In what sense is a must read a must read? Or a must-watch a must-watch? Or a must-listen a must-listen?
Or to generalize, a must-obey cultural consumption/knowledge imperative.
It is a version of authoritarian “what isn’t prohibited is compulsory” but an unusual kind
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Divine right of kings and absolute rule of divine law produce versions of deterministic agency closure (forbidden+compulsory = everything) via cults of personality or legalism.
Cultural determinism is an attempt to manufacture that imperative force.
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A national anthem is a good edge case. In India, it is short, in Sanskrit (so most of us don’t actually understand it), and universally memorized. A true must-know. And hammered in because you must actually sing it frequently in schools. Not just stand for it.
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In the US it is mostly must-recognize but only subset have memorized the whole thing. It’s twice as long, almost as archaic (not a dead language but older English), and most ceremonial performances require standing but not sing-along. In part because it’s a harder melody to sing.
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But back to sat Kanye West as a must-listen. It isn’t authoritarian, and it’s totally opt-in to Nation of Ye, but there is a certain force of necessity there nevertheless. It is a precondition for participation in a temporality; a way of being in historical time.
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To not listen to say John Legend is merely a matter of taste/cultural choice
To not listen to Kanye is to forgo an entire timeline, a way of being in time
To the extent you think music is a necessary strand of history, it is sitting out *the* timeline. Consensus reality trunk.
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One key idea behind my multitemporality thesis is that it is possible to not read must-reads, not listen to must-listens, etc and still stay not alive, but in time. Ie experience a coherent temporality and be in history.
Ie there is no privileged necessary trunk temporality
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I’ve never knowingly listened to Kanye (though I take my musical friends at their word that I’m missing something historic), but unlike the law of gravity, or hard edged laws of justice system, the consequences of not obeying the must-listen law are not as clear. But they exist.
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Kanye is just an example. The general principle is that consensus reality is actually dissensus garden of forking paths, but unlike bitcoin, there is no longest-chain-wins rule. There is no protocol force ensuring universal consensus. So you get divergence. Multitemporality.
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It is tempting to think of there being a ground truth cultural reality with different must-inhabit temporalities being co-extensive and nonrivalrous imperative coverings of it. Many maps for different journeys, one territory. Any journey that is not prohibited is mandatory.
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Must-consumes are like public keys for accessing temporalities. You can’t get out though unless you know the private key. Trapdoor realities. Hotel California temporalities. Self-securing cults that reprogram your log level life semantics.
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there's a surreal feeling you get once you understand the basics of crypto ux you could call "seeing like a private key" (cf: seeing like a state). Things like email addresses, SSNs, phone numbers... key ids issued/managed/controlled by 3rd parties start seeming really shady
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Connecting this bunnywarren to the meme du jour
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I saw a guy living
Not reading must-reads
Not listening to must-listens
Not watching must-watches
Not knowing must-knows
Not suffering atemporality
Just living in his own timeline, like a psychopath
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Similar energy. Need to explicitly connect, but just logging it here for now.
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A clock is the design outcome of applying occam’s razor to narratives
Tick-tock is merely the simplest endless story you can tell.
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If territory is a concept, the question would be: what is the problem to which it answers?
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