Cult Icon

Nor is it of the greatest sign'f· th t 1cance at he won the gratitude of all those who at such gre h ' at cost, e had helped, even though we can supp ose that he d 'd Wh . . . 1 • at 1s most important 1s that he could take a very close look h . If . at imse , could measure himself against his own demandt"ng d d f scan ar o selfworth, and be perfectly sat isfied with what he found. He had in other words, not merely a love for ot hers , 1·ustified b, . '(' cl I r h . or not, uc a Jusu 1e ove 1or 1mself which is the d r· . . f .d • ennmon o pn e What he could find in himself was a loving and cons"d . b I erate man ut more than that, a nob le one."

"Th ere is one k ind of situati on, however, in which silen ce simpl y betr ays on e's in ep tn ess, and th at is a situati on of great loss, thr ough bereavement, mar ital separat ion, and similar reve rsa ls of fortun e.

Every normal human being, in reasonably normal circumstances, is totally governed by a sense of self-worth. All other things that arc valued derive their worth from this. People aspire to fame, power, and wealth, and to the boundless approval and often envy of oth ers, but this is only because they think of their precious selves as being at the center of all these"

", Someone who is proud cares nothing for whether his or her virtues and strengths are appreciated by others. The only concern of the proud is how they appear co themselves. If you are roud, you do not need to diminish another or co invite attention ~o another's limitation, however obliquely or even correctly. Your 0 ,vn self-appraisal is all chat matters-alway s provided, of course, that it is accurate and correct.

And it is clear th at persons can not, for the most part, bestow pleasures upon th emselves. Th ey need othe r things and other persons as the source of them. This does not render pleasures bad, but it does make th em largely a matter of luck. They belong in a very happy life but cannot be made th e whole point of it. Genuine happin ess, on the oth er hand, whil e it can be utterly ruined by chance- by dreaded illness, for example, or other disasters-nevertheless depends on onese lf, in case it is ever won. Wisdom, or the choice of th e right path to happiness, cann ot guarantee th at one will win happiness; but, on the othe r hand, one is certain to miss it without that wisdom."

"t would thu s be as narrow to identify happiness with pleasure as to identify it with an y other externa l good, such as property, honor, youth, beauty, or whatever. External goods are goods, and while a happy life can not be devo id of them all, neithe r can any sum of them , however great, add up to such a life."

"Pleasure, then, shou ld be included within that vast and heterogeneous assortment of things that the ancients classed as externals. This apt term was applied to all those things of value to one's life, which result from accident or good fortune, or are bestowed by others. What ot hers bestow, however, they can also withhold, and similarly, one can be cursed by chance as readily as one can be blessed. Externa ls, in short, do not depend upon oneself. They are largely or entirel y beyond one's own contro l, and are for that very reason called externa ls.

Aristotle thought that the appropriate reward for a proud man was hon or, and thi s does, indeed, seem to be a more appropriate goal for such a person than pleasure. If you are honored for what you actually are, and that is in fact something noble, then such honor is well placed and you are, to some extent, justified in believing that you have achieved something worthwhile. Still, such things as honor, fame, and glory, though certainly not despicable, do depend upon others and must therefore be classed as externals. One can seek hon or, for example, and even honor that is deserved; but whether one obta ins it will always depend upon the perceptions and values and, sometimes, the caprices of others. One cannot bestow honors upon oneself. People tend, moreover, to honor and applaud th eir own benefactors, or sometimes even people who merely make them feel very good, such as charismatic clergy and th e like, rather than to honor noble character for its own sake . Wh at they give then resembles the price of a purcha se more than a gift. Thu s a victorious general is honored, rath er than a losing one, even though the latter might in fact have displayed more resourcefulness and courage 

Perhaps the fairest thing to say concern ing th e thin gs we have been considering-wealth, honor, glory, and the like- is that, like pleasure, they often contr ibute to happine ss but never add up to it. Personal excellence or even her oism are often parts of a lasting happin ess, and the recognition of such qualitie s by others often adds to that happiness. But th e real reward of personal excellence, of the kind that leads one to do, perhaps with almost superhuman effort and resourcefulness, what no one else has ever done, is simply the possession of that exce llence itself. To be uniquely able to create an extrao rdin ary piece of music of great merit, or a poem, or a story, or a philosophical treatise, or a painting, or a building, or to accomp lish any feat of great significance requiring genius or exemplary courage- all such abilities are gifts in themselves that are not much embellished by the gifts added by others. What one finds satisfying are qualities belonging to oneself rather than thin gs added. At the same time, it would be unrealistic to treat the recogn ition or accla im of ot hers as worthless. What we should say is that such hono r and acclaim are sometimes a part of one's happiness, possibly even a necessary part; but they can never constitute the sum and substa nce of it.

