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How to Be an Artist When Nothing Lasts Forever
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- Опубліковано 3 сер 2023
- Flashback to February 21, 2019:
This video is the third in a series about self-consciousness. This time rather than exclusively focusing on Bill Murray or the history of Dada and Surrealism (although they’ll both come up again)we start off opposing Slavoj Zizek’s version of Hegelian Materialism against Alan Watts’ Western Buddhism.
We then take up an excerpt from Graham Harman’s book “Weird Realism,” and only THEN return to Bill Murray and Avant-Garde art as both appear in the unreleased cult film “Nothing Lasts Forever.”
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This is destined to be an all-time classic ;)
I don't think this really gets at what Watts is, though.
This was my thought. Watts described our "personality" as the image we construct of ourselves out of fear. As a reflex that keeps us from engaging with the world as we really are, and as it really is.
I don't think his prescription was that the world just happens to us, and that we should cease to engage with it, but rather that we should first strive to see things clearly, and then we can act rightly, rather than simply acting reflexively.
Watts was a cheerful nihilist who, through the grace of God, drank himself to death in a playful universe without a purpose other than digging the fun of it all. 😅
@@FrancisGo. I think he drank himself to death because he saw how suicidally egotistical, capable, and determinedly wrongheaded humans are, and he was coping.
I'm so disappointed that my years ago old comment from the zero books version of this video is gone. I'm so interested in what I had to say the first time you posted this.
I want to see if my position has changed or how it's developed.
Sadge.
This is a valuable video. Thanks, Doug. I think the enantiodromia-like dynamic you point out between Watts and Zizek's positions is spot on. Of course, I think Zizek (and indeed Harman's) view of a fundamental separateness is only tenable under scientific materialism (the qualifier is important), a metaphysical view whose libidinal energy has long-but been exhausted. We cling to its empty husk despite ourselves. No wonder it no longer provides us any warmth.
I mean, heck, even science itself-with the begrudging yet continued re-confirmation of the reality of quantum physics-has moved past materialism. And, in fact, the irreducibility of space-time altogether. Unity's back on the menu, boys. Bill Hicks was right.
Of course, that doesn't mean that there isn't an insurmountable break at the root of the subject. But it only appears fundamental so long as there's a subject to experience the brokenness. The final contradiction is to recognize the contradiction of contradiction itself. The fires of hell are the same as the light of God. Trash-stratum. Yada yada. Matt Christman has it down. I hope the rest of the left (whatever that means) can catch up.
Thanks, again!
Thank you!
The fire of Hell is the same as the light of God is not a contradiction. To understand it in the simplest of terms, think of the human behavior of "Killing them with Kindness" in that if one is insulting and adversarial towards you, yet you remain genuinely kind to them in order to bring peace and love among you, those who react back to you by abandoning their adversarial position and unite in respect and love for you, they have come into the "light", but those who persist to even more staunchly hate you for your kindness end up burning in their psyche even more. Try it next time you find yourself in the position and remember your kindness must be genuine for the love and respect of your neighbor.
Quality content. Thank you.
Much appreciated
Doug, these videos give me so much to chew on, and are a huge part of why I subscribe and support. As you are working through these ideas in producing your videos, I am am too. So here's my take, according to my biases and current understanding, without having watched the previous two videos:
Part 1
As to the perception question, reality IS extemely interconnected, and yet at least as we are capable of perceiving, it is Not a harmonic whole. Regardless of the physics or lacunas of human perception, it is full of human abstractions built on a limited perception shaped by other and previous human abstractions. Reification has utility, but distorts as it is utilized, etc. etc.
The basis for organization of human beings is common cause of humanity to maximize liberty and safety, excitement and security, expression and acceptance and so on, YET we have very inadequate perception of this, and desire it to different degrees, thus we lack unity of purpose and is partly why we do not spontaneously organize or revolutionize.
Is Art the vocation(religious reference intended) of an artist or is it the job of an artist? Or is art simply a skill in a systemetized form of universal human expression, similar to language? I propose "Being an artist" is merely a reification to conform to dominant ideology for the sake of survival, and hope to maximize the human ambitions I listed under common cause. We are motivated to seek those universal or nigh universal human ambitions. They are of course shaped by dominant ideology, economics, government, parental temperament, parental views, and so on.
Continued below
Part 2
Art as product of applying expressive skills, according to availability of media, to create a commodity, is of course directly subject to capitalism as it would be subject to any socioeconomic circumstance of human existence. Art is reification and you can clearly do philosophy and particularly Marxism about that.
My takeaways:
Art, as a scene, as an evolving expression of philosophy, historically diverted itself in response to fear of culture decay and mounting pressures of capitalism, rather than continuing it's previous trajectory of exploration. That's what they said, but I smell fear of us Proles, fear of de-professionalization(and subsequent democritazation) of their field, and loss of their precious butt-sniffing heirarchies.
There was(is?) a conscious effort to alienate society as a whole because a bunch of artists saw themselves entering a new dark age, and decided that we filthy peasants needed to have the church of Art tell us what was good for us, take the donations of the local princes to proclaim them worthy, and demand that we confess our ignorance and sins so that they might then absolve us from our kitsch.
