I’m not sure if I’m persuaded that we can say that “evolution has intentions”—isn’t evolution just a convenient word to describe a pattern? Evolution isn’t an entity, it isn’t a system, it doesn’t have an identity. It is a quality or pattern that we notice in certain systems and at this point we risk getting into some kind of Hegelian matroishka doll about weltgeist—something which I’m afraid to even bring up.
I also feel like I’m missing something that “genocide and factory farms are instrumentally useful” especially if you’re anthropamorphising evolution.
That being said, if the use of the Pathetic Fallacy allows you to make your beliefs pay rent—then I retract the above!
At any rate, thank you for posting this—because I realized something!
I think what this has made me realize is that I DO NOT have a conscious totalizing worldview or philosophy. But obviously I must have a worldview, I assume everyone does, all humans beings have a myriad of beliefs that lies on a continuum between a eclectic and byzantine (and very inconsistent) hodge-podge and the kind of totalizing and self-consistent system you describe.
Now, when I say I don’t have a “conscious totalizing worldview or philosophy”—I am saying I don’t have the self-awareness to know how self-consistent my beliefs are, and where on the continuum mine lies and this is partly because I couldn’t summarize it. As such I’m guessing I’m somewhere on the inconsistent, eclectic, hodge-podge side—but perhaps unconsciously my beliefs are actually really self-consistent and I’m more on the totalizing side, but I doubt it.
This realization is surprising to me, because one thing I am is an aesthete with a curatorial bent—or in laymans terms “I know what I like, and I know what I don’t like and avoid it like the plague”. An aesthete is someone who is especially sensitive to (or excessively concerned with) the beautiful, especially in art. And by curatorial, I mean, someone who wants those beautiful art things to be coordinated in a certain way, to exclude anything which isn’t beautiful rah rah rah. In this regard I have a very bright but narrow spotlight of self-awareness.
I don’t mean to say that I am some kind of superior tastemaker or have a better sense of what is beautiful than others, but I do believe I am especially attuned to my own, idiosyncratic and totally subjective sense of beauty or what I enjoy experiencing. In fact if you ask me “what do most people like?” I would throw up my hands. If pushed, I would mumble something about Taylor Swift, Jeff Koons, and Michael Kors—the kind of answer you give when you have no idea what you’re talking about.
To put it another way, I couldn’t possibly be an aesthetic elitist, because I don’t even know what most people like, so I couldn’t even have something to compare my own aesthetics against.
I don’t know if that counts as a totalizing worldview, since it is only a partial worldview—it is a hyperacuity about art, fashion, music, narrative, the written word, performance etc. that I “like”. Me, myself, and only I.
Regarding genocide and factory farms, my point was just that abusing others for your self-benefit is an adaptive behavior. That’s all. Nothing deeper than that.
By the way, I appreciate you trying to answer the crux of my question to the extent that makes sense. This is exactly the kind of thinking I was hoping to provoke.
As for being attuned with your own taste, it is an especially necessary component of a totalizing worldview for artists e.g. Leonardo, Miyazaki, Eiichiro Oda.
my point was just that abusing others for your self-benefit is an adaptive behavior.
Thank you for clarifying that, I got confused about to whom it benefited.
This is exactly the kind of thinking I was hoping to provoke.
That is excellent to know. And thank you for providing that provocation. It could become valuable self-knowledge for me.
And yes agreed it can be a very necessary component for artists, while I have no doubt there are a lot of artists who spend their artistic lives exploring and discovering that worldview which is unbeknownst to themselves (Picasso perhaps? Fernando Pessoa too? The Moonage Daydream documentary begins with Bowie saying that all artists are attempting to define their relationship with the world) one of the most repeated things that is said about writers, filmmakers, and other creatives is that the adored ones have a distinct “voice” or “point of view”.
This even works in the inverse, fashion designer Miuccia Prada one opined that “to hate something is the origin of my work”
I’m not sure if I’m persuaded that we can say that “evolution has intentions”—isn’t evolution just a convenient word to describe a pattern? Evolution isn’t an entity, it isn’t a system, it doesn’t have an identity. It is a quality or pattern that we notice in certain systems and at this point we risk getting into some kind of Hegelian matroishka doll about weltgeist—something which I’m afraid to even bring up.
I also feel like I’m missing something that “genocide and factory farms are instrumentally useful” especially if you’re anthropamorphising evolution.
That being said, if the use of the Pathetic Fallacy allows you to make your beliefs pay rent—then I retract the above!
At any rate, thank you for posting this—because I realized something!
I think what this has made me realize is that I DO NOT have a conscious totalizing worldview or philosophy. But obviously I must have a worldview, I assume everyone does, all humans beings have a myriad of beliefs that lies on a continuum between a eclectic and byzantine (and very inconsistent) hodge-podge and the kind of totalizing and self-consistent system you describe.
Now, when I say I don’t have a “conscious totalizing worldview or philosophy”—I am saying I don’t have the self-awareness to know how self-consistent my beliefs are, and where on the continuum mine lies and this is partly because I couldn’t summarize it. As such I’m guessing I’m somewhere on the inconsistent, eclectic, hodge-podge side—but perhaps unconsciously my beliefs are actually really self-consistent and I’m more on the totalizing side, but I doubt it.
This realization is surprising to me, because one thing I am is an aesthete with a curatorial bent—or in laymans terms “I know what I like, and I know what I don’t like and avoid it like the plague”. An aesthete is someone who is especially sensitive to (or excessively concerned with) the beautiful, especially in art. And by curatorial, I mean, someone who wants those beautiful art things to be coordinated in a certain way, to exclude anything which isn’t beautiful rah rah rah. In this regard I have a very bright but narrow spotlight of self-awareness.
I don’t mean to say that I am some kind of superior tastemaker or have a better sense of what is beautiful than others, but I do believe I am especially attuned to my own, idiosyncratic and totally subjective sense of beauty or what I enjoy experiencing. In fact if you ask me “what do most people like?” I would throw up my hands. If pushed, I would mumble something about Taylor Swift, Jeff Koons, and Michael Kors—the kind of answer you give when you have no idea what you’re talking about.
To put it another way, I couldn’t possibly be an aesthetic elitist, because I don’t even know what most people like, so I couldn’t even have something to compare my own aesthetics against.
I don’t know if that counts as a totalizing worldview, since it is only a partial worldview—it is a hyperacuity about art, fashion, music, narrative, the written word, performance etc. that I “like”. Me, myself, and only I.
Regarding genocide and factory farms, my point was just that abusing others for your self-benefit is an adaptive behavior. That’s all. Nothing deeper than that.
By the way, I appreciate you trying to answer the crux of my question to the extent that makes sense. This is exactly the kind of thinking I was hoping to provoke.
As for being attuned with your own taste, it is an especially necessary component of a totalizing worldview for artists e.g. Leonardo, Miyazaki, Eiichiro Oda.
Thank you for clarifying that, I got confused about to whom it benefited.
That is excellent to know. And thank you for providing that provocation. It could become valuable self-knowledge for me.
And yes agreed it can be a very necessary component for artists, while I have no doubt there are a lot of artists who spend their artistic lives exploring and discovering that worldview which is unbeknownst to themselves (Picasso perhaps? Fernando Pessoa too? The Moonage Daydream documentary begins with Bowie saying that all artists are attempting to define their relationship with the world) one of the most repeated things that is said about writers, filmmakers, and other creatives is that the adored ones have a distinct “voice” or “point of view”.
This even works in the inverse, fashion designer Miuccia Prada one opined that “to hate something is the origin of my work”
I like that quote.