The more submissive, the more authoritarian

[Kayaker]

I agree, the human brain hasn’t evolved for thousands of years, the old cliche of history repeating itself is not exactly correct, it’s more a case of human perception repeating itself within differing contexts/environments.

The ruling class are submitting to a need for desire, when you can have anything via your billions you can loose desire, they recreate this desire with the goal of absolute control, shaping the world as they see fit, to be like god, more than human. Do a thinking exercise of this, envision yourself now worth 200 billion and observe how your mind behaves, once you attain you initial desires stick with it and the initial excitement dissipates, your mortality and impending death comes into focus.

This incoherency of the ruling class is driven by a lack of bioenergetic resource at a cellular level, they have an abundance of resources but use them incorrectly, it’s a case of resources being information and the coherent use of them the signal. For example they still use big pharma pills, some eat poorly, some follow fad diets, most are eating PUFA, many do drugs, some are vegan etc
This lack of bioenergetic resource at a cellular level causes them to continue hoarding and living in fear of loosing said resources to the lower social classes, it’s similar to what happens when mammals are lacking vitamins and minerals in the diet, they can keep overeating because of this, same with those who under eat protein, ironically the ruling class believe we eat too much meat, my guess is they under eat protein also because of this belief, they think it’s bad.

The hilarity is Peat is the closest to being right on how we work as an organism, many of us will have to watch from the sidelines as the rest veer more and more into madness.

Good concept. Hoarding as similar to having too much of an appetite due to not eating enough of certain nutrients in the diet.

The middle class is the most "wholesome", since both being too poor to satisfy your needs and being rich enough that all of your needs are satisfied is ideally stimulating.

If you believe it's true that they want to remove the middle class, put a massive amount of people on welfare, and turn people who want to work for money into AI through nanotechnology, interestingly enough it'd be the death of wholesomeness for the middle class as well.

Think about the wolf vs the domestic dog. Who is smarter? Who has the bigger brain? The wolf, unless conditions are so harsh that they don't receive proper nutrition.

Also, someone on this forum noted street puppies get sick at a lower rate than vaxxed puppies. It isn't only environmental, but physiological as well.

There is a whole range of personalities in humans. Your reality will be way different from others. We are not the same at all in the way we perceive reality.

Overall I find guru's and people that have a big following tend to have some type of bad aspect of a leadership personality. Which appeals to people who are weak, sick, etcetera.

The good leaders (in my opinion) are often more quiet, smart and they tend to have a good grasp on reality. They can be harsh but truthful. Like a father figure. These people often do not want to be leaders but people beg them to be one. It is the free spirit you cannot catch.

Arrogance and narcissism is also prevelant in guru's and popular leaders. I think all guru's who put themselves in the spotlights have some level of this. Why? Because 99,9% of people have no real clue about the topic they talk about. Most topics are way more detailed than people like to admit. Basically most experts and leaders just want the adoration, following or they want the feeling that their "expertise" means something in the world.

I think a majority of people in the 0.01% are unhealthy. As an example look at Klaus Schwab. Drooping face and overweight, indicator of lower thyroid/low metabolism. These people become perverts and live in fantasies because of their damaged bodies. They want to lash out their frustrations (from living in a sick body) on other people to feel better.

The people who are severely ill and submissive will happily take this punishment. That is why you see people bragging that they got the vaccines with side effects and they do it for the bigger cause. Or they joke about it a lot. It is because subconciously they want the punishment because they think they deserve it.

So the only legitimate leaders are unwilling leaders? Sounds like idealism to me. "Natural leaders" are everywhere and they are appreciated by these "weak, sick, etc" people, who in reality are often just less experienced in a certain topic than they are.

Also, leading is enjoyable in itself to some people. More often than not, they know at least some things, and it's better than them not wanting to lead anyone.

Who's to say Klaus Schwab isn't a fraud? Many times, negative publicity is more profitable than not catching any form of attention, positive or negative. "Drooping faces", I've never seen a picture of this person, but old people in general look bad and few people are angry about it to the extent that they'd want to infringe on the welfare of other people.

Being born into an environment that is either poverty or the opposite, being born with a silver spoon in your mouth and not getting to experience life and getting stimulation with pregnenolone due to having all needs fulfilled, creates mental illness, not physical illness.

What if the fantasy of a large amount of the rich is to actually get found out for wanting to enslave the population (or pretending to want to), so their wealth gets taken away and they can actually live life?

 

['peataphysique]

I agree, the human brain hasn’t evolved for thousands of years, the old cliche of history repeating itself is not exactly correct, it’s more a case of human perception repeating itself within differing contexts/environments.

The ruling class are submitting to a need for desire, when you can have anything via your billions you can loose desire, they recreate this desire with the goal of absolute control, shaping the world as they see fit, to be like god, more than human. Do a thinking exercise of this, envision yourself now worth 200 billion and observe how your mind behaves, once you attain you initial desires stick with it and the initial excitement dissipates, your mortality and impending death comes into focus.

This incoherency of the ruling class is driven by a lack of bioenergetic resource at a cellular level, they have an abundance of resources but use them incorrectly, it’s a case of resources being information and the coherent use of them the signal. For example they still use big pharma pills, some eat poorly, some follow fad diets, most are eating PUFA, many do drugs, some are vegan etc
This lack of bioenergetic resource at a cellular level causes them to continue hoarding and living in fear of loosing said resources to the lower social classes, it’s similar to what happens when mammals are lacking vitamins and minerals in the diet, they can keep overeating because of this, same with those who under eat protein, ironically the ruling class believe we eat too much meat, my guess is they under eat protein also because of this belief, they think it’s bad.

The hilarity is Peat is the closest to being right on how we work as an organism, many of us will have to watch from the sidelines as the rest veer more and more into madness.

Spot on.

Hedonic treadmill - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Holistic medicine and holistic psychology came into existence as attempts to overcome the dogmatic compartmentalization of reality that is endemic. Whenever rigidity is a problem, looking for ways to create new patterns that by-pass the petrified pattern can lead to a solution. Parkinson’s disease and other physical problems have been approached using techniques of intensified or varied stimulation. Increased stimulation--even electromagnetic stimulation-- appears to open alternative patterns. Music, dance, and swimming have been used successfully to improve fluidity in various neurological diseases. Kurt Goldstein (The Organism) worked with brain injuries, and found that the brain has a variety of ways to restore a new balance. Raising the amount of energy that’s available can allow natural processes to create a better synthesis. Political and social problems that are culturally determined may follow rules similar to those of organic brain disease.

Optimal assumptions, when assumptions are necessary, are those that don’t commit you to undesirable conclusions. For example, in the 1950s, some people made the assumption that nuclear war was inevitable, and made large investments in “fallout shelters,” which were conceived in terms of world war II bomb shelters, and so resources were diverted from other investments, such as education, which didn’t in themselves foreclose future possibilities. Self-fulfilling prophecies and self-limiting assumptions are often built into supposedly practical activities.​

Can art instruct science? William Blake as biological visionary

Ray Peat

raypeat.com

In a society that chooses to destroy ecosystems, rather than adapting to them, the question of sanity should be an everyday political issue.