Thus, people who think happine~ results from possessions, for
le have no chance of becoming happy, for they go in the
examp ' d · th · · f l h
d
. t' n Th ey may succee m e1r pursuit o wea t but
wrong 1rec 10 · . '
having done chat, they find themselves usmg th at wealth to purth . ally specious such as power over oth ers or th e envy sue mgs equ ' . of others, and other things tota lly unrelated to th e kmd of ere-
. t'vi'ty we have described; or else th ey find themselves
auve ac 1
going through the kinds of motions that have characte rized their
lives, superfluously adding wealth to what they already have in
great excess. The mere doing of thin gs, perhaps on a large scale,
achieves no more happiness than th e mere defeat of boredomfor which, incidentally, most people appear quit e willing to settle. Sheer boredom is indeed a baneful state. To escape it is, to
some extent, a blessing though a negative one. Hence th e incessant activity on the part of some-t hings done for no purpose
beyond making more money; or travel undertaken for new sights
and sounds passively absorbed; or projects pursued, sometimes
on a grand scale, just to impress others; or thin gs purchased for the
same purpose. This is how many people live, escaping boredom,
keeping busy, being preoccupied with somethin g from one day to
the next, giving little thought to life or death . And this does
achieve, for the moment, the banishment of boredom and lone·
liness; but that is as close to happiness as it gets. Meanwhil e oth·
ers who are wiser, having little of all this and almost never know·
ing boredom, go about life in th eir own way, creating from th eir
own resources things original to themselves, quit e unlik e what
others have done, things small, sometimes not small, sometimes
even great and lasting, but every one of th em somethin g th at is
theirs and is the reflection of their own original power. Such peo·
ple rejoice, perhaps unnoticed-a nd are happy. "

"

Back to Seneca:

"It doesn't matter what you bear, but how you bear it"

"unbroken prosperity cannot bear a single blow."

"Many things we think of as bad are good in the long run, and others that we desire frequently cause pain and distress in the long run"

"great men, rejoices at misfortune as brave soldiers do at wars.  Misfortune is virtue's opportunity"

"

"you do not shine outwardly, all your good qualities are turned inwards.."

"wisdom leaves no place for evil; to it, the only evil is baseness, which cannot occupy a place already inhabited by virtue and honor.  If there can be no injury without evil,  no evil without baseness, baseness cannot find any place within a man already filled with honor , it follows no injury can ever reach the wise man."

"The wise man cannot lose anything.  He cannot be increased or diminished.  He has invested everything in himself, entrusted nothing to fortune, externals,  and is content with virtue."

"

Fortune does not give virtue.  Therefore she does not take it away.  Virtue is free of that.

It is possible for one to aim to do injury to me and I to never receive it.

the success of an insult lies in the sensitiveness and rage of the victim.  Spoil the man's enjoyment.

freedom comes in raising one's mind superior to injuries and becoming a person whose pleasures come from himself alone.

Scant is the part of time we live.  All the rest of existence is not living , but merely time.

"“We have two lives, and the second begins when we realize we only have one.”

"If you own your life, it is long. None of it is given away to another, scattered, entrusted to fortune, wasted through neglect, given away freely, none is superfluous; the whole of life yields a return, so to speak"

"Great wisdom exists from the past.  Time does not degrade works consecrated by wisdom"

"don't envy him.  Those golden trappings are bought at the cost of life"

"

Seek stability, don't rely on fortune.

"how much less you suffer from your self-depreciation than those bound and enslaved by some showy declaration they have made , and are oppressed by some grand title of honor, so that shame rather than their free will forces them to keep up the pretense"

"Desires which one is afraid to express or unable to fulfill.. when men dare not attempt as much as they wish to do, or fail in their efforts and depend entirely on hope; such people are fickle and changeable, a necessary consequence of living in a state of suspense"

"anger is not a weapon because it cannot be put down at will"

"Anger is a terrible judge.  It is inconsistent, hasty, and can invent crimes where none exist"

"There is nothing great or noble about anger"

"It a conscious choice to develop impulses to passions"

"anger can be put to flight by wise maxims"

"anger if too frequently indulged in can develop into a character trait of cruelty"

"If you are angry at evil deeds your mood will depend on others, and you will never cease to be angry as there is so much evil in the world"

"If you want to be angry as men's crimes require, you will go mad with rage"

"avoid scattering your attention many projects and doing what is beyond your ability, this leads to more anger. Failure moves towards anger, anger towards sorrow"

"it is possible to turn offenses into something to be laughed at"

"it's better to heal an injury than to avenge it.  You will cease to be angry at some point, why not cease now?"

