Mormonism is a cult

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huckelberry
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Re: Mormonism is a cult

Post by huckelberry »

Morley wrote:
Thu Apr 20, 2023 3:01 pm
.......

His wife then asks him, "But why do you always paint these damned Birch trees?"

... he explains about his proclivity to notice that everything is deeply mysterious, that all is shadowed by a racial memory of primordial woods, ......(more artificial reasons)...

To do anything less than create a narrative for his actions would brand Bertram as an idiot. And no man wants to be thought of as an idiot by either his wife or the rest of the world. It's also true that once Bertrand gives his reason, that reason becomes true to him, in part because he can't think of anything better that will fulfill the need that humans have for stories that explain things.
I copied only a summary of Morley's post as the full post is copied just above in two different posts.

Morley I enjoyed this post a couple of ways. I found myself thinking many decisions are thought out ahead of time. One could think of chess, I decided to move the knight to threaten a queen king fork forcing my opponent to protect in way I think will be favorable to me. People even review the decision process carefully. But even so there are dimension not understood, underneath awareness.

Such as why did you choose Bertram Russell? I could find no memory of him painting, I could remember almost but not quite somebody like you describe. I checked google, quite a few folks paint similar looking Birch trees. Then I noticed Gustov Klimt versions. Those had escaped my awareness or had been forgotten, You led me to a pleasant rediscovery.

Is there a reason you choose birch trees?
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Re: Mormonism is a cult

Post by huckelberry »

Morley's reply has vanished , I am sad. Yes it was a bit of a meander about an interesting subject, how we tell stories to hid, reveal or entertain.

Morley ,I hope your Swedish study goes well. The thought gives me a bit of guilt or puzzlement. My father learned Swedish before learning English and I do not know any Swedish at all.
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Re: Mormonism is a cult

Post by Morley »

huckelberry wrote:
Tue May 23, 2023 2:21 am
Morley's reply has vanished , I am sad. Yes it was a bit of a meander about an interesting subject, how we tell stories to hid, reveal or entertain.

Morley ,I hope your Swedish study goes well. The thought gives me a bit of guilt or puzzlement. My father learned Swedish before learning English and I do not know any Swedish at all.
On a quick reread, all I could see was my own self-indulgent ego, so it had to go. Thank you, anyway, Huck.
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Re: Mormonism is a cult

Post by Physics Guy »

I didn't see that post as self-indulgent, just a bit rhapsodic, which was somehow an ironically apt tone for the idea that we do things for no real reason but then cling to our justifications.

I have a hard time really buying that idea. I'm sure that sometimes we do things on random impulse, but I think that we also do sometimes act on deliberate plans and principles. More often than either, probably, we do things for definite reasons that just aren't the reasons we think about consciously. In all cases, even the deliberate plans, we are certainly prone to revising our reasons in memory, to make a better story out of the way things turned out.

Probably because of all Morley's birch trees, I found myself remember Frost's poem The Road Not Taken.
Robert Frost wrote:Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
A lot of people seem to remember this poem as being about "the road less traveled" but it's really about how we fall for our own justifications. The poem says clearly that the road taken was not actually any less traveled, and that the idea that it was less traveled was simply an invented excuse. The conclusion is the prediction that this invented excuse will be enshrined in memory as a grand principle.

Re-reading Frost's poem, though, I think it offers a further clue about why we make arbitrary decisions and invent justifications. In the poem there actually is one real difference between the two roads. The road the traveler doesn't take is the one down which they look for a long time, before taking the other one without looking at it for nearly so long. This gives me the idea that the first road looked disappointing. It didn't really seem to go anywhere interesting, at least not anytime soon. The second road looked so similar that the traveler was afraid that it would be just as unimpressive, if it were studied at length, leaving the traveler with a dismal choice between two equally uninspiring directions.

