Neste dia há 565 anos

caía Constantinopla. Numa outra Terça-feira de um outro tempo, século, milénio.

Domingo no mundo (60)

Edward Hopper, Lee Shore, 1941.

so that he could see her among the statues and friezes

Amadeo Modigliani: Anna Akhmatova, 1911.

Years later she wrote in her memoirs, "Whenever it rained (it often rained in Paris) Modigliani took with him a huge old black umbrella. We would sit together under this umbrella on a bench in the Jardin du Luxembourg in the warm summer rain."
[...]
On one occasion she visited Modigliani, but found him absent. “We had apparently misunderstood one another so I decided to wait several minutes,” she said. “I was clutching an armful of red roses. A window above the locked gates of the studio was open. Having nothing better to do, I began to toss the flowers in through the window. Then without waiting any longer, I left. When we met again, he was perplexed at how I had entered the locked room because he had the key. I explained what had happened, 'But that’s impossible – they were lying there so beautifully.’”

Lucy Davies, Modigliani and the Russian beauty: the affair that changed him.

To say what you want to say

Now, I have the words of Esmé Wang, Amy Berkowitz, Porochista Khakpour, Lidia Yuknavitch, and Sonya Huber to keep me company. But at twenty-two, I dogeared the shit out of Etty’s book and let it ignite a feeling in me: a permissioning, an urgency, a responsibility and ability to respond. If you are being given this life—and sister, it is so unlikely that you have been given a life at all—then it is wonderful and appropriate to not just spend it trying to survive, but instead to do more, to say what you want to say, to make what you want to make in the world, to at least try to heal what hurts. To strive towards joy, and a love for people and the world, one that refuses to ignore the worst of what humans could do to one another. And yes, yours may be frivolous words, or maybe the act of creating at all feels frivolous, but it is still worth it.

 Janet Frishberg, Get down to Work or God help you.

Domingo no mundo (59)

Maurice Pendergast, Summer Visitors, 1896.

É digno?

In his 2010 book The Honor Code: How Moral Revolutions Happen, philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah shows that arguments are not what change people’s minds on moral questions — honor is. The end of dueling, or Chinese foot-binding, or the Atlantic slave trade, did not come about, Appiah writes, because of new or more convincing arguments — the arguments against these practices had been in place, sometimes for centuries, before most people were turned against them. What changed was the “honor world” — the group of people who understand and acknowledge the same codes of behavior. Dueling was illegal before it came to seem dishonorable, in part because a newly created popular press brought the aristocracy’s honor code into discussion in lower class circles. This exposure to ridicule or mimicry put a new complexion on a practice that had persisted despite all logical argument against it. 

If debate doesn’t actually change minds, the rhetorical power of social media networks may work best as a way to insist on a broadening of our honor worlds. In the behavior of social media users posting under their real names, identity — contrary to logic-proponents’ assumptions — may be among the strongest persuasive tools. If an honor world is about acknowledging the same codes of behavior, an expanding sense of one’s world can bring unquestioned values or practices into sharp relief. Most Canadians, for instance, would not consider it honorable to rob someone of their land or to break a treaty. (...)

It’s possible for digital interactions to enlarge our honor worlds by bringing us into closer contact with one another. As novels propose moral arguments through character development, digital spaces are best designed not for debating universals, but for developing our capacity to identify through difference. Interacting with a wide range of people with differing worldviews and experiences in digital spaces means more subconscious absorption of alternatives to the life we know. The idea of “debate” imposes an adversarial framework on online interactions, as well as privileging logic as a tool of discovery.

Linda Besner, Faulty Logic. 

Sol

Erwin Blumenfeld, Spring, 1930.

The responsibility of believing

Unfortunately, many people today seem to take great licence with the right to believe, flouting their responsibility. The wilful ignorance and false knowledge that are commonly defended by the assertion ‘I have a right to my belief’ do not meet James’s requirements. Consider those who believe that the lunar landings or the Sandy Hook school shooting were unreal, government-created dramas; that Barack Obama is Muslim; that the Earth is flat; or that climate change is a hoax. In such cases, the right to believe is proclaimed as a negative right; that is, its intent is to foreclose dialogue, to deflect all challenges; to enjoin others from interfering with one’s belief-commitment. The mind is closed, not open for learning. They might be ‘true believers’, but they are not believers in the truth. 

