I want to connect this thread on political philosophy of free will to cultural consumption choices that seem “necessary” in some ways. Things you might sincerely tag #mustread or something like Kanye West music which all my music maven friends tell me is a must-appreciate oeuvrehttps://twitter.com/vgr/status/1187751885790302208 …
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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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Replying to @vgr
is it really authoritarian, or do we just not like to be left out of the popular things?
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Replying to @swimming_blerd
I think that’s a grey zone thing. Popularity is weak social proof of potential historicity, but some things embody actual historicity, where past and future of X don’t make sense without X. Memes that flood the meme pool.
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Replying to @vgr
i think the statement "some things embody actual historicity" is too dubious to argue one way or the other to wit, the stroke by which the past and the present "make sense" we should always regard with skepticism, that is, as a stroke which seeks its own, artificial historicity
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Replying to @swimming_blerd
I agree, it is 100% dubious and I don’t actually believe it, but that’s the point. Historicity is a construct that a) you can opt-in to b) has no pr9vileged version. It’s more than popular appeal, but falls short of an absolute temporality (which I argue cannot exist)
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Replying to @vgr
i disagree i think absolute temporality is the mechanism which enables art to exist, in a large part by dissolving historicity into it--sort of an experiential vortex and as such, we are in no position to evaluate this kind of temporality, only experience it
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Replying to @swimming_blerd
Ah I would say there’s no way to experience this absolute temporality at all, *except* through transient experiencable temporalities that emerge from and collapse back into it. So to believe in it is a leap of faith This is where I end up disagreeing with experienced meditators
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Replying to @vgr
that's more of a feature than a bug imo transience is the essence of whatever we are, as paradoxical as that sounds; anyone who says otherwise is selling something but whether we choose to understand that negatively or positively is up to us
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Venkatesh Rao Retweeted Venkatesh Rao
I’m not tagging it as either, just rejecting claims of absolute experiencehttps://twitter.com/vgr/status/1186056484481667072?s=21 …
Venkatesh Rao added,
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Replying to @vgr
as paul ricoeur and virginia woolf show us, this cuts both ways: the desire to transcend the relative illegibility of finite, experiential time (ironically) produces a more illegible, abstract, and absurd vision of the Absolutepic.twitter.com/Bo1AF4ZYiE
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Replying to @swimming_blerd
Have you seen my multitemporality talk? Curious to hear what you think. It references Woolf, Mrs Dalloway etc. About 18 months behind my current statement but mostly still roughly right re my directionhttps://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tSE8VdaZNuY …
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