I think this is a subtle problem in game theory. If the traveler were somehow unable to study the second road carefully—a bear was approaching, or something—and had to choose a road after studying only the first one, the second road could be a rational choice, assuming that neither road could actually be dangerous. The first road was known to be unpromising, while the second road still had a chance of being interesting.

So now step back one level, assuming that no bear is actually coming, and consider the game theory of whether or not to study the second road. If you don't study it, then you get to make a good, rational choice between the roads (as just explained). If you study it, on the other hand, the best outcome is no better (you see something that makes the second road a rational choice) while the worst outcome is worse (you see nothing better about the second road so you're stuck with a difficult choice between equally unexciting options). And the quick glance that you have already given the second road makes the worse outcome seem more likely. So you get to make a choice about which you can feel good if you deliberately avoid studying the second road carefully, and just set off along it without further thought.

If you spin this to yourself as a principled choice of the less-traveled road, you even get to feel optimistic about your randomly chosen journey. On the other hand, though, the second road actually is less traveled in one sense. Your own surveillance has not traveled it by looking down it. So perhaps the poem really isn't just cynically mocking our pretences to principle, but earnestly advocating a principle of taking less-traveled roads, as a metaphor for not overthinking our choices.
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Re: Mormonism is a cult

Post by Morley »

Physics Guy wrote:
Thu May 25, 2023 6:38 am
I didn't see that post as self-indulgent, just a bit rhapsodic, which was somehow an ironically apt tone for the idea that we do things for no real reason but then cling to our justifications.

I have a hard time really buying that idea. I'm sure that sometimes we do things on random impulse, but I think that we also do sometimes act on deliberate plans and principles. More often than either, probably, we do things for definite reasons that just aren't the reasons we think about consciously. In all cases, even the deliberate plans, we are certainly prone to revising our reasons in memory, to make a better story out of the way things turned out.

Probably because of all Morley's birch trees, I found myself remember Frost's poem The Road Not Taken.
Robert Frost wrote:Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
A lot of people seem to remember this poem as being about "the road less traveled" but it's really about how we fall for our own justifications. The poem says clearly that the road taken was not actually any less traveled, and that the idea that it was less traveled was simply an invented excuse. The conclusion is the prediction that this invented excuse will be enshrined in memory as a grand principle.

Re-reading Frost's poem, though, I think it offers a further clue about why we make arbitrary decisions and invent justifications. In the poem there actually is one real difference between the two roads. The road the traveler doesn't take is the one down which they look for a long time, before taking the other one without looking at it for nearly so long. This gives me the idea that the first road looked disappointing. It didn't really seem to go anywhere interesting, at least not anytime soon. The second road looked so similar that the traveler was afraid that it would be just as unimpressive, if it were studied at length, leaving the traveler with a dismal choice between two equally uninspiring directions.

I think this is a subtle problem in game theory. If the traveler were somehow unable to study the second road carefully—a bear was approaching, or something—and had to choose a road after studying only the first one, the second road could be a rational choice, assuming that neither road could actually be dangerous. The first road was known to be unpromising, while the second road still had a chance of being interesting.

So now step back one level, assuming that no bear is actually coming, and consider the game theory of whether or not to study the second road. If you don't study it, then you get to make a good, rational choice between the roads (as just explained). If you study it, on the other hand, the best outcome is no better (you see something that makes the second road a rational choice) while the worst outcome is worse (you see nothing better about the second road so you're stuck with a difficult choice between equally unexciting options). And the quick glance that you have already given the second road makes the worse outcome seem more likely. So you get to make a choice about which you can feel good if you deliberately avoid studying the second road carefully, and just set off along it without further thought.

If you spin this to yourself as a principled choice of the less-traveled road, you even get to feel optimistic about your randomly chosen journey. On the other hand, though, the second road actually is less traveled in one sense. Your own surveillance has not traveled it by looking down it. So perhaps the poem really isn't just cynically mocking our pretences to principle, but earnestly advocating a principle of taking less-traveled roads, as a metaphor for not overthinking our choices.
PG, you keep returning to this Frost piece, and I love it. I'm very much on board with you on this one. No piece of poetry, music, literature, or art should have a meaning that's fixed forever in time.