Believing, like willing, seems fundamental to autonomy, the ultimate ground of one’s freedom. But, as Clifford also remarked: ‘No one man’s belief is in any case a private matter which concerns himself alone.’ Beliefs shape attitudes and motives, guide choices and actions. Believing and knowing are formed within an epistemic community, which also bears their effects. There is an ethic of believing, of acquiring, sustaining, and relinquishing beliefs – and that ethic both generates and limits our right to believe. If some beliefs are false, or morally repugnant, or irresponsible, some beliefs are also dangerous. And to those, we have no right.

Daniel DeNicola, You don't have a right to believe whatever you want to.

Domingo no mundo (58)

Marcel Dyf, Rivière en Provence, 1983.

Condenar os homens, não a obra.

There are generally two forms of absolutism; ‘dichotomous thinking’ and ‘categorical imperatives’. Dichotomous thinking – also referred to as ‘black-and-white’ or ‘all-or-nothing’ thinking – describes a binary outlook, where things in life are either ‘this’ or ‘that’, and nothing in between. Categorical imperatives are completely rigid demands that people place on themselves and others. The term is borrowed from Immanuel Kant’s deontological moral philosophy, which is grounded in an obligation- and rules-based ethical code.  

In our research – and in clinical psychology more broadly – absolutist thinking is viewed as an unhealthy thinking style that disrupts emotion-regulation and hinders people from achieving their goals. Yet we all, to varying extents, are disposed to it – why is this? Primarily, because it’s much easier than dealing with the true complexities of life. The term cognitive miser, first introduced by the American psychologists Susan Fiske and Shelley Taylor in 1984, describes how humans seek the simplest and least effortful ways of thinking. Nuance and complexity is expensive – it takes up precious time and energy – so wherever possible we try to cut corners. This is why we have biases and prejudices, and form habits. It’s why the study of heuristics (intuitive ‘gut-feeling’ judgments) is so useful in behavioural economics and political science.  

But there is no such thing as a free lunch; the time and energy saved through absolutist thinking has a cost. In order to successfully navigate through life, we need to appreciate nuance, understand complexity and embrace flexibility. When we succumb to absolutist thinking for the most important matters in our lives – such as our goals, relationships and self-esteem – the consequences are disastrous.

Mohammed Al-Mosaiwi, The danger of ablsolute thinking is absolutely clear. 

Da marketização da Universidade

It strikes me that a real problem with the university system is that, intellectually, it is becoming the only game in town. Scholars have no other place to go, scientists few, and even as university departments themselves become less and less concerned with ideas, almost anyone whose work is in any way related to the life of the mind — artists or journalists, for instance — becomes more and more likely to have to spend at least some time employed by one. These two phenomena are related. The best thing that could happen to universities would be to face a little competition.  

It’s helpful to remember that universities have faced effective competition before, and benefited from it. Most 18th-century Enlightenment thinkers had nothing but contempt for universities, which they saw as corrupt, pedantic, moribund, and medieval; they preferred to write for the general public. The modern university was a bid for renewed relevance. Similarly, in the mid-20th century, it wasn’t the French academic system but nonuniversity groups and institutions like Georges Bataille’s Collège de Sociologie (which was not a college), the Existentialists, or even professional psychiatrists like Jacques Lacan, who invented much of what we now think of as French theory. In each case, the real innovators were much closer to artistic and journalistic circles — which are now, ironically, themselves being drawn into the university — than to academe. But it can hardly be said that academe did not come out better for the competition.  

One reason is that there was a lot of money floating around. It wasn’t hard for maverick intellectuals who might otherwise end up in the post office or rural schoolroom to find at least enough money to live on. Perhaps the easiest way to begin to de-bullshitize academic life would be to do something about the current precarity of intellectual life.  

In fact, the phenomenon of bullshit jobs is one of the most compelling arguments in favor of a policy of universal basic income. One common objection to simply providing everyone with the means to live and then allowing us to make up our own minds about how we see fit to contribute to society is that the streets will immediately fill up with bad poets, annoying street musicians, and vendors of pamphlets full of crank theories. No doubt there would be a little of this, but if 40 percent of all workers are already engaged in activities they consider entirely pointless, how could it be worse than the situation we already have? At least this way they’d be happier.

David Graeme, Are you in a BS job?

Domingo no mundo (58)

Kees van Dongen, Sur la dune, 1927-30.

Mau feitio

Considero a literatura uma coisa essencial e acho que, se ela não é essencial, não deve ser manifestada.

Hilda Hilst, Fico Besta Quando Me Entendem.