Thyroid, insomnia, and the insanities: Commonalities in disease

Ray Peat

raypeat.com

 

[zenbox]

“You can have a strong government and a weak people, or strong people and weak government, but you cannot have both.”
— Robert Ringer

I don't think reality is such a stark dichotomy...but it's still a good quote.

 

[Apple]

Think about the wolf vs the domestic dog. Who is smarter? Who has the bigger brain? The wolf, unless conditions are so harsh that they don't receive proper nutrition.

Here is an interesting insight on why human brain decreased around 3,000 years ago .

Group-level cognition and division of labor may select for adaptive brain size variation. This means that within a social group where knowledge is shared or individuals are specialists at certain tasks, brains may adapt to become more efficient, such as decreasing in size.

“Ant and human societies are very different and have taken different routes in social evolution,” Traniello said. “Nevertheless, ants also share with humans important aspects of social life such as group decision-making and division of labor, as well as the production of their own food (agriculture). These similarities can broadly inform us of the factors that may influence changes in human brain size.”

Brains use up a lot of energy, and smaller brains use less energy. The externalization of knowledge in human societies, thus needing less energy to store a lot of information as individuals, may have favored a decrease in brain size.

“We propose that this decrease was due to increased reliance on collective intelligence, the idea that a group of people is smarter than the smartest person in the group, often called the ‘wisdom of the crowds’”, added Traniello.

When and why did human brains decrease in size 3,000 years ago? New study may have found clues within ants

When and why did human brains decrease in size 3,000 years ago? New study in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution may have found clues within ants

blog.frontiersin.org

 

[Drareg]

Spot on.

Hedonic treadmill - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Can art instruct science? William Blake as biological visionary

Ray Peat

raypeat.com

Thyroid, insomnia, and the insanities: Commonalities in disease

Ray Peat

raypeat.com

Thanks for the links.
It seems the hedonic treadmill theory is based in genetics, it’s more metabolic as we know.

Peat is as coherent as it gets, current society as organic brain disease, this is the way to look at it right now, seeing people as diseased mentally rather than covid as the problem will allow better decisions on our part, we should be quarantining ourselves from the brain diseased.

 

[Drareg]

Here is an interesting insight on why human brain decreased around 3,000 years ago .

Group-level cognition and division of labor may select for adaptive brain size variation. This means that within a social group where knowledge is shared or individuals are specialists at certain tasks, brains may adapt to become more efficient, such as decreasing in size.

“Ant and human societies are very different and have taken different routes in social evolution,” Traniello said. “Nevertheless, ants also share with humans important aspects of social life such as group decision-making and division of labor, as well as the production of their own food (agriculture). These similarities can broadly inform us of the factors that may influence changes in human brain size.”

Brains use up a lot of energy, and smaller brains use less energy. The externalization of knowledge in human societies, thus needing less energy to store a lot of information as individuals, may have favored a decrease in brain size.

“We propose that this decrease was due to increased reliance on collective intelligence, the idea that a group of people is smarter than the smartest person in the group, often called the ‘wisdom of the crowds’”, added Traniello.

When and why did human brains decrease in size 3,000 years ago? New study may have found clues within ants

When and why did human brains decrease in size 3,000 years ago? New study in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution may have found clues within ants

blog.frontiersin.org

Interesting, the hard drive and internet seems to be capable of reducing it further when used incorrectly.

 

[Apple]

Interesting, the hard drive and internet seems to be capable of reducing it further when used incorrectly.

Looks like we are collectively moving towards shrinking our brain to the size of walnut. Smartphones gave it a new start. We don't need to remember lots of stuff anymore or do calculations...there is Internet for everything

 

['peataphysique]

Thanks for the links.
It seems the hedonic treadmill theory is based in genetics, it’s more metabolic as we know.

Peat is as coherent as it gets, current society as organic brain disease, this is the way to look at it right now, seeing people as diseased mentally rather than covid as the problem will allow better decisions on our part, we should be quarantining ourselves from the brain diseased.

Nowadays more and more authors have been suggesting that all personality disorders (including the Cluster B, which has 2 PD [psychopathy and narcissism] that virtually afflict every politician around the world and the parasitic overclass/cryptocracy/monopoly capitalist bankers)

Objective: Epigenetic mechanisms have been described in several mental disorders, such as mood disorders, anxiety disorders and schizophrenia. However, less is known about the influence of epigenetic mechanisms with regard to personality disorders (PD). Therefore, we conducted a literature review on existing original data with regards to epigenetic peculiarities in connection with personality disorders.

Summary: Epigenetic studies in PD seem to be a useful approach to elucidate the interaction of co-working risk factors in the pathogenesis of personality traits and disorders. However, the complexity of pathogenesis leads to divergent results and impedes an explicit interpretation. Differing methylation patterns within the selected PD could indicate subgroups which would benefit from patient-oriented therapeutic adjustments. They might play a major role in the future design and observation of early therapeutic intervention and thus could help to prevent severe dysfunctional conduct or full-blown personality disorder in risk subjects.

Introduction

The epigenetic view on genes presumably associated with psychiatric disorders is gaining increasing academic interest and enables auxiliary insights in the pathogenesis of a particular disease. Severe psychiatric axis-I disorders like major depressive disorder (MDD) are currently widely investigated at the epigenetic level, and results account for a substantial pathogenetic impact of gene epigenetic modifications.

Epigenetic mechanisms in general function to homeostatically control gene accessibility and transcriptional functionality. Thus, gene function can be organized in both a highly programmed and life-enduring, but also in an environmentally-responsive way (1). The transcriptome as the immediate representation of genomic activity is regulated by (i) control of gene access for the transcriptional machinery through chromatin condensation and histone modification such as (de-)acetylation, (de-)phosphorylation, sumoylation, (ii) non-coding and microRNA that influences chromatin formation, as well as RNA translation and degradation, and (iii) covalent DNA changes by methylation of the cytosine nucleotide, which hampers transcriptase accessibility to the methylated region, and which can activate enzymes that interact in silencing the specific gene.

Whereas epigenetic patterns stably determine mitosis-persistent cell differentiation as a precondition for embryonal development without changing DNA sequence, the epigenome also represents a dynamic adaption to environmental conditions. There is growing evidence in the last two decades that early life experience can affect long standing somatic and mental health trajectories in animals and humans by influencing the epigenetic pattern and thus affects structure and accessibility of the genome. Studies in rodents demonstrated the decisive impact of maternal care and early social adversity on the offspring's development and adult phenotypes. Early life adversity (ELA) in rats led to increased hippocampal glucocorticoid receptor (GR) expression, disturbed hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis functionality, and changed DNA methylation of the GR gene (NR3C1) in the hippocampus (3), of the brain-derived neurotropic factor gene (BDNF) promoter in the prefrontal cortex and of the Arginine Vasopressin gene (AVP). In humans, ELA was associated with decreased GR mRNA expression and NR3C1 hypermethylation in post-mortem human brains. Hitherto findings indicate that epigenetic patterns found in context with ELA in animals and humans are not restricted to suggestive disease-associated functional genes but are spread genome-wide (7, 8), and are not stringently tissue-specific (9), since peripheral blood cells (PBC), especially T-cell lymphocytes, were shown to reflect epigenetic patterns similar to neuronal cells in culture and in brain tissue.

