Hey ND, don't derail the discussion. Agent Smith just likes to get involved in every discussion even when he doesn't have anything to say. His comment was likely more playful than malicious, and I deleted it because it wasn't a good contribution.

Craft, as an activity separate from art, aims to produce useful objects, which are more or less fit for purpose and more or less beautiful. Art aims to produce objects solely for aesthetic appreciation (which are therefore more difficult to judge).

Craft, as a part of art, is the application of traditional skills that the artist has been trained in. Or more loosely, it is the skill or technique involved in making a work of art. How important is it? I'd say very important, but it's more complicated than a linear scale of skillfulness.

They say that Van Gogh was not as accomplished a painter as Picasso, but I don't think we can say that he was an inferior artist. I suppose we might say that because Picasso had mastered the traditional artistic skills, he was more able to revolutionize art in the way he did. Things seemed to come easy for him; was that because of technical mastery?

Similarly, there have been many more technically able guitarists than Frank Zappa or Robert Fripp, but the music of, say, Yngwie Malmsteen and Steve Vai leaves me cold. Could this be because Zappa and Fripp had other skills, not particularly involved in guitar technique, that they brought to bear on their guitar playing (harmonic awareness, note choices, etc., that they got from being composers and having a natural all-round musical knowledge and musicality)? Or do we in this case want to reach for the arty stuff to explain it: conceptual vision, emotional investment, or imagination?

Some painters are terrible at painting hands but great at other things. Can we only say they are great once they've finally managed to master hands?

It becomes apparent that craft, skill, and technique are not the same thing, or can at least encompass a range of different and overlapping kinds of abilities. One answer is that craft (and possibly technique) is the set of traditional techniques that are handed down by training, whereas skill seems to be something wider or more general.

I wouldn't want to say that art = [craft, skill, and technique] + [vision, emotional investment, imagination], because it seems simplistic and reductive, but it might be a way of looking at it. For instance, some conceptual artists have the second addend, and the first is applied by the employees of the artist. And what does this say about conceptual art?

I can recommend “From the Oasthouse”, which is a fictional podcast released as if it were a real one. Alan Partridge is one of the best comic creations of modern times, although I’m not a huge fan of the newer TV stuff.

But then aren't the children being used to promote a cause? If you believe in deontological ethics surrounding the idea of not using people as a means, this is problematic. — schopenhauer1

No, I think you misunderstood. I did not mean to suggest that children are being produced by Marxists merely as tools to bring on the new society. I was addressing your main points, from which you said it follows that Marxists should not have children:

Modern human living requires the very central aspect of laboring in a privately owned milieu.

This privately owned situation is near impossible to change. — schopenhauer1

Against the first point, many Marxists think that life is nevertheless worthwhile. Against the second, virtually all Marxists believe change is possible. So you did not carry your point.

What you're missing is that many Marxists enjoy life, thinking it's worthwhile despite the general lack of human emancipation. So it depends on the temperament of the individual Marxist--which of course applies generally for antinatalism, not just to Marxists--although I think we can say that virtually all Marxists would not like to see an end to the human species, because they don't think that progress is impossible.

Yes, I completely understand. However, (a) I'm not going to rip apart the discussion by deleting a bunch of posts that have received replies, and (b) I'm going to bed now and hereby hand over all responsibilities to @Baden. :up:

@karl stone

I'm leaving your posts here because they've received some good replies, but I'm warning you: they are off-topic, evangelical, and plainly transphobic. Any more of those posts will be deleted, and you might also be banned.

20 years before the creative use of Auto-Tune.

:up: The Talk Talk influence is very much in evidence on that one. Sounds like "New Grass".

it does have recently-widowed-40-something vibes to it at times — Noble Dust

Seems to suit me fine.

But when I decided to put it on while I was working yesterday, the nostalgic melancholy was so unbearably poignant as to be distracting. (Then I put on all of Bohren & der Club of Gore's albums for the next few hours, and wondered why I was feeling down at the end of the day.)

Ironically I've listened to this one, since I used to be a Wilson-head back in high school. — Noble Dust

I like his work with Tim (No-Man). Not a huge fan of the other stuff.

I recently found “The Album Years” with Steven Wilson and Tim Bowness.

It feels like radio to me, or how it used to feel. 30 years ago I tuned in to my favourite radio programmes each week, and now I do the same with podcasts. Plus I can listen to the old ones too.

it's still on the main page.

the country was called "Russia" as a general designation.

The Soviet Union was referred to as "Russia" in every-day language including in the press. — Apollodorus

Only by ignorant outsiders.

Hi Varde, I deleted it. I couldn't make sense of it, and I judged this to be partly down to the writing. If English is not your first language then I'm sorry, but this is an English language forum and we ask that members write at a good level of standard English.

