“When praying, a wise man from the East always implored his deity to spare him from living in interesting times. Since we are not wise men, our deity has not spared us, for we do live in interesting times. In any case, our era refuses to allow us to ignore it. The writers of today already know this. If they speak out, they are immediately criticized and attacked. If they remain silent out of humility, no one will ever speak of anything but their silence, to raucously reproach them.”
#AlbertCamus
https://lithub.com/albert-camus-on-the-responsibility-of-the-artist/
Your best interests might not be a safe option for me.
“Or consider an even greater level of technological superiority which might enable the frontrunner to cause other nations to voluntarily lay down their arms, not by threatening them with destruction but simply by persuading a great majority of their populations by means of an extremely effectively designed advertising and propaganda campaign extolling the virtues of global unity. If this were done with the intention to benefit everybody, for instance by replacing national rivalries and arms races with a fair, representative, and effective world government, it is not clear that there would be even a cogent moral objection to the leveraging of a temporary strategic advantage into a permanent singleton.”https://a.co/j3v8kVB
Your best interests might not be a safe option for me.
“Or consider an even greater level of technological superiority which might enable the frontrunner to cause other nations to voluntarily lay down their arms, not by threatening them with destruction but simply by persuading a great majority of their populations by means of an extremely effectively designed advertising and propaganda campaign extolling the virtues of global unity. If this were done with the intention to benefit everybody, for instance by replacing national rivalries and arms races with a fair, representative, and effective world government, it is not clear that there would be even a cogent moral objection to the leveraging of a temporary strategic advantage into a permanent singleton.”https://a.co/j3v8kVB
Blackmail is not healthy for human evolution— yet Twitter is setting people up for situations that are harmful.
I love when he talks about the damage the weight of a blue check can do to a society who ultimately desires freedom
Bakhtin appreciates his vision but also dissects it & points to what he considers an incompleteness — the best type of criticism — imo — helps us see how another views the world so we can view with them while retaining or gaining our own insight.
The school of life!
“The teacher who tries to set things right by desperately doing more—more assignments, more readings, more demonstrations of expertise—may, oddly enough, make a bad situation worse. Students do not in fact want the teacher’s knowledge; they want the teacher to want theirs.”
Are You My Mother? https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/are-you-my-mother
“Conversely, anyone who has experienced a “good class,” as either a student or a teacher, will recognize that dynamic of mutual satisfaction in Lay’s description. Good classes are not recalled in the same obsessive detail as bad ones because good classes are not eventful in the same way. Their drama is intellectual, not interpersonal; their stakes are shared thought and argument; the feelings they give rise to are pleasantly hazy. Neither their content nor their tone needs to be litigated in retrospect. There is a wonderful synchronicity between the knowledge of the teacher and what Lay and his contemporaries called the wish-energy of the student, such that the external world of the classroom appears to be changed into a dream world, a respite from the school that, paradoxically, exists within it.” ~Merve Emre
“The teacher who tries to set things right by desperately doing more—more assignments, more readings, more demonstrations of expertise—may, oddly enough, make a bad situation worse. Students do not in fact want the teacher’s knowledge; they want the teacher to want theirs.”
Are You My Mother? https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/are-you-my-mother
Thanks for asking! I’m reading essays written by M.M. Bakhtin. He was a Russian literary critic & philosopher. He interests me because I like learning how things are made and work— novels “work” in different ways & people like Bakhtin analyze literary text & language.
I’m on the part where he is talking about Goethe.
“Human creativity has its own internal law. It must be human (and civilly expedient), but it must also be necessary, consistent, and true, like nature. Any arbitrariness, fabrication, or abstract fantasy was repulsive to Goethe.” 
Update soon!— the books in this picture stayed at the store. About 50 pages into one of the Bakhtin books I bought. Why are you interested?
Smores & wine 🔥#summer 
He is referenced a lot! Jack Spicer & Jack Gilbert are my favorite Beat related poets— although they aren’t necessarily classified as “Beats” — not Gilbert anyway who was from my hometown.
Yes — like many others. Truth is important—a cookie cutter devotion and/or perspective to larger than life personalities is not healthy.
I’ll make an honest confession: I’ve never read much of Burroughs— if any.
Joan’s life sounded so interesting— she was definitely more than a muse & did not deserve to be murdered.
On the Disappearing of Joan Vollmer Burroughs. "After William Burroughs killed his wife Joan Vollmer, he threw away all her possessions."
https://lithub.com/on-the-disappearing-of-joan-vollmer-burroughs/
#writing #beats
Archivists who write about their subjects have my deepest respect— what a tragedy— Joan Vollmer needs to be remembered for more than her death. Lessons from the past are so important— desire & drugs is a deadly combination. Her life sounded interesting— hope to hear more from Katie or others. I passed by a few Beats today at the bookstore— did not take any home. Thanks for sharing this story.
Bakhtin & Sontag — I wanted to buy more though— only so many reading hours in a day. Sunny & dogs in the fountain— ☀️📖 #bookstr #pittsburgh 
God help me ☀️ “The School For Wives” is available for purchase. 