The translation of environmental signals into epigenetic information can be triggered by neuronal activity that initiates intracellular pathways such as cAMP signaling mediated histone acetylation or that influences and interacts with other epigenetic processes. Additionally, activity of the AVP promoter is regulated by the methyl-CpG-binding protein 2 (MeCp2), which is phosphorylated and activated by depolarization of hypothalamic neurons and in turn moderates demethylation of the BDNF promoter. In sum, although many details of molecular mechanisms remain unknown, the present insights substantiate and refine the idea how environmental signals might be translated into intracellular information and molecular memory.

Currently, a considerable number of studies explore epigenetic changes in association with behavior or affect difficulties like aggression or fear in human and animal subjects, particularly in connection with disturbances of the serotonergic system that meanwhile is well-known to be crucial in early brain development. The objective of this work was to review the current original publications on epigenetic modifications associated with personality disorders (PD) in humans.

Methods

Literature search was performed as a systematic review according the Preferred Recording Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA-P) guidelines (17). We based our search on the PubMed Central database of the U.S. National Institutes of Health's National Library of Medicine (NIH/NLM) using terms oriented on the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) of the NCBI Library.

For the search keywords were inserted in a double or triple combination to yield comprehensive hits. The following keywords were utilized: “personality,” “personality disorder,” “personality trait,” each of them combined with “epigenetic,” “methylation,” “acetylation,” “phosphorylation,” “ubiquitation,” “sumoylation,” “microRNA,” “chromatin” and “chromatin remodeling,” respectively, as well as with one of the keywords “aggression,” “anankastic,” “antisocial,” “anxious,” “avoidant,” “borderline,” “dependent,” “eccentric,” “emotionally unstable,” “histrionic,” “passive-aggressive,” “impulsive,” “narcissism,” “narcissistic,” “paranoid,” “schizoid,” and “schizotypal,” respectively. The search included publications until May 15th 2018.

Results

Among the included studies, 13 explored the epigenetic influence on Personality Traits (two on impulsiveness, six on antisocial traits, seven on aggression) and 11 studied epigenetic differences in personality disorders (two in antisocial personality disorder (ASPD), 9 in borderline personality disorder (BPD)).

Size, constitution of study groups, and the number of investigated genes varied between the studies and ranged from single gene assays to genome-wide methylation analyses (GWA) with implications for the statistical power.

Personality Disorders

Antisocial Personality Disorder

With regards on antisocial PD, only methylation of the monoamine oxidase A gene (MAOA) has been examined. The two studies differed decisively with respect to study design and methylation results.

Philibert et al. considered the known variable nucleotide repeat (VTNR) region of MAOA and introduced a new VTNR region upstream of the transcriptional start site (TSS) of the gene (MAOA VTNR P2). They found a genotype-dependent methylation level and gene activity, but only in females (19). Within a total of well characterized 571 subjects (312 female) of the Iowa Adoption Study (IAS) they measured ASPD lifetime symptom counts in a linear mode according to DSM-IV criteria. Methylation patterns were analyzed at two promoter-associated CpG islands of MAOA in DNA extracted from EBV transformed lymphoblast cell lines from peripheral blood. Sequence analyses of the VTNR P2 revealed five genotypes with each seven to 11 eleven repeats (7R, 8R, 9R, 10R, 11R), of which the 9R genotype showed the lowest methylation in homozygous females, and the greatest gene activity in the functional analysis via luciferase essay. Presence of the low activity allele 10R was associated with higher vulnerability to the harming effects of childhood sexual and physical abuse and it accounted significantly for variances in symptom severity of ASPD in women. In male subjects no significant effect of the P2 genotype on MAOA methylation status was found.

In contrast, in a population of incarcerated men (n = 86) fulfilling the DSM-IV criteria for ASPD, Checknita et al. found a significant overall hypermethylation of the MAOA promoter region in the ASPD group compared with healthy controls (n = 93) with significant differences in methylation levels at 34 of 71 distinct MAOA promoter CpG sites. In their analysis, they did not consider symptom severity or childhood adversity. Methylation of MAOA promoter was associated with decreased gene activity (luciferase-assay) and positively correlated with 5-hydroxytryptophane levels in blood, thus suggesting functional relevance.

Personality Traits

Antisocial Traits

Moul et al. found antisocial traits being associated with genetic and epigenetic modulation of the rs11568817 SNP in the HTR1B promoter region. In an investigation with boys (n = 117) exhibiting callous-unemotional (CU) traits and antisocial behavior problems, and grouped by high and less strong CU traits, they found lower methylation levels of HTTR1B in saliva cell DNA in the high CU trait group. In turn, methylation was decisively moderated by rs11568817 SNP genotype and carried by two exclusive CpG sites (CpG12 and CpG14), which individual methylation levels were negatively associated with overall methylation levels in this gene region. The authors assume two ways of risk for high CU traits, first, carrier of the risk (minor) allele (s) with low levels of methylation at CpG sites 12 and 14 (what was associated with high overall promoter methylation) and second, carrier without risk allele but with high methylation at CpG 12 and CpG14 (what was associated with low overall methylation) and high expression of HTR1B.

In the same sample of participants stratified by CU score level and by age, the aforementioned research group analyzed methylation characteristics of the ocytocin receptor gene (OXTR) in PBC DNA. They revealed high CU traits being associated with increased methylation at two of the six analyzed CpG loci within the OXTR promoter and being correlated with decreased oxytocin blood levels. Yet, when divided in age group, these findings reached significance only in the older group (age 9–16 years), not in the prepubertal children (age 4–8 years) (here only by trend). Similarly, oxytocin serum levels significantly were negatively correlated with gene methylation level in the older boys.

Frontiers | Epigenetics in Personality Disorders: Today's Insights

Objective: Epigenetic mechanisms have been described in several mental disorders, such as mood disorders, anxiety disorders and schizophrenia. However, less ...

www.frontiersin.org

As for the current pseudo-pandemic and the mandatory pseudo-vaccines/RNA-bioweapons::

Two more cases of prion disease as a result of COVID-19 vaccines

The more time passes, the more it becomes obvious that Montagnier may be right - i.e. these vaccines (especially the mRNA types) and their global roll out may be the biggest medical error humanity has ever made...

raypeatforum.com

I posit in this theory of mine, that much of the more fantastical elements of the film may be examined as coping mechanisms of Caden’s mind upon trying to parse larger and deeper horrors. There is a running ‘virus’ thread through the film (“infectious diseases in cattle”), and it is my impression that the deep horror ravaging New York City through at least the second half of the film is a Zombie outbreak, filtered through Caden’s tunnel vision of the world at large.

If that is indeed the case, I cannot think of any other film that so dramatically skews the perception of both the audience and the protagonist that we get within throwing distance of real psychological breakdown from real humor. Imagine if I Am Legend had Will Smith’s mannequin externalizations actually talking back to him, if his spiral to deeper insanity left the audience questioning their own experiences of the events. I’ve got a feeling that Synecdoche is currently the closest film to just that.

