway. they can really get into your head and give you the frame through which you interpret whatever events are going on at any particular time. Helen Thompson is one of those for me, that has really altered the fundamental habits that I have for thinking about the big structural aspects of the world. Obviously a lot of these kinds of people are dicks but she's not. this is a form of mediation that I rely on a lot.

 

[shakahislop]

on the mediation of war strand of this, there is another thing going on there as well i think, which is that even if you're in a country where a war's going on, and to be honest even if you're directly involved in the fighting, most of what you understand about that war is still mediated. obviously if you are in the vicinity of a car bomb (and survive) then that is something that you directly experience. but if you're round the corner behind some buildings or 1k away or whatever, you might see a plume of smoke, but you are still mostly going to know about what happened from the TV or the radio. this obviously extends to what's going on with the war in other parts of the country. so people's experiences of wars are basically tech-mediated in most places

 

[version]

on the mediation of war strand of this, there is another thing going on there as well i think, which is that even if you're in a country where a war's going on, and to be honest even if you're directly involved in the fighting, most of what you understand about that war is still mediated. obviously if you are in the vicinity of a car bomb (and survive) then that is something that you directly experience. but if you're round the corner behind some buildings or 1k away or whatever, you might see a plume of smoke, but you are still mostly going to know about what happened from the TV or the radio. this obviously extends to what's going on with the war in other parts of the country. so people's experiences of wars are basically tech-mediated in most places

The awareness of being in the reported war zone must have an effect too though, much like learning COVID was actually happening where you were and not just in China.

 

[version]

It's interesting reading this and hearing how similar some of this lot's criticisms are to those on the left.

Inside the New Right’s Next Frontier: The American West

The dissident fringe is a space where far right and far left can coexist. And the Rockies are where they're headed.

www.vanityfair.com

If you believe this story, marking yourself as a “nationalist,” as many Republican politicians now call themselves, or a “localist,” as *The American Conservative—*house organ of the anti-globalist right—proudly describes itself, this framing explains why our society seems to be spinning apart: The relentless power of markets has worked its way into every part of our lives, breaking down traditional cultures and modes of life, forcing us to live drone-like lives ordered by our phones and credit scores, leading to the mass export of jobs overseas, the destruction of the natural world, an internationalist foreign policy that costs trillions of dollars and thousands of lives, and even the destruction of institutions like the American family farm. It is, like Marxism was once for the global left, a story that is a bible to all the other stories you need to understand the world.

It's difficult to argue the above isn't broadly true, imo. The argument's really over how best to respond to it.

 

[Mr. Tea]

It's interesting reading this and hearing how similar some of this lot's criticisms are to those on the left.

Inside the New Right’s Next Frontier: The American West

The dissident fringe is a space where far right and far left can coexist. And the Rockies are where they're headed.

www.vanityfair.com

If you believe this story, marking yourself as a “nationalist,” as many Republican politicians now call themselves, or a “localist,” as *The American Conservative—*house organ of the anti-globalist right—proudly describes itself, this framing explains why our society seems to be spinning apart: The relentless power of markets has worked its way into every part of our lives, breaking down traditional cultures and modes of life, forcing us to live drone-like lives ordered by our phones and credit scores, leading to the mass export of jobs overseas, the destruction of the natural world, an internationalist foreign policy that costs trillions of dollars and thousands of lives, and even the destruction of institutions like the American family farm. It is, like Marxism was once for the global left, a story that is a bible to all the other stories you need to understand the world.

It's difficult to argue the above isn't broadly true, imo. The argument's really over how best to respond to it.

It's hard not to facepalm if right-wingers are only now figuring out that the social and ecological consequences of centuries of unrestrained capitalism might not be entirely positive.

 

[Leo]

It's hard not to facepalm if right-wingers are only now figuring out that the social and ecological consequences of centuries of unrestrained capitalism might not be entirely positive.

sure, but realistically, most people don't think in those terms. they like the the ability to buy cheap goods at Walmart (even though they're made in China), and most likely avoid paying more for the equivalent goods made in America. guessing the focus of most people is on more day-to-day issues as opposed to the impact of unrestrained capitalism over the years. and then when that impact is felt, they react against it.

 

[version]

It was funny to read them talking about localism and the dangers of wealth free of geography whilst they're turning these places into two-tier economies and have all their money in investments elsewhere.

 

[Mr. Tea]

sure, but realistically, most people don't think in those terms. they like the the ability to buy cheap goods at Walmart (even though they're made in China), and most likely avoid paying more for the equivalent goods made in America. guessing the focus of most people is on more day-to-day issues as opposed to the impact of unrestrained capitalism over the years. and then when that impact is felt, they react against it.

So basically they want all the advantages of globalism with none of the drawbacks.

 

[version]

So basically they want all the advantages of globalism with none of the drawbacks.

Who doesn't?

 

[Mr. Tea]

Who doesn't?

As a para-Marxist misanthro-accelerationist, I want the exact opposite.