Showing posts with label Didion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Didion. Show all posts

Thursday, October 1, 2020

10/1/20 - On Morality & Fanaticism; Conformist Suicide

"When we start deceiving ourselves into thinking not that we want something or need something... but that it is a moral imperative that we have it... we join the fashionable madmen, and then...the thin whine of hysteria is heard in the land, and then is when we are in bad trouble. And I suspect we are already there." -Joan Didion (1965
) 

 As a follow-up to the last episode, this trimmed and updated re-post connects Didion's fanatic test to the moral certitude manufactured by propaganda and its architects using social media as a delivery super weapon. Also, public vs. private opinion, the Cradle of Reason, how propagandees can respond to competing propagandists, and keeping the you in you. 


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Music: Yellow Candy & Paul Vernon

Monday, September 28, 2020

9/28/20 - An Invasive Species Gazes Into The Abyss

Todd & Brian discuss whether the "divine" human species is in fact both bipolar and invasive, the difficulties that come from gazing into the Abyss, and moral imperatives vs. self-righteousness: how narcissistic morality becomes naked authoritarianism. Also, where solutions to the informational anarchy crisis must begin, when the ends smother the means, how a species can summon both altruism and barbarity, and let's kill Rousseau's Noble Savage once and for all. Yes. More easy listening to help you escape the world's troubles!

 

Music: Paul Vernon and Yellow Candy

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Wednesday, August 19, 2020

8/19/20 - Intellectual Populism, Enemy of the People, The Humanovirus Sh*tshow

Detailing the gloriously organic results coming from a month of social media, news, and podcasting detox. Also, boutique "news" & democratized opinion's relationship to mob rule: Ibsen's Enemy of the People, the humanovirus and its ubiquitous invasive species traits, the Dennis Doctrine, and podcasting without Sausage Party Hope and with a severed validation stream leaves one pesky unanswered question: "why the f**ck am I doing this?"

More Drew Michael: https://www.youtube.com/user/drewmichaelcomedy/videos

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Thursday, June 18, 2020

6/18/20 - A "Real Conversation"? Allow Me to Retort...

You say you want a real Great Racial Awakening™ dialogue? Great! Quit proselytizing long enough to take a stiff drink and have a listen. Remember: when you clicked you asked.



Also: supporting lockdown protests and the 2A while mocking militia stalkers at the capitol, burning heretics and blasphemers at the free speech stake, influencers exploiting and monetizing catastrophe and chaos, electoral Ground Hog Day, and why Biden's VP choice is maybe more important than anything. Like it? Share it!

More: www.facebook.com/escapingthecave.com 

Saturday, May 23, 2020

Joan Didion's 'On Morality': The Extremist Test

There's a Bob Dylan lyric in Highlands that always makes me smile: "She said, "you don't read women authors, do you?"" For whatever reason, I typically don't with one very significant exception: Joan Didion. I bought We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live, a non-fiction collection, with Orwell's. She's fantastic. Slouching Toward Bethlehem's essays/articles are on par with Mencken's, if less vitriolic and venomously entertaining! On Self-Respect and On Morality are worth finding and devouring.

Here's an excerpt from On Morality, written in 1965. That's significant, as you'll see. Crusading moral certitude isn't new. We were hatched in that fire; it's part of the American DNA and what makes us particularly susceptible to propaganda and makes this technologically amplified conflict between our moralistic ideological religions so dangerous. Didion's Lionel Trilling quote deserves its own space and I literally squealed when I saw she used the word, "agitprop!" And the last paragraph? Ooof! We need a test for those infected with the Extremist Virus. Joan Didion has it: