flâneur

Camille Nibungco

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on the atlas — 149

highlights — 1235

  • Of course, conservatism is now built on a foundation not of Christianity or free markets but on the belief that elites are screwing you, that it’s all a conspiracy against you and your way of life. That is the bedrock. That is the new covenant - paranoia, obsession, revenge. “They’re all out to get you,” says Trumpism, “and I will destroy your enemies.” You don’t even need me to tell you that.
    Welcome to the Political Era of the Paranoid Delusion
  • But learning to be more careful about not falling for jerks is not the same as learning—or trying to teach oneself—not to need anyone, not to need romantic love at all. And yet wide swaths of our culture have, it seems, embraced the idea that the desire for love and romance is something we should strive to overcome, or master, in the name of something like self-actualization. In fact—if we’re being real—we ought to acknowledge that self-actualization is a concept as little grounded in evidence as the belief in religious miracles, in that I’m pretty sure no one has ever witnessed self-actualiza…
    Against Self-Actualization
  • I was a freshman in college when the book, “The Rules”—which advised women to play hard to get and especially to withhold sex until they were sure of commitment—became a runaway bestseller. Naturally, its retro assumptions about what men want (sex) and what women want (commitment) enraged feminists. I was, and am, with the feminists. While sex can complicate things, the real issue, as my friend implied, is power and the need to hold onto a measure of it. The problem, in other words, is not that Ivy goes to bed with Ansel too soon; it’s that she allows him to be the judge of her worth, from the…
    Against Self-Actualization
  • She tells herself that the sex is good, at any rate. And that has to count for something, right? So says our aimless, consumerist, individualistic culture at least, which is apt, when convenient, to endow sex with special, quasi-religious significance, as if good sex means something, signals connection just as much as words—conversation—or acts of kindness do. It doesn’t, at least not in the opinion of this reader. (It should be in addition to, not in lieu of, she says primly.)
    Against Self-Actualization
  • Imagery is powerful in South Korea. The country has been one of the most efficient in utilizing soft power, rivaling even Japan in regards to cultural relevance in the west. This dominance is not by mistake, as the production of consumer goods, entertainment, and tourism became crucial in both countries after the devastation of war. Soft power is something that is sold to you, a participatory system, reliant on both economy and communication, a dialogue between the market and the people. This is a language you can see in Seoul, the exchange of design, aesthetic, and trend, for power. There is …
    everything as advertisement - Oyster Fans: Redux
  • As stigma decreases, as more and more women stop associating sex with morality, and as the American middle class continues to shrink, the market opens up to a wider breadth of workers. No longer exclusive to the underclass of career criminals, or lumpenproletariat, the work is now available to the petite bourgeoisie, who arrive to the industry with a class interest that opposes the lumpenprole worker. The petite bourgeoisie sex worker is not seen as a traitor to her class in this method of operating, in spite of her criminality and non-traditional means, as she still serves the interest of cap…
    The Gentrification of Sex Work - Oyster Fans: Redux
  • Granted, were these novels to follow such plotlines, they’d be of a completely different nature. But that also shows the implicit intention of these books. It would never occur to the nannies to act out because doing so would be class betrayal. For all their self-perception as outsiders, they are much closer in status with their employers than they would like to believe. As such, their crowning act of aggression is not revolution, but assimilation.
    The Woman-of-Color Nanny Novel - by Chris Jesu Lee
  • “meme magic is real because a symbolic economy yields disproportionate benefits to people skilled in symbol manipulation.”
    Gmail
  • The rewards of feeling, it turns out, are the same as the punishments: we are forced to experience immediately what we have. This is a dangerous project — one that imbues the world with a violence and a volume that extend indiscriminately in all moral directions — but one that nonetheless also allows us to live. It is worth it, I think, to approach the unbearable. It is worth it to endure it all.
    against narrative - by rayne fisher-quann
  • But, if love has taught us anything, it’s that there are things known to the body that cannot be grasped by the mind. The things I’ve felt, I realize, don’t belong to my rational self any more than anything else does. To think that you ought to understand something just because you lived it — that you are owed an explanation for your feelings just because you happen to be the one who felt them — strikes me as a supremely naive kind of power play; the little dog that thinks it’s a big dog, or the toddler that acts like a dictator because it senses, perhaps, exactly how beholden it is to the whi…
    against narrative - by rayne fisher-quann
  • To love someone, after all, is absurd: it humiliates you, it debases you, it removes you from yourself, it leaves you as alienated from your own thoughts and actions and impulses as you might be from a stranger’s, it takes your organs out of your body and forces you to watch them sleep (do my organs really look like that, you might wonder eventually — so wet and ugly, so foreign even though they belong to you, even though you need them to survive). You will feel things you can’t understand, and work to convince yourself of facts that your body doesn’t feel; you learn lessons and forget them ju…
    against narrative - by rayne fisher-quann
  • But I consider it a good rule of thumb to question my impulses when they start to become default, and I have therefore begun to question the purpose and the efficacy of the endless search for personal narrative — particularly when it comes to love and pain, two phenomena that have never submitted easily to intellectual capture. It has begun to feel much more radical and much more necessary to put in a new kind of difficult work: the process of exploring blindly again, of searching without hope of satisfaction, of sitting indefinitely in the discomfort of feeling without reaching for the balm o…
    against narrative - by rayne fisher-quann
  • A relationship, notably, is not an algorithm. It is a gestalt. Far be it from me to say that I’ve figured out what relationships really are or really mean, but I know there is an intangible force formed between the centres of people that sits beyond the limits of interpretation, that is larger than itself and both of you, that cannot be explained satisfactorily by the rational mind or by language. This is not to say that it’s not worth it to try; the attempt to describe the unbearable, knowing that we will fail but hoping to fail with dignity or beauty, is not only the engine of all art but, p…
    against narrative - by rayne fisher-quann
  • This is the paradox of narrative: it is both existentially necessary and necessarily insufficient. We can’t escape the story (to think that we can is, in the end, another kind of story), but the story is also never enough.
    against narrative - by rayne fisher-quann
  • That’s what a story is: a false promise of fulfillment that we know to be false and yet swallow wholesale time and time again, not because it’s plausible but because it’s irresistible.
    against narrative - by rayne fisher-quann
  • To tolerate life, as Gaitskill implores us to do, you first have to actually live in it — get up in the morning, take out the trash, eat breakfast, go to work, get on the train, try not to look too deeply into the faces of the people sitting across from you, walk home, call your parents, pay your rent — and you must do all of this amid immeasurable tragedy, amid loss, amid dizzying pain. This is the obvious truth that hits me over the head again and again, that I fear I’m doomed to learn and forget and re-learn in perpetuity: that nearly every person you’ll ever encounter, in love or in passin…
    against narrative - by rayne fisher-quann
  • This task — the task of continuing to live — would be nearly impossible without beauty, or narrative, or interpretation, or divinity, or whatever else you choose to call the process by which we assign meaning to the objectively absurd (although the assumption that anything can exist objectively beyond the interpretation of an observer is a heavy one, and not one that I instinctively hold true). We tell ourselves stories, as Didion would say — or, as she writes a few oft-ignored sentences later, at least we do for a while
    against narrative - by rayne fisher-quann
  • Every boob with a hangnail has been clogging the courts and haunting talk shows across the land for the last twenty years, telling his/her "story" and trying to get redress. Whatever the suffering is, it's not to be endured, for God's sake, not felt and never, ever accepted. It's to be triumphed over. And because some things cannot be triumphed over unless they are first accepted and endured, because, indeed, some things cannot be triumphed over at all, the "story" must be told again and again in endless pursuit of a happy ending. To be human is finally to be a loser, for we are all fated to l…
    against narrative - by rayne fisher-quann
  • I longed for absolutes and found that the realities of love had none to offer me. In the absence of knowledge, I made myself dizzy with stories.
    against narrative - by rayne fisher-quann
  • I won, sometimes, but never stayed winning for long. In the end, the game always made a fool out of me. He meant it as a lesson: you can play the tables as long as you want, telling yourself another kind of story about how you’re the one in control, but the house always wins. Desire always wins. Isn’t that embarrassing?
    against narrative - by rayne fisher-quann
  • And at the same time, a lot of people were dying of AIDS. I became an activist with ACT UP. The downtown scene, where people were largely white and well-educated, had an attitude of ‘We can change this through activism. We can get the government to agree this is a crisis.’ The entitlement of educated people. And the uptown scene with the ball world, because it was African American and Latinx, there wasn’t a sense of ‘We can save the world.’ It was ‘We can create our own world, and that world will sustain us.’ Those two queer worlds were not connected. I didn’t know anybody who was in both. I w…
    Jennie Livingston on Paris Is Burning 30 Years Later
  • The trendiest thing in content right now (maybe always) is making women feel like absolute shit for being humans. If someone can’t attack your mind, they’ll go for the body, if not that they’ll go for the spiritual grounding, your sense of morality, your curated exceptionalism, your hair, your teeth, your repression. It’s all so easy, I don’t blame anyone — there are so many easy options to choose from.
    Damn, this Frontal Lobeing / Is this joy? - smitch + co.
  • Men find sad girls and female pain morbidly alluring, and I’d sooner die than enable someone other than myself to profit from my emotional fetishization. That was the framing through which I had shared any of it in the first place, to clarify the type of character creation I don’t want to participate in.
    Emotional Relapse and Next Steps - smitch + co.
  • "Male fantasies, male fantasies, is everything run by male fantasies? Up on a pedestal or down on your knees, it's all a male fantasy: that you're strong enough to take what they dish out, or else too weak to do anything about it.” — Margaret Atwood
    Hot White Woman Feminism™ - smitch + co.
  • The more we repress our childlike feelings, the less we’re able to connect with those same emotions in others. Anyone can demonstrate empathy by saying the right words. But true empathy is knowing intimately how the other person feels because you’ve felt it yourself, and you know it’s O.K. to feel that way. The opposite—indulging in these feelings, for example, by acting out—is also neglecting your inner child. When you do this, you are putting the burden of caretaker on others. Listening to your ugly feelings without letting them hijack your nervous system is a lifelong practice. I don’t typi…
    ugly feelings - by Elaine - manners & mystery
  • I used to admire people who could conceal their feelings. They seemed very self-aware and mature. But I think people who wear their emotions on their sleeves are generally easier to trust than those who never seem to get upset. Emotional signaling is important. It helps us read each other better, helps us help each other better, helps us become better friends, partners, and parents. Some people struggle to access their emotions. If you ask them how they feel about a situation, they will think about it and come up with a reasonable, “mature” response. They’ve rationalized their way to a “correc…
    ugly feelings - by Elaine - manners & mystery
  • Instead of selflessness, you should strive for integrity – when you create, it should be things that you think are good – that honestly portray your inner and outer world as best you are able. When you are honestly pursuing your own values and vision – and not subordinating them – you are more likely to generate meaning than if you are navigating a maze of compromises with some ultimate goal in mind. Especially if these compromises are dictated to you by a nagging superego that torments you with an image of moral heroism which you can never live up to.
    Instead of your Life's Purpose - by existentialpervert69
  • This means not waiting to find your story arc, but rather recognizing that there are stories that pop up which you can opt into if you recognize them and have the right skills and virtues. It is about being prepared for the call to adventure, and cultivating the ability to recognize it, rather than believing we can direct our lives from the perspective of some knowable, ultimate mission.
    Instead of your Life's Purpose - by existentialpervert69
  • I’m not sure we could keep living in Brahman for long, and am skeptical of holy men who claim to live there permanently. So perhaps habituation is not an evil baked into the brain of all us poor creatures. Rather, the permanency of Maya may be a necessity for getting up in the morning.
