Post ASDmr7exlSTTXiACa8 by irratizomb@nnia.space
 (DIR) More posts by irratizomb@nnia.space
 (DIR) Post #ASDliYIhFG7Bbj68yO by comrade_lecter@nnia.space
       2023-02-01T02:07:29Z
       
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       @laura do you think top bestsellers of, say, 1950, looked more intelligent?
       
 (DIR) Post #ASDmGXjTraTxgwpmkK by irratizomb@nnia.space
       2023-02-01T02:13:38Z
       
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       @laura @comrade_lecter I don't think that looks any different really. To say otherwise is to think that some period of history was somehow more reasonable or rational then another, and that simply isn't true. People are people, and are the same as the Romans or Sumerians, with the same built in biases and intellectual faults and gifts.
       
 (DIR) Post #ASDmcejYVuANmCPhho by irratizomb@nnia.space
       2023-02-01T02:17:37Z
       
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       @laura @comrade_lecter I mean; I have a general argument for why that isn't the case. We don't see the intellectual engagement because of how much stuff we have to filter through. Keep in mind, the population of the world in 1950 was half of what it is today. And a straight doubling of all the numbers just means that there is strictly speaking just as much chaff to intellectual stuff to filter through as then. So we should actually expect to see more chaff, not less, because it is easier for chaff to profligate across communication channels then intellectual ideas. To say that the 50s were, somehow, more intellectual then now, is simply ignoring all the nonsense that was going on then.
       
 (DIR) Post #ASDmr7exlSTTXiACa8 by irratizomb@nnia.space
       2023-02-01T02:20:15Z
       
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       @laura @comrade_lecter Like, keep in mind, in most industrial places, people were getting their feet x-rayed in their shoes to see if their feet fit them by radiologically untrained sales technicians in the 50s, and smoking was everywhere. Like. Nonsense is always around, and we have a nasty habit of filtering that out for our favored intellectual pursuit. This happened with Cicero in the Roman Empire too.
       
 (DIR) Post #ASDnAmnd22iMdaappQ by aronarchy@nnia.space
       2023-02-01T02:23:48Z
       
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       @laura um isn't /I'm Glad My Mom Died/ a really good memoir pushing back on common narratives romanticizing child abuse, & anti-assimilationist?
       
 (DIR) Post #ASDrxi7fbm3G8gYHNQ by comrade_lecter@nnia.space
       2023-02-01T03:17:26Z
       
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       @laura if I don't know a single author here except for Hemingway, and didn't read this particular book of his, am I unintelligent?
       
 (DIR) Post #ASDsPnzPOCVcRW5HLk by irratizomb@nnia.space
       2023-02-01T03:22:33Z
       
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       @laura @comrade_lecter Here is the thing, having read at least 4 of those books, I can safely say, they actually are only intellectual because we think they are. People can gather knowledge from multiple sources, and knowledge by proxy is useful. What makes mass marketable romance worse then Joy Street or The Parasites or The Disenchanted?