Hume, Kant and Hegel. — Jack Cummins

Plato, Kant, Schopenhauer — Jack Cummins

If it hasn't been said already, it might be important to note that Hume's and Kant's attacks on metaphysics have probably been the most important in the history of philosophy. To embrace these philosophers is not to embrace metaphysics (or, when it comes to Hume, "system building").

I'm puzzled by this phenomenon. Every so often people arrive here and start complaining about the evils of belief. What's going on? Is this a thing, some kind of movement, perhaps related to new atheism?

I agree with Banno. Also it's clear that the OP's complaint is with believing wrong or evil things, and that swearing off belief as such is going too far, not to mention impossible. Be careful about what you believe, and never think yourself infallible, and try only to believe true things rather than things that make you feel good--that seems like a more useful response to the evils that have been committed on the basis of certain beliefs. Or criticize faith, unquestioning belief, etc.

When I heard this song for the first time it seemed like the best piece of music I'd ever heard. Context is everything.

I fault that song primarily for a couple of historical inaccuracies. Rasputin was probably not the "Lover of the Russian queen" and I have not seen sources supporting the claim that he was "Russia's greatest love machine". Otherwise it's pretty much spot on.

It's a reflection of the private and perhaps even sacrosanct nature of shitting and fucking, but another aspect is probably the widespread cultural conception of these things as low and of the animal, maligned by preachers, poets, and philosophers since forever.

Current
Graham Joyce, Indigo

Recently read
Robert Silverberg, The World Inside :up:
Patricia Highsmith, The Talented Mr Ripley :up:
Richard Matheson, I Am Legend :down:

Soon to read
Orhan Pamuk, The Black Book
Jan Potocki, The Manuscript Found in Saragossa
Robert Silverberg, The Book Of Skulls
Christopher Priest, The Glamour
Italo Calvino, The Baron in the Trees
Philip K. Dick, Radio Free Albemuth
Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle

Well I'm not arguing in favour of uncaused causes, just pointing out that it's not self-contradictory in the way that "nonexistent existent" is.

I guess you’re lucky he didn’t give you bigpox.

The term uncaused cause makes no sense, it's like saying the nonexistent existent — universeness

The latter is self-contradictory, but the former is not. It’s not nonsense to say that a cause is itself uncaused: it causes, but is not caused. However it is nonsense to say that something existing does not exist.

Goat pox is a thing, only it’s not conventionally a single word.

If my memory serves me right, sources of the virus include cutaneous lesions, saliva, nasal secretions and faeces, and is most likely to occur in crowded stock.

Succinct and useful :up:

A followup question might be: how much does neoliberalism allow capitalism to abandon states, that is, nation states?

Posts deleted, user banned.

Same here, but … everything in its right place.

A civil war in Russia would very likely be characterized by national conflicts, since 22 of the country’s federal subjects (constituent divisions) are republics representing different ethnicities. Several of those, like Chechnya, are predominantly Muslim and haven’t always got along with Moscow.

Yep.

Whether instead of Humanities and Social Sciences we should have psychology, sociology, history, and so on, as separate categories, I don’t know. Seems ok as it is.

He or she clearly requested to be banned.

Any more stupid questions?

Done

Today is Victory Day.

In what way, by feeding about 80% of the people who didn't previously have food? Everything is failure if you see it from the appropriate angle. Humans should go back to living in starvation, darkness, mass hysteria, and violent psychosis, I suppose.

It would be better than having everything we need and being able to provide what other entire continents need as well despite their governing bodies buying and selling citizens or starving them to death. — whollyrolling

Even if this comment made sense it would be foolish. Don't waste our time please. Up your game.

Thanks :smile:

Since China and Russia are capitalist states now, is there really any true representative of leftism today?

What is the left now, and what is the far left? Who is the far left? — frank

Definitionally I'd say that the far left is whoever is politically active towards the swift replacement of capitalism with socialism, where socialism is the social ownership and democratic control of the means of production, which might lead to some sort of classless society, e.g., communism. Note: not (necessarily) government or state, but certainly social, ownership and control.

The project has been a horrendous failure so far and it has no current prime representative. But capitalism has been in many ways a horrendous failure too, so the spectre of socialism will continue to haunt the world.

Here's Russia-1's response to the Brits. The graphics at 17 seconds and then at 1:27 get the point across.



Why Huddersfield is the main target, I'm not sure.

That's probably an illusion. With Ukraine, in contrast with the wars of the past, it's just too early for simple narratives to have developed, or to have become credible. And anyway, if you really look into past wars, you soon see how endlessly complex they are.

On the other hand, I guess it's plausible that as the world becomes more interconnected, clear narratives become more difficult to establish.