5 ms·

It's gripping the entire world. When things are judged, not by how the author intended, but by the readers interpretation, it's a bad situation.

ed25519FUUU 6y ago
Oscar Wilde has something to say about censorship (and he knew a little bit about being attacked for writing): > There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all. In today’s highly polarized and tribal world, books must also be a way to signal virtue and tribe membership.
- tharne 6y ago
  That was exactly Nabokov's point in writing Lolita.
- nickthemagicman 6y ago
  This also applies to art in general. Marcel Duchamps Fountain was one of my favorite pieces of art because it called out the art world for judging art based on the fact that it was made by a member of the accepted 'art world' but it was a frickin urinal.
  - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
    I didn't think that was the point. I thought that the point was that, within certain flavors of philosophy, there is no such thing as beauty (that is, beauty has no objective reality), and therefore that anything could be regarded as being art. Duchamps' point was that this urinal was as good as the Mona Lisa; that is, Duchamps really agreed with this viewpoint (if I understand correctly). He got upset when critics called it "pretty", because that meant that they had completely missed the point.
    - nickthemagicman 6y ago
      It beggers the question of 'what is art'? What actually MADE that urinal art was that it was made by a member of the artistic ingroup. If I go hang a urinal in a museum as a web developer I will get arrested and it will be thrown out.
scarecrowbob 6y ago
I've been reading Alice Miller's book "For Your Own Good" this last week. Big chunks of her book excerpt "Mein Kampf", which I previous hadn't read at all. I have very little problem reading Hitler's text through my own critical lens, without adopting the authors intent. I have a very different view on the world than Hitler, and I have no problem at all saying that my views are less pathological than his and further, I feel like history has judged the dude rightly and quite harshly. Is that a bad situation? And if not, how is this different than what you're describing?
- nickthemagicman 6y ago
  Actually my point is a tautological fallacy. You can never know what the author intended when writing. And every reader has a different subjective experience of a piece of literature or a work of art. So it's actually fucking impossible to even judge a work of art or writing based on the authors or readers perspective or in any thing beyond the aesthetic. Because what you think about something may not be what someone else thinks about it. And every persons thinking is influenced by so many different experiences: cultural, personal, moral, etc. So to attempt to create a concrete narrative about the intentions of a specific work of art or literature is impossible. This applies to reality as well. I've never read Mein Kampf, but I assume Hitle has good intentions for his country and wants peace and prosperity for the particular ingroup of people he identifies with. This is the same that everyone wants for their particular ingroup. Hitler did terrible things to accomplish that. So your perspective on Hitlers work is affected by the genocide that he commited. However, history is written by the winners and the present reality is merely one narrative, that the winners create. AMERICANS and every single other country in the world have commited genocide and other horrible atrocities.(see Native Americans during settler times and 400k innocent civilians killed in the middle east during the past decade) However, they won. If Hitler had won WW2 I can't help but wonder if the Jewish Holocaust would have been as minimized as the Native American Holocaust, and pushed under the rug. And Hitler would have gone down in history as a hero based on the news media spinning that narrative and nationalistic exuberance. Narratives are the most powerful thing in the world but also the most untrue.
  - 6y ago
dragonwriter 6y ago
> When things are judged, not by how the author intended, but by the readers interpretation, it’s a bad situation. I don’t know, I think there’s a very good reason to give significant priority in judgement of acts to their consequences, especially forseeable ones, not just their intentions. That’s as true of acts of artistic creation as any other action. That’s on top of the fact that forseeable consequences are often a better indicator of actual intent than convenient and otherwise unsupported post hoc statements of intent when an action is criticized for its actual consequences.

ed25519FUUU 6y ago

Oscar Wilde has something to say about censorship (and he knew a little bit about being attacked for writing): > There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all. In today’s highly polarized and tribal world, books must also be a way to signal virtue and tribe membership.

tharne 6y ago
That was exactly Nabokov's point in writing Lolita.
nickthemagicman 6y ago
This also applies to art in general. Marcel Duchamps Fountain was one of my favorite pieces of art because it called out the art world for judging art based on the fact that it was made by a member of the accepted 'art world' but it was a frickin urinal.
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  I didn't think that was the point. I thought that the point was that, within certain flavors of philosophy, there is no such thing as beauty (that is, beauty has no objective reality), and therefore that anything could be regarded as being art. Duchamps' point was that this urinal was as good as the Mona Lisa; that is, Duchamps really agreed with this viewpoint (if I understand correctly). He got upset when critics called it "pretty", because that meant that they had completely missed the point.
  - nickthemagicman 6y ago
    It beggers the question of 'what is art'? What actually MADE that urinal art was that it was made by a member of the artistic ingroup. If I go hang a urinal in a museum as a web developer I will get arrested and it will be thrown out.

scarecrowbob 6y ago

I've been reading Alice Miller's book "For Your Own Good" this last week. Big chunks of her book excerpt "Mein Kampf", which I previous hadn't read at all. I have very little problem reading Hitler's text through my own critical lens, without adopting the authors intent. I have a very different view on the world than Hitler, and I have no problem at all saying that my views are less pathological than his and further, I feel like history has judged the dude rightly and quite harshly. Is that a bad situation? And if not, how is this different than what you're describing?

nickthemagicman 6y ago
Actually my point is a tautological fallacy. You can never know what the author intended when writing. And every reader has a different subjective experience of a piece of literature or a work of art. So it's actually fucking impossible to even judge a work of art or writing based on the authors or readers perspective or in any thing beyond the aesthetic. Because what you think about something may not be what someone else thinks about it. And every persons thinking is influenced by so many different experiences: cultural, personal, moral, etc. So to attempt to create a concrete narrative about the intentions of a specific work of art or literature is impossible. This applies to reality as well. I've never read Mein Kampf, but I assume Hitle has good intentions for his country and wants peace and prosperity for the particular ingroup of people he identifies with. This is the same that everyone wants for their particular ingroup. Hitler did terrible things to accomplish that. So your perspective on Hitlers work is affected by the genocide that he commited. However, history is written by the winners and the present reality is merely one narrative, that the winners create. AMERICANS and every single other country in the world have commited genocide and other horrible atrocities.(see Native Americans during settler times and 400k innocent civilians killed in the middle east during the past decade) However, they won. If Hitler had won WW2 I can't help but wonder if the Jewish Holocaust would have been as minimized as the Native American Holocaust, and pushed under the rug. And Hitler would have gone down in history as a hero based on the news media spinning that narrative and nationalistic exuberance. Narratives are the most powerful thing in the world but also the most untrue.
- 6y ago

dragonwriter 6y ago

> When things are judged, not by how the author intended, but by the readers interpretation, it’s a bad situation. I don’t know, I think there’s a very good reason to give significant priority in judgement of acts to their consequences, especially forseeable ones, not just their intentions. That’s as true of acts of artistic creation as any other action. That’s on top of the fact that forseeable consequences are often a better indicator of actual intent than convenient and otherwise unsupported post hoc statements of intent when an action is criticized for its actual consequences.