Here’s a possible timeline (possible spoilers, watch the movie first for the second time, if you haven’t already) that I’ve concocted:

-Early into Caden’s warehouse project an outbreak of a “flesh eating virus” throws New York City into panic. New York’s large low-to-middle ‘actorly’ class, the many in New York City with any sort of acting talent at all, seek refuge in Caden’s warehouse. As long as they put up with Caden’s stage direction they could live full time in the warehouse in a simulacrum of New York as it was just before all hell started to break loose.

-Eventually the government catches up to the crisis. The poor and untalented, but otherwise uninfected, that couldn’t pass Caden’s not-very-rigorous auditions get corralled up by, seemingly, government vehicles and sent to a quarantine camp, euphemistically called ’Funland’.

-Here we hear pleas of “When will it open?” and we filter it through Caden’s ego and assume that these people are desperate to get in, because they are desperate to see great art. Or we filter it through Caden’s self-doubt and assume they are mocking Caden’s ambitions. The masterstroke is that in the objective reality they may in fact simply be (pun intended) dying to get in.

-Near the worst, Caden follows Hazel back out into the real New York. By this point New York is a war torn shell of what it once was. Caden’s memory happily fills in Hazel’s neighborhood as a timeless version, but his mind can’t escape at least some of the effects of time upon his obsessions: Hazel and her house. It’s possible that the earlier manifestations of the house under fire are merely psuedo-memories backward extrapolated to provide sense to a brutal truth of the destroyed and decaying present.

-Under the control of Caden’s female replacement the warehouse becomes more serious and less of the silly fun of Caden’s ever-present bathos (’b’ intended). It’s possible that she, Caden’s anima, seeks to fast forward the simulation to the devastation of New York. There are ‘Freedom Riots’ and the actors rebel against their direction. Perhaps some actors escape, and many die. Caden himself is too exhausted, too deep in his own thoughts, to let the final horrors sink in. The final horrors of so many dead actors slip past what remain of Caden’s filters, but it is too late for them to have as much of an impact as they should.

Synecdoche, New York: A Great Film About the Upcoming Zombie Apocalypse?

Max Battcher's personal blog

blog.worldmaker.net

“Ever!” Kaufman said. “Ever! Like, ever!” But yes, that included right now. Moreover, the profile still wouldn’t be published for another three weeks, and he and I both had been reading that morning about states blindly reopening and the explosion of new Covid-19 cases in Arizona, the hospitals overloading. It seemed the future would be different from the present. It always is.

This Profile of Charlie Kaufman Has Changed (Published 2020)

How do you write about Hollywood’s most self-referential screenwriter at a destabilizing moment in history? It takes more than one draft.

www.nytimes.com

Guess how the film ends?

I know it's a popular term nowadays, but the blue pill/red pill allegory is suited perfectly to the topic of government conspiracy. Many people don't want to live in a world where they are expendable cattle.

 

[Drareg]

Nowadays more and more authors have been suggesting that all personality disorders (including the Cluster B, which has 2 PD [psychopathy and narcissism] that virtually afflict every politician around the world and the parasitic overclass/cryptocracy/monopoly capitalist bankers)

Frontiers | Epigenetics in Personality Disorders: Today's Insights

Objective: Epigenetic mechanisms have been described in several mental disorders, such as mood disorders, anxiety disorders and schizophrenia. However, less ...

www.frontiersin.org

As for the current pseudo-pandemic and the mandatory pseudo-vaccines/RNA-bioweapons::

Two more cases of prion disease as a result of COVID-19 vaccines

The more time passes, the more it becomes obvious that Montagnier may be right - i.e. these vaccines (especially the mRNA types) and their global roll out may be the biggest medical error humanity has ever made...

raypeatforum.com

Synecdoche, New York: A Great Film About the Upcoming Zombie Apocalypse?

Max Battcher's personal blog

blog.worldmaker.net

This Profile of Charlie Kaufman Has Changed (Published 2020)

How do you write about Hollywood’s most self-referential screenwriter at a destabilizing moment in history? It takes more than one draft.

www.nytimes.com

Guess how the film ends?

Is this movie worth watching? It’s one of those I was going to but didn’t, it may be better to watch now with the lens you have offered. I never knew it covered a viral outbreak, the movie descriptions paint a picture of a depressed perfectionist type.

With the definition of word Synecdoche in mind I’m curious if this movie is a reference to the UN smart cities we are moving toward.

 

['peataphysique]

Is this movie worth watching? It’s one of those I was going to but didn’t, it may be better to watch now with the lens you have offered. I never knew it covered a viral outbreak, the movie descriptions paint a picture of a depressed perfectionist type.

With the definition of word Synecdoche in mind I’m curious if this movie is a reference to the UN smart cities we are moving toward.

Yes, to say is definitely worth watching is an understatement, it is considered to be the best film of it's decade by many top film critics, including Ebert. In my opinion if it doesn't end up being the best film of this century, it most likely be in the top 10 best films of this century.

"Synecdoche, New York" is the best film of the decade. It intends no less than to evoke the strategies we use to live our lives. After beginning my first viewing in confusion, I began to glimpse its purpose and by the end was eager to see it again, then once again, and I am not finished. Charlie Kaufman understands how I live my life, and I suppose his own, and I suspect most of us. Faced with the bewildering demands of time, space, emotion, morality, lust, greed, hope, dreams, dreads and faiths, we build compartments in our minds. It is a way of seeming sane.

Very few people live their lives on one stage, in one persona, wearing one costume. We play different characters. We know this and accept it. In childhood we begin as always the same person but quickly we develop strategies for our families, our friends, our schools. In adolescence these strategies are not well controlled. Sexually, teenagers behave one way with some dates and a different way with others. We find those whose have a persona that matches one of our own, and that defines how we interact with that person. If you aren't an aggressor and are sober, there are girls (or boys) you do it with and others you don't, and you don't want those people to discover what goes on away from them.

In the earlier scenes, he was married to Adele (Catherine Keener). She leaves, and he marries Claire (Michelle Williams), who to some degree is intended to literally replace the first wife, as many second spouses are. Why do some people marry those who resemble their exes? They're casting for the same role. Caden has hired an actor named Daniel London (Tom Noonan) to star in the play, as a character somewhat like himself. Many writers and directors create fiction from themselves, and are often advised to.

What happens in the film isn't supposed to happen in life. The membrane between fact and fiction becomes permeable, and the separate lives intermingle. Caden hardly seems to know whose life he's living; his characters develop minds of their own. How many authors have you heard say their dialogue involves "just writing down what the characters would say?"

Living within different personas is something many people do. How can a governor think to have a mistress in Argentina? An investment counselor think to steal all the money entrusted to him? A famous athlete be revealed as a sybarite? A family man be discovered to have two families? I suspect such people, and to some degree many of us, find no more difficulty in occupying those different scenarios that we might find eating meat some days and on others calling ourselves vegetarian.