Long before Roland Barthes rolled out his 1967 essay, The Death of the Author, the Russian literary critic, Mikhail Bakhtin, maintained that every piece of art lives a life that's separate from that of its creator. Each work deserves the right, and indeed is obliged, to be reinterpreted afresh by each new generation of eyes. His premise was basically that any original artistic intent should be disregarded and that each work deserves a life of its own that is wholly and completely separate from its creator--to be reevaluated by each succeeding generation and every disparate culture that comes in contact with it.



edit: (Okay, I'm admittedly simplifying Bakhtin, but let's go with it, anyway.)
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Re: Mormonism is a cult

Post by Physics Guy »

I just read this piece in The Guardian complaining about how people aren't letting authors die so much any more, but are deciding that artworks are bad because they don't approve of their creators' views or personal lives.

I'm not sure I buy the whole genius thing, though. Lots of writing is bad, but how much is really so amazing that I'm not going to care at all whether the writer was a jerk? Maybe there are a few gems so bright that I'd pluck them out of a sewer, but I'm afraid I'm cynical or jaded enough to reckon that most work by famous authors is really just ordinarily competent stuff that people consume out of name recognition. Tarnishing that name with ugly associations is quite enough to sink an author below the many potential peers who didn't previously have as much recognition luck, but can now get their chance.

Maybe some artists like to think that they're prophets, blessed with revelations that it is our moral duty to heed. I'm afraid I'm also Philistine enough to figure that artists are all just entertainers, busking for pennies. Once I've dropped my pennies into their hats, I'm entitled to interpret the works I've purchased however I wish—whether that's by ignoring the authors and all their intentions, or by deciding that I dislike the works because I dislike the authors. The author is dead or alive—on my call.
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Re: Mormonism is a cult

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Physics Guy wrote:
Tue May 30, 2023 9:48 pm
I just read this piece in The Guardian complaining about how people aren't letting authors die so much any more, but are deciding that artworks are bad because they don't approve of their creators' views or personal lives.

I'm not sure I buy the whole genius thing, though. Lots of writing is bad, but how much is really so amazing that I'm not going to care at all whether the writer was a jerk? Maybe there are a few gems so bright that I'd pluck them out of a sewer, but I'm afraid I'm cynical or jaded enough to reckon that most work by famous authors is really just ordinarily competent stuff that people consume out of name recognition. Tarnishing that name with ugly associations is quite enough to sink an author below the many potential peers who didn't previously have as much recognition luck, but can now get their chance.

Maybe some artists like to think that they're prophets, blessed with revelations that it is our moral duty to heed. I'm afraid I'm also Philistine enough to figure that artists are all just entertainers, busking for pennies. Once I've dropped my pennies into their hats, I'm entitled to interpret the works I've purchased however I wish—whether that's by ignoring the authors and all their intentions, or by deciding that I dislike the works because I dislike the authors. The author is dead or alive—on my call.
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Re: Mormonism is a cult

Post by Morley »

Physics Guy wrote:
Tue May 30, 2023 9:48 pm
I just read this piece in The Guardian complaining about how people aren't letting authors die so much any more, but are deciding that artworks are bad because they don't approve of their creators' views or personal lives.

I'm not sure I buy the whole genius thing, though. Lots of writing is bad, but how much is really so amazing that I'm not going to care at all whether the writer was a jerk? Maybe there are a few gems so bright that I'd pluck them out of a sewer, but I'm afraid I'm cynical or jaded enough to reckon that most work by famous authors is really just ordinarily competent stuff that people consume out of name recognition. Tarnishing that name with ugly associations is quite enough to sink an author below the many potential peers who didn't previously have as much recognition luck, but can now get their chance.