This is one explanation for why i can admire the avent garde and sometimes slip into feeling i should aspire to it, but not as an artist participate in it in integrity. It's too pure, like mother aky.
Harman's book on Lovecraft has been on my queue for some time. It caught my Lovecraft fan's eye whilst I was reading his bio after he and Zizek appeared in an interview/conversation together. I thought I would read this one first, not sure if it is the best choice for an introduction to Harman's thought.
I think this was rather beautiful
Thank you!
I appreciate your take, but it's still hard for me to see the disparity between Watts and Zizek being resolved in any fundamental way. Watts did popularize Eastern ideas, but it was more to show people a spiritual path or outlet from capitalism; whereas Zizek, whose position has definitely changed over the past decade or so, seemed to be more focused on negativity itself as a founding principle of the subject. So, "nothingness" isn't a mediation between them, but just commentary on the limits of subjectivity itself in a capitalist world. I would like to see more people foster a genuine sense of spirituality in themselves, even if love is evil.
Good video. High information stuff like this > low information UFO tabloid discussion
You'll eat those words after the saucers land.
always on the razors edge Doug the a foot in all camps to turn them to look from a parallax view to draw all camps to a more universalist position. sublation of all positions
Not sure how it follows at all to blame Greenberg's misstep on Trotsky. If we have even a passing familiarity with Trotsky's thinking on the matter, it's a pretty wild reach to think his understanding of artistic and cultural questions would be decoupled from some accounting of prevailing objective conditions, the self-activity of the working class, and, ultimately, the fate of the struggle for socialism. Doug oddly chose not to quote some of the key bits:
"The artistic schools of the last few decades - cubism, futurism, dadaism, surrealism - follow each other without reaching a complete development .... To find a solution to this impasse through art itself is impossible. It is a crisis which concerns all culture, beginning at its economic base and ending in the highest spheres of ideology. Art can neither escape the crisis nor partition itself off. Art cannot save itself .... For these reasons the function of art in our epoch is determined by its relation to the revolution. ...
"Without a new flag and a new program it is impossible to create a revolutionary mass base; consequently it is impossible to rescue society from its dilemma. But a truly revolutionary party is neither able nor willing to take upon itself the task of “leading” and even less of commanding art, either before or after the conquest of power."
www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/06/artpol.htm
Source, for whatever weirdo cares
From sarcastic comments on Chapo videos to this
I reject asceticism in all of its forms.
And I reject aestheticism in all it’s forms.
"..a self-reflective, and maybe even aesthetic, mode of material production." You seem to be combining or reconciling modernist aesthetics and critical theory with material production (of goods and services) which is usually not considered aesthetic activity per se. This sounds like "the combining of art and life" that was articulated earlier in the video. I believe art acquires its meaning and usefulness in its separation from art, life, politics, production, etc. I believe aesthetic experience is a distinct experience that cannot be reduced to the political, material or psychological, although these things shape art and artists. Art for art's sake is as good a reason for making art as all the other reasons. Art and material production should be left to do their own thing in their own respective ways. Combining them is an attractive utopian fantasy.
There's a lot here. Your take at the end is, for me, new and thought provoking. My initial thoughts are: Maybe Doug's feelings about art are akin to Zizek's about the Universe--somewhere between hate and indifference. If we look for answers there, look to it to "free" us from ourselves, invest it with powers and meanings, we only accommodate, and accommodate ourselves to, the status quo. Maybe the fact that art exists at all is a mistake--just little bits flashing here and there, in all, a void. If we take that mistake to the end ... then ... I don't know ... something about love ... something about the means of production. Great work! Thanks for doing these.
Doug, have u ever thought about talking to the lads from 'Weird Studies' or Julian Demedeiros? Idk, but, I've always thought u'd have a nice chat--and it would also fulfill my virtual dreamscape, utube fetish!
Doug made some kind of reaction video on Julian de Medeiros. Some kind of polemics on his interpretation.
Why assume that Zizek or Watts are talking about love at all? What Zizek is doing is defending the West against Eastern philosophy, and what Watts was doing was defending human existence against Western Modernity. To them, love is an Object, a Tool, to serve ideological and philosophical interests.
If the meaning of X and Y are tied up in Z, then X and Y are subsumed, transformed to Z's interests, under Z, and Z is all that is real. Love is not real for either Zizek or Watts, which undoubtedly assists Zizek in exchanging one female model for a fresher one over time, among many other outcomes.
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We've had global culture for quite some time now, so the assertion by Sublation Media that the elimination of Eastern philosophy from Western Capitalism will help Communism is bad logic. The "East" is tremendously influenced by the West, in 2023 much more than in Watts' time, and vice versa. Just as Capital doesn't care about borders, neither does culture.
A popular global meaning that either requires Communism or is highly advantaged by Communism over Capitalism is a more reasonable path forward in the 21st century. Otherwise, we'll be stuck in Nostalgia until our own extinction, including the pre-global world of East vs West.
Bleh
💯💯💯
Nah. Hegel, and therefore Zizek, are both wrong. Watts doesn’t get everything right either, mind you, but he is much better than Hegel.
great arguments!