    Baldwin in Brahman - by Erik Hoel
  • “What is the most wonderful thing on this earth?” And the king replied, “Every day people are dying around us, and yet men think they will never die.” And this is Maya
    Baldwin in Brahman - by Erik Hoel
  • In the secular world, there are only two things that shake us from our habituation, our Maya, and reveal to us Brahman (Egyptians called this “lifting the Veil of Isis”). For the secular, art lifts the Veil of Isis, and a trip to the hospital lifts the veil as well. Yet both art and hospitals are liminal spaces we must retreat from—soon the veil starts to flutter closed again, some neurons somewhere deep in the brain lowering the amplitude of their responses, until they become quiescent and we are blind once more.
    Baldwin in Brahman - by Erik Hoel
  • It was the discovery of the neural mechanism for a psychological concept called “habituation.” Habituation is the homeostasis of the mind. It is why you first feel your shirt when you put it on only to have that feeling quickly fade. And it is also, I think, probably the neural mechanism that turns Brahman into Maya. We habituate to the world, to our own situation, even our own suffering.
    Baldwin in Brahman - by Erik Hoel
  • A memory I hadn’t recollected in years. Why don’t we recall any of this in our day-to-day lives? Brahman inevitably decays into Maya, and stays that way until some new incident awakens us from our dogmatic slumber, which we are always destined to return to. Why is the distinction between the ephemeral and the eternal so hard to keep in mind?
    Baldwin in Brahman - by Erik Hoel
  • If it does not kill us, the world damages us. It damages us in childbirth or during exercises or when moving a couch. It damages us when we become manic or depressed. It damages us when we inject heroin or crash our bikes or our spouse betrays us or when our children get damaged themselves. Privately I and my family refer to such damages as “the real problems.” For the truth is that jobs, grades, mortgages—all the normal difficulties elsewhere in life—mostly end up being either solvable, ephemeral in the long run, or actually livable in their implications, even if they at first seem immediate …
    Baldwin in Brahman - by Erik Hoel
  • And in case you need permission: it’s okay to have BIG dreams, even in confusing times when ambition is sometimes viewed negatively! A deeper part of you wants to dance, to create something deeply meaningful for your life.
    Making the Things You Love - by Alex Olshonsky - Deep Fix
  • “We long to discover the secrets and mysteries of our individual lives, to find our unique way of belonging to this world, to recover the never-before-seen treasure we were born to bring to our communities. To carry this treasure to others is half of our spiritual longing. The other half is to experience our oneness with the universe, with all of creation.”
    Making the Things You Love - by Alex Olshonsky - Deep Fix
  • Sadly enough, millennials rank “having a job they enjoy” as more important than practicing human “kindness” in their everyday lives. Which brings me back to my central concern here. If we turn to our collective past to understand the origin of work in our lives and how it was never meant to be the primary lens through which we define ourselves, we begin to see the many ways in which we have de-evolved rather than evolved in our self-understanding.
    Making the Things You Love - by Alex Olshonsky - Deep Fix
  • Let interest be your compass toward what you should put effort into. I personally advocate that it’s also fine to experiment with multiple interests even if that feels… misguided or abstract. E.g., projects, blogs, identities. Each iteration gets you closer to your truest self. I also think ambition or even propensity to learn is mostly directionless but potent, and can be applied to multiple things. You don’t have to simply listen to people who believe that ambition has to be a linear, unwavering, charted path. It’s more like a meander, a slow burn, an emerging discovery, I think.
    chapters and doors - by Nix 🕊 - starting from nix
  • Being filtered out very early by people who don’t believe or see your value is a blessing. It means you’ve depicted a distinct version of yourself that people can opt in or out of. The right people actively choose you rather than being lukewarm or ambivalent. There’s love in specificity after all.