Maybe some artists like to think that they're prophets, blessed with revelations that it is our moral duty to heed. I'm afraid I'm also Philistine enough to figure that artists are all just entertainers, busking for pennies. Once I've dropped my pennies into their hats, I'm entitled to interpret the works I've purchased however I wish—whether that's by ignoring the authors and all their intentions, or by deciding that I dislike the works because I dislike the authors. The author is dead or alive—on my call.
What I read here is that you read this Guardian article and that you don't really care what the academic arguments are. Fair enough; I think I understand. You see art as something that's primarily transactional. Apologies for wasting both your time and mine.
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Re: Mormonism is a cult

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Morley wrote:
Wed May 31, 2023 1:47 pm
Physics Guy wrote:
Tue May 30, 2023 9:48 pm
I just read this piece in The Guardian complaining about how people aren't letting authors die so much any more, but are deciding that artworks are bad because they don't approve of their creators' views or personal lives.

I'm not sure I buy the whole genius thing, though. Lots of writing is bad, but how much is really so amazing that I'm not going to care at all whether the writer was a jerk? Maybe there are a few gems so bright that I'd pluck them out of a sewer, but I'm afraid I'm cynical or jaded enough to reckon that most work by famous authors is really just ordinarily competent stuff that people consume out of name recognition. Tarnishing that name with ugly associations is quite enough to sink an author below the many potential peers who didn't previously have as much recognition luck, but can now get their chance.

Maybe some artists like to think that they're prophets, blessed with revelations that it is our moral duty to heed. I'm afraid I'm also Philistine enough to figure that artists are all just entertainers, busking for pennies. Once I've dropped my pennies into their hats, I'm entitled to interpret the works I've purchased however I wish—whether that's by ignoring the authors and all their intentions, or by deciding that I dislike the works because I dislike the authors. The author is dead or alive—on my call.
What I read here is that you read this Guardian article and that you don't really care what the academic arguments are. Fair enough; I think I understand. You see art as something that's primarily transactional. Apologies for wasting both your time and mine.
PG will speak for himself, of course, Morley, but should each of us not see art (and many other things in our lives) in our own way, whatever that may be?

I find that a lot of "art" of various sorts does nothing for me. One notable exception is Rodin's sculptures. But I have never even bought an inexpensive reproduction of any of his works, and am unlikely ever to do so. I've visited the Rodin Gardens several times, and enjoyed each visit, but I simply do not care to pay for a reproduction of any of the pieces.

As far as wasting time is concerned, I may not read every word you write here, but what I do read I find interesting and often thought provoking.
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Re: Mormonism is a cult

Post by Morley »

malkie wrote:
Wed May 31, 2023 2:59 pm
PG will speak for himself, of course, Morley, but should each of us not see art (and many other things in our lives) in our own way, whatever that may be?
Absolutely. And one of my abiding arguments is that working artists, art historians, and academics often shoot themselves (and the entire discipline) in the foot by making art inaccessible. To paraphrase Walt Kelly, we are our own worst enemies. I sometimes worry that I personally do more harm than good in this regard.
malkie wrote:
Wed May 31, 2023 2:59 pm
I find that a lot of "art" of various sorts does nothing for me.
Me, too. I know of no one who doesn't share this sentiment.
malkie wrote:
Wed May 31, 2023 2:59 pm
One notable exception is Rodin's sculptures. But I have never even bought an inexpensive reproduction of any of his works, and am unlikely ever to do so. I've visited the Rodin Gardens several times, and enjoyed each visit, but I simply do not care to pay for a reproduction of any of the pieces.
Agree. Though I've come pretty close to forking out for this one of Balzac:

Image
malkie wrote:
Wed May 31, 2023 2:59 pm
As far as wasting time is concerned, I may not read every word you write here, but what I do read I find interesting and often thought provoking.
You're too kind. Too often, however, I think that I should practice a bit more of STFU on myself. As you may have noticed, it's an ongoing battle.
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