"Synecdoche" is accomplished in all the technical areas, including its astonishing set. The acting requires great talent to create characters who are always in their own reality, however much it shifts. Philip Seymour Hoffman's character experiences a deterioration of body, as we all do, finds it more difficult to see outside himself, as we all do, and becomes less sure of who "himself' is, as sooner or later we all do. He shows us this process with a precise evolution.

The best films of the decade | Roger Ebert | Roger Ebert

"Synecdoche, New York" is the best film of the decade. It intends no less than to evoke the strategies we use to live our lives. After beginning my first viewing in confusion, I began to glimpse its purpose and by the end was eager to see it again, then once again, and I am not finished...

www.rogerebert.com

With the definition of word Synecdoche in mind I’m curious if this movie is a reference to the UN smart cities we are moving toward.

Sort of, in the sense of the breakdown of difference in human cultures and also all individuals, and also categorical domains such as politics, art, psychology, science and economics.
In this film, Kaufman was heavily inspired by Braudillard, specially by his philosophical work called "Simulacra and Simulation", and of course, in his collection of essays: "The Transparency of Evil":

The sexual body has now been assigned a kind of artificial fate. This fate is
transsexuality - 'transsexual' not in any anatomical sense, but rather in the
more general sense of transvestitism, of playing with the commutability of the
signs of sex - and of playing, in contrast to the former manner of playing on
sexual difference, on sexual indifference: on lack of differentiation between the
sexual poles, and on indifference to sex qua pleasure. Sexuality is underpinned
by pleasure, by jouissance (the leitmotiv of sexual liberation); trans sexuality is
underpinned by artifice -be it the artifice of actually changing sex or the artifice
of the transvestite who plays with the sartorial, morphological or gestural signs
of sex. But whether the operation in question is surgical or semio-urgical,
whether it involves organs or signs, we are in any case concerned with
replacement parts, and since today the body is fated to become a prosthesis, it
is logical enough that our model of sexuality should have become transsexuality,
and that transsexuality should "have everywhere become the locus of
seduction.

We are all transsexuals, just as we are biological mutants in potentia. This is
not a biological issue, however: we are all transsexuals symbolically.
Take La Cicciolina. Is there any more marvellous incarnation of sex - of sex
in pornographic innocence? La Cicciolina has been contrasted with Madonna,
virgin fruit of the aerobic sphere, product of a glacial aesthetic, devoid of all
charm and all sensuality - a numbed android who by virtue of this very fact
was perfect raw material for a synthetic idol. But is not La Cicciolina too a
transsexual? Her long platinum hair, her customized breasts, her realer
thanreal curves worthy of an inflatable doll, her lyophilic eroticism borrowed from a
comic-strip or science-fiction world, and above all the hyperbole of her (never
perverse or libertine) sexual discourse - all conspire to offer a ready-made and
total sinfulness; La Cicciolina is the ideal woman of a telephone chat-line
complete with a carnivorous erotic ideology that no modern woman could
possibly espouse - except, that is, for a transsexual, or a transvestite, these
being the only people left who live through the signs of an overdrawn,
rapacious sexuality. La Cicciolina, as carnal ectoplasm, is here very close to
Madonna's artificial nitroglycerine or to Michael Jackson's androgynous and
Frankensteinian appeal. All of them are mutants, transvestites, genetically
baroque beings whose erotic look conceals their generic lack of specificity.
They are all I gender-benders' - all turncoats of sex.

Ibid. Pg. 20-21

In The Transparency of Evil (1993), Baudrillard described a situation in which previously separate domains of the economy, art, politics, and sexuality, collapsed into each other. He claims that art, for instance, has penetrated all spheres of existence, whereby the dreams of the artistic avant-garde for art to inform life has been realized. Yet, in Baudrillard’s vision, with the realization of art in everyday life, art itself as a separate and transcendent phenomenon has disappeared.

Baudrillard calls this situation “transaesthetics” which he relates to similar phenomena of “transpolitics,” “transsexuality,” and “transeconomics,” in which everything becomes political, sexual, and economic, so that these domains, like art, lose their specificity, their boundaries, and their distinctness. The result is a confused condition where there are no more criteria of value, of judgement, or of taste, and the function of the normative thus collapses in a morass of indifference and inertia. And so, although Baudrillard sees art proliferating everywhere, and writes in The Transparency of Evil that “talk about Art is increasing even more rapidly” (p. 14), the power of art — of art as adventure, art as negation of reality, art as redeeming illusion, art as another dimension and so on — has disappeared. Art is everywhere but there “are no more fundamental rules” to differentiate art from other objects and “no more criteria of judgement or of pleasure” (p. 14). For Baudrillard, contemporary individuals are indifferent toward taste and manifest only distaste: “tastes are determinate no longer” (p. 72).

And yet as a proliferation of images, of form, of line, of color, of design, art is more fundamental then ever to the contemporary social order: “our society has given rise to a general aestheticization: all forms of culture — not excluding anti-cultural ones — are promoted and all models of representation and anti-representation are taken on board” (p. 16). Thus Baudrillard concludes that: “It is often said that the West’s great undertaking is the commercialization of the whole world, the hitching of the fate of everything to the fate of the commodity. That great undertaking will turn out rather to have been the aestheticization of the whole world — its cosmopolitan spectacularization, its transformation into images, its semiological organization” (p. 16).

In the postmodern media and consumer society, everything becomes an image, a sign, a spectacle, a transaesthetic object — just as everything also becomes trans-economic, trans-political, and trans-sexual. This “materialization of aesthetics” is accompanied by a desperate attempt to simulate art, to replicate and mix previous artistic forms and styles, and to produce ever more images and artistic objects. But this “dizzying eclecticism” of forms and pleasures produces a situation in which art is no longer art in classical or modernist senses but is merely image, artifact, object, simulation, or commodity (Baudrillard is aware of increasingly exorbitant prices for art works, but takes this as evidence that art has become something else in the orbital hyperspace of value, an ecstasy of skyrocketing values in “a kind of space opera” [p. 19]).

Examples of the paradoxical and ironic style of Baudrillard’s philosophical musings abound in The Perfect Crime (1996b). Baudrillard claims that the negation of a transcendent reality in the current media and technological society is a “perfect crime” that involves the “destruction of the real.” In a world of appearance, image, and illusion, Baudrillard suggests, reality disappears although its traces continue to nourish an illusion of the real. Driven toward virtualization in a high-tech society, all the imperfections of human life and the world are eliminated in virtual reality, but this is the elimination of reality itself, the Perfect Crime. This “post-critical” and “catastrophic” state of affairs render our previous conceptual world irrelevant, Baudrillard suggests, urging criticism to turn ironic and transform the demise of the real into an art form.

Baudrillard has entered a world of thought far from academic philosophy, one that puts in question traditional modes of thought and discourse. His search for new philosophical perspectives has won him a loyal global audience, but also criticism for his excessive irony, word play, and intellectual games. Yet his work stands as a provocation to traditional and contemporary philosophy that challenges thinkers to address old philosophical problems such as truth and reality in new ways in the contemporary world.

Jean Baudrillard (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

The film's title is a play on Schenectady, New York, where much of the film is set, and the concept of synecdoche, wherein a part of something represents the whole or vice versa.

And so, it's also supposed to show the human condition through an universal lens.

