[a pleasurable headache] the absence of Culture
The State of the Culture, 2024
All in all this is a pretty depressing read, but puts a finger on so many elements and symptoms of the current cultural Zeitgeist.
"Even the dumbest entertainment looks like Shakespeare compared to dopamine culture. You don’t need Hamlet, a photo of a hamburger will suffice. Or a video of somebody twerking, or a pet looking goofy.
Instead of movies, users get served up an endless sequence of 15-second videos. Instead of symphonies, listeners hear bite-sized melodies, usually accompanied by one of these tiny videos—just enough for a dopamine hit, and no more.
This is the new culture. And its most striking feature is the absence of Culture (with a capital C) or even mindless entertainment—both get replaced by compulsive activity."
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Can Saudi Arabia Buy Soccer?
https://www.gq.com/story/can-saudi-arabia-buy-soccer
Oliver Franklin-Wallis at GQ asks the question most of the soccer world asked last summer (and this winter during the transfer window). MBS continues sports-washing and his ambitions do not end there.
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'This Is What Our Ruling Class Has Decided Will Be Normal'
https://foreverwars.ghost.io/this-is-what-our-ruling-class-has-decided-will-be-normal/
This week U.S Airman Aaron Bushnell set himself on fire in front of the Israeli embassy rather than "be complicit in genocide". He died screaming the words "Free Palestine!". The above piece by Spencer Ackerman at Forever Wars is a sombre read.
"At every stage of this horror, and seemingly the stages to come, the Israelis have had the ironclad material and diplomatic support of the Biden administration and a bipartisan congressional majority. That is the complicity Aaron is talking about, and which he considered too personally burdensome to live through. He is not the first person to set himself on fire in protest of Gaza. And anyone who does so inevitably references Thích Quảng Đức, the Buddhist monk who burned himself alive in 1963 to protest the U.S.-supported government of South Vietnam.
But I've never heard of a U.S. service member performing such an extreme act. That seems like a turn of the historical ratchet, as well as a bone-deep indictment of U.S. policy from someone inside the national-security apparatus. That's why he burned himself wearing his field uniform. He is symbolically purging the sins of a country whose ruling class has acted so disgracefully. "
Also worth reading is Luke O'Neil's piece at Welcome to Hell World entitled 'Maybe even approach a level of serenity'.
"There's a lot to process here but I can't help but focus on the detail of a cop of some kind holding his gun on a man as he's burning to death on the ground. You could do a lot worse in terms of nation-defining metaphors."
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I'm off to recover from being ill (again), see you in two!