"

Revolt- Passion- Freedom-  

Belong-purpose-storytelling-transcendence

"

11 hours ago, Cult Icon said:

"It a conscious choice to develop impulses to passions"

I like this one 

On 4/29/2020 at 8:32 PM, Matt! said:

 

I like this one 

 

These are from Seneca's Letters and Essays.  This channel covers 91 of the letters.  A less talented youtuber has done all of them.  I have the rest of the letters in an audiobook.  I am profoundly moved by Seneca's writings, particularly those on time, life and death, and right thought & right action.  They are a secondary source of lost Stocism and are one of the most important things I've ever read:

I 

what is beauty?  want without a concrete goal/practical end- it is desire to contemplate the object, this particular thing.  No substitute can satisfy the object of interest.

transcendence, ideals, aspirations 

resonant, engaging, composed, timeless

imagination vs fantasy- imagination is pondered, fantasy is acted out.  fantasy penetrates and pollutes our world, those of imagination exist in a world of their own. 

modern culture is immersed in fantasy, which offers surrogate fulfillment to our forbidden desires- thereby permitting them.

"Imagined scenes, by contrast, are not realized but represented; they come to us soaked in thought, and in no sense are they surrogates, standing in place of the unobtainable. On the contrary, they are deliberately placed at a distance, in a world of their own. Convention, framing and restraint are integral to the imaginative process. We enter a painting only via the frame that shuts out the world in which we stand."

In the theatre too, the action is not real but represented, and however realistic, avoids (as a rule) those scenes which are the food of fantasy. In Greek tragedy the murders take place off stage, to be reported in lines that set the chorus in rhythmical motion, spelling out the horror and also containing it, subdued to the metre of the verse. The purpose is not to deprive death of its emotional power, but to contain it within the domain of the imagination—the domain where we wander freely, with our own interests and desires in abeyance

"Art answers the riddle of existence: it tells us why we exist by imbuing our lives with a sense of fittingness. In the highest form of beauty life becomes its own justification, redeemed from contingency by the logic which connects the end of things with their beginning, as they are connected in Paradise Lost, in Phedre and in Der Ring des Nibelungen. The highest form of beauty, as exemplified in those supreme artistic achievements, is one of the greatest of life’s gifts to us. It is the true ground of the value of art, for it is what art, and only art, can give."

Keats’s vision of the Grecian urn, with its message that ‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty—that is all j Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know’, arises from a lingering glance at a vanished world. But it records a common experience. Our favourite works of art seem to guide us to the truth of the human condition and, by presenting completed instances of human actions and passions, freed from the contingencies of everyday life, to show the worthwhileness of being human."

"

"

"During the nineteenth century there arose the movement of ‘art for art’s sake’: l’art pour l’art. The words are those of The´ophile Gautier, who believed that if art is to be valued for its own sake then it must be detached from all purposes, including those of the moral life. A work of art that moralizes, that strives to improve its audience, that descends from the pinnacle of pure beauty to take up some social or didactic cause, offends against the autonomy of the aesthetic experience, exchanging intrinsic for instrumental values and losing whatever claim it might have had to beauty. It is certainly a failing in a work of art that it should be more concerned to convey a message than to delight its audience. Works of propaganda, such as the socialist realist sculptures of the Soviet period or (their equivalent in prose) Mikhail Sholokhov’s Quiet Flows the Don, sacrifice aesthetic integrity to political correctness, character to caricature, and drama to sermonizing. On the other hand, part of what we object to in such works is their untruthful quality. The lessons urged upon us are neither compelled by the story nor illustrated in the exaggerated figures and characters; the propaganda message is not part of the aesthetic meaning but extraneous to it— an intrusion from the everyday world which only loses conviction when thrust on us in the midst of aesthetic contemplation. By contrast, there are works of art which contain intense moral messages in an aesthetically integrated frame"