In McCarthy's novel an unnamed protagonist who has suffered a head injury is seized by a memory (or fake memory) of a building. With a multi-million payout from those responsible for the head injury, he becomes obsessed with reconstructing the building, furnishing it and filling it with actors re-enacting specific tasks. In Kaufman's film, instead of one block of flats, we have all of New York replicated in a warehouse in New York. This in turn is replicated within another, even bigger warehouse. This vast set-within-a-set explains the film's staggering $20m budget. Kaufman explains here that an exact replica of New York City would also have to occupy the same amount of space as New York City and there's a pleasingly direct echo here of the one-paragraph Borges tale in which a map is made of an empire "whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it."

This is also the tale with which Baudrillard begins his essay on simulacra. But a purely mental wrangling with simulacra et al is not nearly as pleasurable as experiencing that concept made visual (if not "real") in Kaufman's dizzying shots of city-within-city and warehouse-within-warehouse. His version has, in every sense of the word, greater scope.

Doubling and redoubling also prove ideas eminently suited to the screen. Sammy, the man who follows and observes Caden and is then hired by him to play him in his theatre piece, inevitably becomes more Caden than Caden himself: there are all sorts of resonances with Paul Auster's story, City of Glass but of course on-screen semblances give this doubling an extra dimension. Being able to see how Hazel (Samantha Morton) comes to resemble Claire (Michelle Williams) and then to experience the visual bewilderment of seeing their actor-doubles is somehow much more powerful than relying on words to render them.

Finally, though as kaleidoscopically clever as the finest postmodern novel, the film is also full of heart. Which, for all his brilliance, is more than you can say of Baudrillard. Pathos and humour however, aren't surprising coming from the screenwriter who admits, "I'm looking for the emotional thing as opposed to the logical thing". What is surprising is that the "emotional thing" could be partnered with the "cerebral thing" so spectacularly. Kaufman is often described as "novelistic", yet his first directorial effort may well have outdone the postmodern novel at its own game.

Baudrillard_Simulacra and Simulations

http://www.davidbardschwarz.com/pdf/simulacrum.pdf

Jean Baudrillard (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

https://0ducks.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/simulacra-and-simulation-by-jean-baudrillard.pdf

Symbolic Exchange and Death and the succeeding studies in Simulation and Simulacra (1994 [1981]) articulate the principle of a fundamental rupture between modern and postmodern societies and mark Baudrillard’s departure from the problematic of modern social theory. For him, modern societies are organized around the production and consumption of commodities, while postmodern societies are organized around simulation and the play of images and signs, denoting a situation in which codes, models, and signs are the organizing forms of a new social order where simulation rules. In the society of simulation, identities are constructed by the appropriation of images, and codes and models determine how individuals perceive themselves and relate to other people. Economics, politics, social life, and culture are all governed by the mode of simulation, whereby codes and models determine how goods are consumed and used, politics unfold, culture is produced and consumed, and everyday life is lived.

Baudrillard’s postmodern world is also one in which previously important boundaries and distinctions — such as those between social classes, genders, political leanings, and once autonomous realms of society and culture — lose power. If modern societies, for classical social theory, were characterized by differentiation, for Baudrillard, postmodern societies are characterized by dedifferentiation, the “collapse” of (the power of) distinctions, or implosion. In his society of simulation, the realms of economics, politics, culture, sexuality, and the social all implode into each other. In this implosive mix, economics is fundamentally shaped by culture, politics, and other spheres, while art, once a sphere of potential difference and opposition, is absorbed into the economic and political, while sexuality is everywhere. In this situation, differences between individuals and groups implode in a rapidly mutating or changing dissolution of the social and the previous boundaries and structures upon which social theory had once focused.

In addition, his postmodern universe is one of hyperreality in which entertainment, information, and communication technologies provide experiences more intense and involving than the scenes of banal everyday life, as well as the codes and models that structure everyday life. The realm of the hyperreal (e.g., media simulations of reality, Disneyland and amusement parks, malls and consumer fantasylands, TV sports, virtual reality games, social networking sites, and other excursions into ideal worlds) is more real than real, whereby the models, images, and codes of the hyperreal come to control thought and behavior. Yet determination itself is aleatory in a non-linear world where it is impossible to chart causal mechanisms in a situation in which individuals are confronted with an overwhelming flux of images, codes, and models, any of which may shape an individual’s thought or behavior.

In this postmodern world, individuals flee from the “desert of the real” for the ecstasies of hyperreality and the new realm of computer, media, and technological experience. In this universe, subjectivities are fragmented and lost, and a new terrain of experience appears that for Baudrillard renders previous social theories and politics obsolete and irrelevant. Tracing the vicissitudes of the subject in present-day society, Baudrillard claims that contemporary subjects are no longer afflicted with modern pathologies like hysteria or paranoia. Rather, they exist in “a state of terror which is characteristic of the schizophrenic, an over-proximity of all things, a foul promiscuity of all things which beleaguer and penetrate him, meeting with no resistance, and no halo, no aura, not even the aura of his own body protects him. In spite of himself the schizophrenic is open to everything and lives in the most extreme confusion” (1988: 27). For Baudrillard, the “ecstasy of communication” means that the subject is in close proximity to instantaneous images and information, in an overexposed and transparent world. In this situation, the subject “becomes a pure screen a pure absorption and re-absorption surface of the influent networks” (1988: 27). In other words, an individual in a postmodern world becomes merely an entity influenced by media, technological experience, and the hyperreal.

Thus, Baudrillard’s categories of simulation, implosion, and hyperreality combine to create an emergent postmodern condition that requires entirely new modes of theory and politics to chart and respond to the novelties of the contemporary era. His style and writing strategies are also implosive (i.e., working against previously important distinctions), combining material from strikingly different fields, studded with examples from the mass media and popular culture in an innovative mode of postmodern theory that does not respect disciplinary boundaries. His writing attempts to itself simulate the new conditions, capturing its novelties through inventive use of language and theory. Such radical questioning of contemporary theory and the need for new theoretical strategies are thus legitimated for Baudrillard by the large extent of changes in the current era.

Jean Baudrillard (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

 

['peataphysique]

Is this movie worth watching? It’s one of those I was going to but didn’t, it may be better to watch now with the lens you have offered. I never knew it covered a viral outbreak, the movie descriptions paint a picture of a depressed perfectionist type.

With the definition of word Synecdoche in mind I’m curious if this movie is a reference to the UN smart cities we are moving toward.