    chapters and doors - by Nix 🕊 - starting from nix
  • The learning rate is steep. It’s good to change your mind, actually. Admit to yourself when your inputs led to faulty conclusions. But! It is important to keep increasing the incremental positivity of said beliefs about one’s own life. To keep expanding the window of constraints you’ve historically framed for yourself.
    chapters and doors - by Nix 🕊 - starting from nix
  • My life before was so clearly defined but now the future feels so shapeless, a fragment of potential, open in flight. It’s not the same old story, lineage, history, anymore. The plot is evolving. I decidedly grit my teeth and pursue change, but sometimes I don’t realize how hard it is. My surroundings spin by like dust in a whirlwind. I’m constantly changing my mind. Still, I feel like same old me. That duality always surprises me.
    chapters and doors - by Nix 🕊 - starting from nix
  • We are united in our general frustration with life, and yet incapable of imagining ourselves advancing a concrete task of civilization or self-governance. Our frustrated energies thus turn inward. Social controls intensify in service of a vague and predictable resentment. De­corum is endlessly renegotiated. New forms of authority and litigiousness come to dominate human affairs and yet hold to no positive law. The young person is given the choice between participation in this stilted pantomime of discourse on the one hand and resigned disengagement on the other.
    The Zoomer Question - American Affairs Journal
  • Our reflexive distrust of “systems” and “institutions” in general rationalizes our own inability to build anything of substance, and leads to an implicit affirmation of today’s institutions in particular. Folk skepticism of “authority” and “religion” is not, as Katz would have it, the same as questioning authority as it is currently constituted; it seems, in fact, to be a nostalgic tic received from our elders, one which preempts the possibility of new organization.
    The Zoomer Question - American Affairs Journal
  • The Burnout Society mainly concerns Western neoliberal societies and not the situation of the Chinese factory worker. But through social media the neoliberal form of life is also expanding across the Third World. The rise of egotism, atomization, and narcissism in society is a global phenomenon. Social media turns all of us into producers, entrepreneurs whose selves are the businesses. It globalizes the ego culture that erodes community, erodes anything social. We produce ourselves and put ourselves on permanent display. This self-production, this ongoing “being-on-display” of the ego, makes u…
    The Tiredness Virus | The Nation
  • Artists, by necessity, have to be egotistical, narcissistic, and delusional to some degree. That’s not automatically an indictment of that group and its mentality. But there’s a degradation of art and artists when these things overly become vessels for people’s desire to be relevant in a world where there’s 8 billion people and more with each passing day, each of us seeming to matter less and less.
    Attention, Rage, and the Artist as the Supreme Being
  • Even if the vast majority of people acknowledged there definitely would’ve been a female Gustav Mahler or a BIPOC pan-gender J.S. Bach, it won’t make up for the fact that there aren’t. The bitter reality is that we will never be moved by the transcendent beauty of hypothetical artists whose gifts we’ve been denied.
    Attention, Rage, and the Artist as the Supreme Being
  • If art is the highest expression of humanity and the creation of art bestows the highest value to a person, then the lopsided prevalence of male artists whom we revere creates an unacceptable impression, that men are more valuable than women.
    Attention, Rage, and the Artist as the Supreme Being
  • “#MeToo was about a lot of things and among them was a cultural referendum on the myth of male genius.” Weinstein and his kind’s sexual crimes against women are easily understood as acts of violence and dehumanization. But if artistry, particularly great artistry, is understood as the pinnacle of humanity, and the path to achieving that glory has been denied to a gender or racial groups, that too can be viewed as violence and humanization.
    Attention, Rage, and the Artist as the Supreme Being
  • Something that’s always intrigued me is how cancel culture tends to be so focused in the culture industries, by which I mean fields like entertainment, media, and academia.
    Attention, Rage, and the Artist as the Supreme Being
  • In this environment where in order to matter, you need to get attention, and in order to get attention, you need to generate fury, what incentive is there for people to be anything but rage-mongers?
    Attention, Rage, and the Artist as the Supreme Being