That’s a lovely essay, I just read through it and it’s given me a lot to think about. Dreaming is something that has influenced my thinking quite a bit having spent a bit too much time in my own head growing up.
The distincition between entertainment and art here is particularly salient, although I would imagine the pressure on both would still be present. For entertainment it would be pure engagement farming, how much attention can be captured. Meanwhile art would be about the commodization of expanding the mind, pithy insights made for people to easily consume and “expand” their mind in a safe manner with minimal effort. Vacuous for an entirely different reason than entertainment, and I’d say perhaps more dangerous as a result.
”The only cure for bad fiction is good fiction”; but I might say that entertainment is neutral fiction, bad fiction can lead people’s minds down terrible paths.
Your writeup makes me think you may be interested in Erik Hoel’s essay Enter the Supersensorium.
That’s a lovely essay, I just read through it and it’s given me a lot to think about. Dreaming is something that has influenced my thinking quite a bit having spent a bit too much time in my own head growing up.
The distincition between entertainment and art here is particularly salient, although I would imagine the pressure on both would still be present. For entertainment it would be pure engagement farming, how much attention can be captured. Meanwhile art would be about the commodization of expanding the mind, pithy insights made for people to easily consume and “expand” their mind in a safe manner with minimal effort. Vacuous for an entirely different reason than entertainment, and I’d say perhaps more dangerous as a result.
”The only cure for bad fiction is good fiction”; but I might say that entertainment is neutral fiction, bad fiction can lead people’s minds down terrible paths.