Prof. Roger Scruton presents a provocative essay on the importance of beauty in the arts and in our lives.
In the 20th century, Scruton argues, art, architecture and music turned their backs on beauty, making a cult of ugliness and leading us into a spiritual desert.
Using the thoughts of philosophers from Plato to Kant, and by talking to artists Michael Craig-Martin and Alexander Stoddart, Scruton analyses where art went wrong and presents his own impassioned case for restoring beauty to its traditional position at the center of our civilization.
I've been writing poetry similarly to the way journals are discussed here. Your first post resonated with me -- I'd use poems to converse with my conflicted self; give the emotions a free hand to write things that may be painful to read later; get it out of my head -- and I'd encourage you to return to writing (or poetry!) because distance brings freshness.
"When the soul wanes
the form appears."
- Charles Bukowski
Reading your comment also made me think about how it's harder to write when things are good. Someone else commented about the possibility of writing your thoughts down having an affect on them; I think there's merit to that tied with the power of our thoughts and the reinforcement/feedback that you observed while feeling the opposite.
A reminder to myself, even; consistent writing is as hard as consistent anything else.
I was probing for the nature of your org because I hail from one of the largest student housing coops in Canada. It sounds nice at first, but the headaches/politics/etc are proportionately sized. We instituted terms of office for board execs some 6/7 years ago, though the internal power structures that people spoke about in this thread are very much a thing here.
It was a soberly disappointing read, if I'm being honest. When you say, "if we as students want something to happen, we make it happen - if we don't, it doesn't", I wish I could jam that into the minds of our members. That said, there was a post on HN about loneliness the other day that had over 1000 comments, and I believe that's exacerbated in our metropolitan city; an existential threat to the cooperative spirit. We're working on it, will continue.
Does your student org suffer from student churn? As in, it's active from Sept-Apr, and 'dead' between May-Aug? Is the idea of student buy-in/engagement something your org has to contend with with?
Your comment is grey and I don't think it should be.
People care so much about being "a good person" while also acknowledging corporate psychopathy and other "bad guys win" scenarios that are so normal to the human existence.
Meanwhile, if you ask an educator about their situation, I'm not sure they'd tick the box. The educators I know are fulfilled by their work, not their work environments.
I think this rivalry should continue; playfully acknowledge what everyone observes to be true.
Sir Tim said cool urls never die; GitLab, your turn! https://hub.gitlab.com -- make it happen!
Edit: Your use-case; me. I migrated to your platform and, as an autodidact, would greatly appreciate a native resource of similar (IMproved) quality. Thank you.
> What changed is the government is now acting as a cartel for a very small number of companies who are allowed to sell legally.
What's unfortunate in theory, and funny in practice, is that "cannabis clinics" are essentially public on-boarding centres for this entrapment. The people working there aren't any more knowledgeable than a google search and take advantage of people naively thinking this "Medical Marijuana License" is anything other than a permit to get scammed by licensed producers (or cartel members, in this case). A part of the consultation is being taught how to buy from these LPs online as if one has never used amazon.com -- pretty funny to experience while playing dumb.
> I am starting to truly believe that we are slowly poisoning ourselves without realising it and then blaming the wrong culprits for it.
I have a background in hospitality, so I used to think about this all the time. I fully agree with you because I have no idea where all these allergies came from. It doesn't help that the problem is exacerbated by restaurants bending over backwards to fill chairs -- many of those allergies are just diets with parlance that cooks easily understand.
The fear for me is that we, as the affected mass, can be cognisant but remain powerless. We still go to the same brick and mortars and that's our only participation in the process. The changes that happen to our food are already delivered by a fully functioning system, at a scale unlikely to make swift changes, before we get any or notice it's bad. Only when we die are changes made, like seatbelts, but tasty.
I watched Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams last night (Crazy Diamond). "What would happen to our local economy if everyone grew their own food?" <-- Chills, man. Won't be long.
I think HBO just made it way easier. Once I heard the series would be a show, I knew we'd never get any more books because the lull between A Feast for Crows and Dance with Dragons was something like 5 years. At that rate, he'd need another 15 to be done while gallivanting on other fantasy titles/collections/anthologies/wtf and endorsing everything under the sun once the first three books gave him clout.
I'm definitely a little bitter about it, but I've accepted it. Parris needs the royalties.
/salt: Somehow, within that time, Robin Hobb managed to spit out a trilogy seemingly once a quarter. Thankfully, Steven Erikson came along and wrote The Malazan Book of the Fallen, which, if you like books, honestly puts ASoIaF to shame on numerous levels (and has the benefit of being done).