Says Who?

© 2009 Loretta Lux

Good metaphor:

"Her face lost a layer of worry"

Leads to (with increasing degrees of Worry, and decreasing degrees of Doubt):

THE STRATA OF ANXIETY

Astro: I may not exist.

Exosphere: It is conceivable that all of my beliefs are falsely directed.

Thermosphere: What if David Icke was right?

Mesosphere: What if David Irving was right?

Stratosphere: What if Mohammed was right?

Troposphere: What if Nietzsche was right?

Aerosphere: Neofascism. Nukes. Climate chaos. Late-capitalist consensus. Polarization of wealth, elites, faith.

Thin air: I am fat and decaying.

1 bar: Eventually, I will give in to my ideological circumstances. (Want what the world wants me to want.)

Crust: Eventually, I am going to die.

Mantle: Eventually, I am going to be found out.

Core: Eventually, I will vote Conservative.

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"they're treating us like animals; let's shit on their floor!"

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How lovely is the phrase "You know what I'm like" in practice?

What it means is, I guess, the triple:
1) everyone else, roughly
2) my past selves, less roughly
3) a character, a rogue, a card, someone who is something more than just bundles of sense for you.

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"The composition of vast books is a laborious and impoverishing extravagance. To go on for five hundred pages developing an idea whose perfect oral exposition is possible in a few minutes! A better course of procedure is to pretend that these books already exist, and then to offer a resume, a commentary . . . More reasonable, more inept, more indolent, I have preferred to write notes upon imaginary books."
- Borges

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James spends much time drawing out the meaning and microcosmic power from pop music. I like it very much too, but I won't dig in too far. If I did, it might start looking like fallacy-checking pop songs...

"If I was a rich girl,
Na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na,
Then I'd have all the money in the world,
If I was a wealthy girl."
(affirming the consequent.)

-this is fucking great, a coupla Polish concréte jazzists on a tight freakout.

- In the unlikely case that you're able to resist this, keep your unfortunate skill to yourself, eh?

-and this is *almost* good despite its concept: lumpen Brit hiphop crew 30KB in praise of meateating. They aim for homely Beta Band, but barely make it to Dan Le Sac.

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"Selfpity lasted a matter of seconds in the open; then the bird of prey fell on it, tearing it, ripping it. The bird was the real world, a mercernary dispatched by his conscience, the angry voice of all the people in the world who were worse off than he was. Just common sense."

- Iain Banks, "The Bridge"

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Thought on "sensitivity"

Compare this article about depression stats with this. They each take a similar tone - sensible levelling of things - but only one is a snarking mess.

And fundamentally I don't think it's a matter of one being actually researched, of one of them having a writing style and only one of them linking the issue to anything except self-righteousness.

Instead, it's the difference in the writers' sensitivities that makes only one of them lightly sickening. What is sensitivity? I dunno; probably "the ability to be affected", but not just emotionally; to comment, after all, requires hard insight, which after all requires sharp perspective.

We often speak about sensitivity as if it were a small act, or some kind of supererogation on us, but it's not. It is (ok, should be) instead the origin of all critical commentary. In fact, fuck it: it is what vitalizes all thought* that is worth anything.

* non-science.