Also, expanding on the influence of "The Transparency of Evil" by Braudillard, forgot to put an equally important part regarding the collapse of difference between all cultures, categorical domains such as politics, science and art, and all individuals in respect to gender, beauty, culture, ethics, religion, proper discernment of valuable art, race etc... :

Consider Michael Jackson, for example. Michael Jackson is a solitary mutant, a precursor of a hybridization that is perfect because it is universal- the race to end all races. Today's young people have no problem with a miscegenated society: they already inhabit such a universe, and Michael Jackson foreshadows what they see as an ideal future. Add to this the fact that Michael has had his face lifted, his hair straightened, his skin lightened - in short, he has been reconstructed with the greatest attention to detail. This is what makes him such an innocent and pure child - the artificial hermaphrodite of the fable, etter able even than Christ to reign over the world and reconcile its contradictions; better than a child-god because he is child-prosthesis, an embryo of all those dreamt-of mutations that will deliver us from race and from sex. One might also consider the transvestites of the aesthetic sphere - of whom Andy Warhol must surely be the emblematic figure. Like Michael Jackson, Andy Warhol is a solitary mutant - a precursor, for his part, of a perfect and universal hybridization of art, of a new aesthetic to end all aesthetics. Like Jackson, he is a perfectly artificial personality: he too is innocent and pure, an androgyne of the new generation, a sort of mystical prosthesis or artificial machine capable, thanks to its perfection, of releasing us at one blow from the grip of both sex and aesthetics. When Warhol says: all works are beautiful -I don't have to choose between them because all contemporary works are equivalent; when he says: art is everywhere, therefore it no longer exists, everyone is a genius, the world as it is, in its very banality, is inhabited by genius - nobody is ready to believe him. Yet his is in fact an accurate description of the shape of the modern aesthetic, an aesthetic of radical agnosticism. We are all agnostics, transvestites of art or of sex. None of us has either aesthetic or sexual convictions any longer - yet we all profess to have them.

The Transparency of Evil, Pg. 22

 

[Drareg]

Yes, to say is definitely worth watching is an understatement, it is considered to be the best film of it's decade by many top film critics, including Ebert. In my opinion if it doesn't end up being the best film of this century, it most likely be in the top 10 best films of this century.

The best films of the decade | Roger Ebert | Roger Ebert

"Synecdoche, New York" is the best film of the decade. It intends no less than to evoke the strategies we use to live our lives. After beginning my first viewing in confusion, I began to glimpse its purpose and by the end was eager to see it again, then once again, and I am not finished...

www.rogerebert.com

Sort of, in the sense of the breakdown of difference in human cultures and also all individuals, and also categorical domains such as politics, art, psychology, science and economics.
In this film, Kaufman was heavily inspired by Braudillard, specially by his philosophical work called "Simulacra and Simulation", and of course, in his collection of essays: "The Transparency of Evil":



Ibid. Pg. 20-21

Jean Baudrillard (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

And so, it's also supposed to show the human condition through an universal lens.

Baudrillard_Simulacra and Simulations

http://www.davidbardschwarz.com/pdf/simulacrum.pdf

Jean Baudrillard (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

https://0ducks.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/simulacra-and-simulation-by-jean-baudrillard.pdf

Jean Baudrillard (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Thanks, this is good reading.

I think Braudillard is another French philosopher obsessed with sex, once again like the paedophile focault they ignore resources like food and water as the primary drive, sex is secondary. He may have not come from the ruling class background Foucault did but he seems similar.

It’s no surprise these philosophers are elevated and thought in the humanities and social studies, it protects the ruling class by centering sex as the main driver of human behavior, the ruling class then hoard up the resources, this is what we are currently witnessing, it‘s no surprise the new left woke types are so incoherent when this is what they read, how do they know what they know, well we now know , they read and parrot the works of paedos and the sexually incoherent, no thinking exercises.

The quote below is the type of verbosity woke types soak up, it’s a delusion, power is never lost, this is basic physics, it flows back through restructures, the restructuring is normally analogous to the past, remember the human brain structure is still similar to the past, evolving slowly.
The fallacy in his reasoning here is not accounting for the bioenergetic source for the energy expenditure in his new imploded society, a schizo society is not conducive to anything coherent.

Its like a sexual fantasy he has, he foresees and desires a sexual orgy, he won’t come out and say this so he codifies it with verbosity, he may not be conscious of this but his bioenergetic capacitance is incoherent therefore he is in a sexual emergency mode of sorts, he is decaying and body wants to spread seed, his primary drives are already met with food,water and shelter so the neurosis developed around sex.
Foucault is much the same, a philosophy or solipsism to move toward paedophilia codified in verbosity, its likely his true drive is not acknowledged by his conscious mind.
Most of the woke left resonate with these works because their primary resources are in abundance, they are still bioenergetically incoherent because of poor food choices, ssri’s, high estrogen, high serotonin etc ,they have a sexual incoherency and this is why these verbose philosophies appeal to them, sexual depravity is the only way they can become aroused.
Its also clear as day that many wokists are not high in physically attractive traits, all of this is a form of verbose "incelism" in males and females.

"Baudrillard’s postmodern world is also one in which previously important boundaries and distinctions — such as those between social classes, genders, political leanings, and once autonomous realms of society and culture — lose power. If modern societies, for classical social theory, were characterized by differentiation, for Baudrillard, postmodern societies are characterized by dedifferentiation, the “collapse” of (the power of) distinctions, or implosion. In his society of simulation, the realms of economics, politics, culture, sexuality, and the social all implode into each other. In this implosive mix, economics is fundamentally shaped by culture, politics, and other spheres, while art, once a sphere of potential difference and opposition, is absorbed into the economic and political, while sexuality is everywhere. In this situation, differences between individuals and groups implode in a rapidly mutating or changing dissolution of the social and the previous boundaries and structures upon which social theory had once focused’.

 

['peataphysique]

Thanks, this is good reading.

You're welcome.

I think Braudillard is another French philosopher obsessed with sex, once again like the paedophile focault they ignore resources like food and water as the primary drive, sex is secondary. He may have not come from the ruling class background Foucault did but he seems similar.

At first glance, Baudrillard might seem that way, because he was a French Post-Structuralist at the same time (1960's) Focault et al. also were. But in actuality, his ideas are quite different, he argues that the primary drive of human beings is the Destrudo, or death-drive.

And in case you were wondering, Baudrillard refused to sign the infamous: French petition against age of consent laws - Wikipedia

It’s no surprise these philosophers are elevated and thought in the humanities and social studies, it protects the ruling class by centering sex as the main driver of human behavior, the ruling class then hoard up the resources, this is what we are currently witnessing, it‘s no surprise the new left woke types are so incoherent when this is what they read, how do they know what they know, well we now know , they read and parrot the works of paedos and the sexually incoherent, no thinking exercises.

In actual fact, Baudrillard exposes the parasitic overclass and denounce it's tactics, one of many being mass media; TV ads with supermodels, pornography, pharmaceutical ads, food ads, the whole "american dream" and the whole plethora of delusions it entails etc...

The quote below is the type of verbosity woke types soak up, it’s a delusion, power is never lost, this is basic physics, it flows back through restructures, the restructuring is normally analogous to the past, remember the human brain structure is still similar to the past, evolving slowly.
The fallacy in his reasoning here is not accounting for the bioenergetic source for the energy expenditure in his new imploded society, a schizo society is not conducive to anything coherent.