"Consider John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. The advocacy of the Christian life is here embodied in schematic characters and transparent allegory. But the book is written with such immediacy and such a true feeling for the weight of words and the seriousness of sentiment, that the Christian message becomes an integral part of it, rendered beautiful by the compelling words. We encounter in Bunyan a unity of form and content that forbids us from dismissing the work as a mere exercise in propaganda. At the same time, even while admiring Pilgrim’s Progress for its truthfulness, we may reject its underlying beliefs. Bunyan is showing the lived reality of Christian discipleship, and atheists, Jews and Muslims can find truth in his story—truth to the human condition and to the heart of one who has glimpsed in his life’s disorder the hope of a better world. Nor does Bunyan’s moralizing offend, since it emerges from experiences honestly captured and vividly confessed to. Works of art are forbidden to moralize, only because moralizing destroys their true moral value, which lies in the ability to open our eyes to others, and to discipline our sympathies towards life as it is. Art is not morally neutral, but has its own way of making and justifying moral claims. B"

"erotic art and pornography. Art can be erotic and also beautiful, like a Titian Venus. But it cannot be beautiful and also pornographic—so we believe, at least. And it is important to see why. In distinguishing the erotic and the pornographic we are really distinguishing two kinds of interest: interest in the embodied person and interest in the body—and, in the sense that I intend, these interests are incompatible."

Normal desire is an inter-personal emotion. Its aim is a free and mutual surrender, which is also a uniting of two individuals, of you and me—through our bodies, certainly, but not merely as our bodies. Normal desire is a person to person response, one that seeks the selfhood that it gives. Objects can be substituted for each other, subjects not. Subjects, as Kant persuasively argued, are free individuals; their non-substitutability belongs to what they essentially are. Pornography, like slavery, is a denial of the human subject, a way of negating the moral demand that free beings must treat each other as ends in themselves.

Pornography addresses a fantasy interest, while erotic art addresses an interest of the imagination. Hence the first is explicit and depersonalized, while the second invites us into the subjectivity of another person and relies on suggestion and allusion rather than explicit display. The purpose of pornography is to arouse vicarious desire; the purpose of erotic art is to portray the sexual desire of the people pictured within it—and if it also arouses the viewer, as Correggio does from time to time, then this is an aesthetic defect, a ‘fall’ into another kind of interest than that which has beauty as its target. Hence erotic art veils its subject matter, in order that desire should not be traduced and expropriated by the observer. The supreme achievement of erotic art is to cause the body to veil itself—to make the flesh itself into an expression of the decency that forbids the voyeur, so that the subjectivity of the nude is revealed even in those parts of the body that are outside the province of the will. This is what Titian achieves, and the result is an erotic art that is both serene and nuptial, an art that removes the body completely from the sullying interest of the Peeping Tom

There is another and better way of seeing things, however, and it is one that explains much of that old morality that many people now profess to find so puzzling. On this view my body is not my property but—to use the theological term—my incarnation. My body is not an object but a subject, just as I am. I don’t own it, any more than I own myself. I am inextricably mingled with it, and what is done to my body is done to me. And there are ways of treating it that cause me to think and feel as I would not otherwise think or feel, to lose my moral sense, to become hardened or indifferent to others, to cease to make judgements or to be guided by principles and ideals. When this happens it is not just I who am harmed: all those who love me, need me or relate to me are harmed as well. For I have damaged the part on which relationships are built. The old morality, which told us that selling the body is incompatible with giving the self, touched on a truth. Sexual feeling is not a sensation that can be turned on and off at will: it is a tribute from one self to another and—at its height— an incandescent revelation of what you are. To treat it as a commodity, that can be bought and sold like any other, is to damage both present self and future other. The condemnation of prostitution was not just puritan bigotry; it was a recognition of a profound truth, which is that you and your body are not two things but one, and by selling the body you harden the soul. And that which is true of prostitution is true of pornography too. It is not a tribute to human beauty but a desecration of it.

aesthetic judgments as essentially autobiographic statements expressing subjective preferences

The success of kitsch also depends on the universality of the emotions it elicits. Typical consumers of kitsch are pleased not only because they respond spontaneously, but also because they know they are responding in the right kind of way. They know they are moved in the same way as everybody else.

The painter should avoid all unpleasant or disturbing features of reality, leaving us only with those we can easily cope with and identify with. Kitsch comes to support our basic sentiments and beliefs, not to disturb or question them.

The aim of kitsch is not to create new needs or expectations, but to satisfy existing ones. Kitsch thus does not work on individual idiosyncrasies. It breeds on universal images, the emotional charge of which appeals to everyone. Since the purpose of kitsch is to please the greatest possible number of people, it always plays on the most common denominators.
The examples of kitsch themes mentioned above belong to what one may call universal kitsch. They play on basic human impulses irrespective of religious beliefs, political convictions, race, or nationality. They exploit universal subjects such as birth, family, love, nostalgia, and so forth, which could, perhaps, be further analyzed in terms of Jungian archetypes.