Items of Interest, Profound Mystery Edition
"References to mental entities such as purposes and plans cannot be eliminated from our efforts to explain the world."
Clarice Rivers, rest in peace.
Catesby Leigh, A Stirring Monument to America’s Warriors. “Its kinetic design, with changing tempos and moods and a range of character types, seems to resonate with visitors. In remarks at the memorial’s inauguration on September 13, Howard said that his sculpture heralds ‘an American cultural Renaissance.’ There’s also a polemical edge to his public discourse, as when he told the historian Victor Davis Hanson in a recent podcast interview that the ‘art world’ treats the public the way the government does.”
Paul Lewis, Hayek’s Mind. “Contrary to subjectivism’s critics, therefore, references to mental entities such as purposes and plans cannot be eliminated from our efforts to explain the world. A subjectivist approach to the methodology of social science, according to which mental entities provide the indispensable starting point for inquiry, is thereby defended against its physicalist and behaviourist opponents.”
, Goya’s Drowning Dog. “There is a profound mystery here — the most profound, I think — that we cannot penetrate with our reason, but we can know through faith. Goya’s little dog is Michael, not pulled from the waters by God, but comforted to know that he does not struggle against the waves unseen.”Eitan Fischberger, 365 Days of October 7. “The October 7 massacre unleashed a wave of hatred the likes of which we thought were relegated to history books. But the massacre didn’t just embolden Israel’s enemies; it gave anti-Semites in the West carte blanche to display to the world their depravity and support for terrorism and violence. And the response? Silence, from too many of our institutions. Where we expected moral clarity, we found indifference or outright hostility.”
John G. Grove, Depoliticizing the University. “The tension and interplay between different sources of authority (each with its own mode of acting and appropriate values) is the key to individuality itself, shaping us as unique human persons. A liberalism that values individuality and limits the political realm in deference to the choices of individuals will degrade individuality itself if it transforms all social institutions after its own image, leaving society composed only of aggregated, homogeneous individuals and the state.”
Auguste Meyrat, Disney and Creative Misdirection. “What’s killing Disney and Hollywood in general is the rampant immaturity and laziness of its creative workers.”
SMU DataArts, Government Support, Rising Costs, and the Road to Recovery in Massachusetts’ Arts Sector. “In 2022, 65% of expenses were covered by contributed revenue. However, the rate of contributed revenue growth has slowed. With the exception of government funding, other contributed revenue sources did not keep up with inflation.”
Irina Velitskaya, The Gulag Academia. “Back in Sinegorskiy, I had to take the long way to and from school to avoid my anti-Semitic classmates. Now, as a student in good standing at Berkeley, one of the world’s most distinguished universities, I must take a detour many days, both ways, to get to my classes at Dwinelle Hall and other locations, because Berkeley’s famous main gate is effectively closed to free passage for students by pro-Hamas demonstrators. I sometimes am forced to avoid the Bancroft Library as well because of the intimidating protests there.”
Julia Friedman, Culture of Complaint and the New Deal Murals. “I was told that the current tenants of the building in which the mural is displayed had expressed ‘concern’ about its representation of the Native American. The GSA’s policy is not to remove or cover up ‘problematic’ murals (unless it interferes with the function of the government). Instead, the agency tries to resolve complaints by providing detailed scholarly studies about the artwork of the kind I was asked to write. Unlike the trustees of Tate Britain, the administrators of the GSA's Fine arts section take seriously their role of protecting the art in their care.”
Ian Haworth, Abu Hitler. “But the real reason Nazi Germany is used as the ultimate insult against Israelis? To hide the darkest Palestinian secret: a shared genocidal history and bloodthirsty obsession with anti-Semitism that festered long after the fall of Hitler.”
, Z600 Part 2. “The reason the PFLP is so popular among the humanities and social sciences graduate degree crowd is because its message can be coded as ‘marxist-socialist resistance’ from oppression. But in reality, or the world most members of the academy do not live in, the PFLP is an Islamist terror network with historical ties to the Muslim Brotherhood that uses the mask of socialism to dupe Western leftists into assisting them in their ultimately imperialist and religiously fundamentalist goals.”Ari Gandsman, Stop Blaming Foucault. “Merging densely packed and impenetrable, jargon-laden verbiage with simplistic political sloganeering, such scholars cast themselves as doyens in a survivalist postapocalyptic horror film leading the search to a new Garden of Eden, albeit an Eden that is still committed to upholding academic institutional norms of university press publishing and peer-reviewed articles, at least for those willing to conform.”
Mitzvah recommendation: Help the Asheville Print Studio + Gallery.
Current earworm: LL Cool J featuring Saweetie, Proclivities (NSFW).
On now: “Bill Scott: Two Decades” at Hollis Taggart through November 16.
Content at DMJ is free but paid subscriptions keep it coming. Please consider one for yourself and thank you for reading.
Our next title in the Asynchronous Studio Book Club is The World of Perception by Maurice Merleau-Ponty. For more information, see the ASBC homepage.
The current exhibition in the Dissident Museum is David Curcio: The Point of the Needle.
Dissident Muse’s first publication, Backseat Driver by James Croak, is available now at Amazon.
Aphorisms for Artists: 100 Ways Toward Better Art by Walter Darby Bannard is out now at Allworth Press. More information is available at the site for the book. If you own it already, thank you; please consider reviewing the book at Amazon, B&N, or Goodreads.