Its like a sexual fantasy he has, he foresees and desires a sexual orgy, he won’t come out and say this so he codifies it with verbosity, he may not be conscious of this but his bioenergetic capacitance is incoherent therefore he is in a sexual emergency mode of sorts, he is decaying and body wants to spread seed, his primary drives are already met with food,water and shelter so the neurosis developed around sex.
Foucault is much the same, a philosophy or solipsism to move toward paedophilia codified in verbosity, its likely his true drive is not acknowledged by his conscious mind.
Most of the woke left resonate with these works because their primary resources are in abundance, they are still bioenergetically incoherent because of poor food choices, ssri’s, high estrogen, high serotonin etc ,they have a sexual incoherency and this is why these verbose philosophies appeal to them, sexual depravity is the only way they can become aroused.
Its also clear as day that many wokists are not high in physically attractive traits, all of this is a form of verbose "incelism" in males and females.

"Baudrillard’s postmodern world is also one in which previously important boundaries and distinctions — such as those between social classes, genders, political leanings, and once autonomous realms of society and culture — lose power. If modern societies, for classical social theory, were characterized by differentiation, for Baudrillard, postmodern societies are characterized by dedifferentiation, the “collapse” of (the power of) distinctions, or implosion. In his society of simulation, the realms of economics, politics, culture, sexuality, and the social all implode into each other. In this implosive mix, economics is fundamentally shaped by culture, politics, and other spheres, while art, once a sphere of potential difference and opposition, is absorbed into the economic and political, while sexuality is everywhere. In this situation, differences between individuals and groups implode in a rapidly mutating or changing dissolution of the social and the previous boundaries and structures upon which social theory had once focused’.

As I said before, Baudrillard considers the sex-drive to be secondary, a mere cheap thrill. You see, he was never a Marxist, not even in the beginning, back then he called himself a "neo-marxist" but he quickly moved past this label towards a transcendental Nihilism which is the logical conclusion of Substance Metaphysics and the reductionistic Newtonian clockwork-universe physics.

That quote you added, he is not endorsing dedifferentiation, he is merely describing how it will come to be, and we are already seeing it, but just the onset.

I think you are spot on on your description of a certain ilk of philosophers, but I wouldn't define most of the original French Post-Structuralists that way. Now, the ones that are that way, they are unaware of these orgonomic needs and so they never get to the root of the problem. It's the prime example of repetition compulsion concomitant with severe anosognosia.

 

[Drareg]

You're welcome.


At first glance, Baudrillard might seem that way, because he was a French Post-Structuralist at the same time (1960's) Focault et al. also were. But in actuality, his ideas are quite different, he argues that the primary drive of human beings is the Destrudo, or death-drive.

And in case you were wondering, Baudrillard refused to sign the infamous: French petition against age of consent laws - Wikipedia



In actual fact, Baudrillard exposes the parasitic overclass and denounce it's tactics, one of many being mass media; TV ads with supermodels, pornography, pharmaceutical ads, food ads, the whole "american dream" and the whole plethora of delusions it entails etc...



As I said before, Baudrillard considers the sex-drive to be secondary, a mere cheap thrill. You see, he was never a Marxist, not even in the beginning, back then he called himself a "neo-marxist" but he quickly moved past this label towards a transcendental Nihilism which is the logical conclusion of Substance Metaphysics and the reductionistic Newtonian clockwork-universe physics.

That quote you added, he is not endorsing dedifferentiation, he is merely describing how it will come to be, and we are already seeing it, but just the onset.

I think you are spot on on your description of a certain ilk of philosophers, but I wouldn't define most of the original French Post-Structuralists that way. Now, the ones that are that way, they are unaware of these orgonomic needs and so they never get to the root of the problem. It's the prime example of repetition compulsion concomitant with severe anosognosia.

Thanks for clearing up Baudrillard.

Those consent laws are alarming, the French have serious issues with sexual depravity, I notice it’s generally after the age of 45 in males in France, this of course is when testosterone takes a drastic drop.

The new woke left study the works of those paedos, they are heavily influencing society now, Foucault and his fellow paedos refuse to acknowledge the growth of the prefrontal cortex and the importance of this in decision making, this is an intentional omission.

The repetitive compulsions I feel are structural feeback loops within the brain, the testosterone issue will influence the structural design and behavior is effected accordingly.

Total clowns that read the works of these men, they are railing against white males but worship the philosophic verbosity of paedo white males.

 

[Kayaker]

What other films are worth watching?

 

[Herbie]

What other films are worth watching?

What kind of films?

 

[Kayaker]

What kind of films?

Ones relevant to what's happening. Inspiration, rather than escapism.

 

[CreakyJoints]

Is this movie worth watching? It’s one of those I was going to but didn’t, it may be better to watch now with the lens you have offered. I never knew it covered a viral outbreak, the movie descriptions paint a picture of a depressed perfectionist type.

With the definition of word Synecdoche in mind I’m curious if this movie is a reference to the UN smart cities we are moving toward.

I am a big fan of both Baudrillard and Kaufman's work, so I am thrilled to see them being mentioned here - I must thank @'peataphysique for bringing them up and some very insightful posts, these are marvelous. I didn't know about his views on the age of consent, nor had I read some of the texts you had mentioned, I am grateful for your knowledge.

I think to say Synecdoche New York is about a viral outbreak detracts somewhat from a wonderful film which is, to me, about artistic process, fiction, and memory - it is quite (post?) Modernist in some senses. Perhaps it is prescient in some ways, but I think the comments it makes about creative endeavor are timeless. The first time I saw it in the cinema, I sat there in silence with a friend of mine, long after the credits had finished rolling and the curtain closed - the staff had to ask us to leave; it's almost rather draining. One of my favorite films, but one I can't re-watch often.

The film sums up a lot of Kaufman's concerns, it is like a much more extensive version of Adaptation or Being John Malkovich, both of which he also worked on. I think being given directorial freedom allowed him to really expand on some of those themes he didn't have as much scope to explore in depth when he was only a writer. A lot of what I love about Synecdoche New York is relatable to what I love about Simulacra and Simulation, actually.

Baudrillard is fantastic, Simulacra and Simulation was very easy to read and is one of my favourite texts - and at numerous points he does make rather eerily prescient comments. To be rather reductive in turn; at one point he describes in detail how much of societal development and human behavior is like a snake eating itself. Many of the arguments I've seen @Drareg make about what you call "wokism" are similar; that a subsection of people might rail so strongly against a particular thing (perhaps authoritarianism in this instance) are, with time, doomed to become a version of the thing they once sought to destroy; sometimes this reaction might initially be motivated by some cultural trauma (or at least sold that way). It's been many years since I was able to discuss it with anyone and I shall have to re-read as many of his works as I can in the next few weeks now. Forgive me if you feel I've misrepresented his ideas here, would you agree, @'peataphysique , or am I very far off the mark?

Also, I didn't realise Barthes was signatory to that petition! I was about to dust off Image, Music, Text as a warm-up, but I suppose I'll look at something else instead. Perhaps he would say we should divorce him from his work...

 

[Herbie]

Ones relevant to what's happening. Inspiration, rather than escapism.

The great escape -1963 lol
Papillon -1973 lol
Come and see - 1985
Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring - 2003
Siberiade - 1979
Children of men - 2006
They live - 1988

 

[TheSir]

If true, it has horrible implications for giving women the right to vote, with them being the naturally submissive sex. Is it then a surprise that authoritarian political measures have increased in tandem with female empowerment?