Latest Posts by bernatk - Page 2

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Value v. Progress

Quite recently I wrote about how society is not getting better and just now I realized how easily that can be argued--not because it would be wrong but because of the pride society takes in itself.

There is a popular idea that is thought to be new, however it has always been the human approach to its communities: newer societies are better than the old ones (there are views, contrary to this but let us not discuss nostalgia now). It comes from the observation that new orders are set up because the old ones are mended or upgraded. But is it true?

It is, but only in the most technological sense. Society, as a means of something, as a very functional tool evolves into a better means, into something more functional. The structure enables us to do much more things and the new order, the new society can effectively react to many new issues. But it would be a folly to call the advancements good or bad.

Equality for women, the abolition of slavery and child labor, education--these are all huge steps forward but they do not necessarily fall into the category of good or bad because these things are progress and not values. Mind you that in retrospect it is always represented that old times were evil, when the oppressed suffered and died, when in fact the oppressed could sometimes be content and happy and feel satisfied--surely not because of the riches bestowed upon them but although their lives were hard it was not unavoidably a life they wished they never lived.

The difference between progress and value is not transparent because both are highly desirable. Still, they are not the same, although at times they may mix.

Progress is when something is being made. In sociological questions it may be assumed that progress is infinite, as there cannot be an ultimate society. It may be hard to accept, even so, almost impossible to accept because every step is very rewarding and needs to be served as an end in itself. So sometimes we are under the illusion that this or that change in the community will perfect the whole thing. Equality is the eventual goal and when that is achieved, we are done. However it just depicts how short-sighted we may be. Looking at history, putting ourselves in perspective, it seems like the greatest delusion to say that we would finish the work. For the people, who organized themselves into the first society, it must have seemed like agriculture is the greatest human feat, as it brings about a supply never before seen. And then the same happened with every new societal invention, its creators were so touched by their own grandeur that I imagine some of them almost cried. However, looking at those things today we just shrug and call it primitive. Even so, about agriculture we would say it is necessary for human existence but we would never take the extra step of saying agriculture is a value. Certainly it is in economic terms but it does not have a higher, abstract form. It is all about function.

In contrast with progress, value is an end. To be tender toward people, to save somebody, to sacrifice something, these can sometimes serve progress, but they are also satisfactory in themselves. And it also teaches a good lesson about the people of the past: everybody, throughout history, had the potential to live equally valuable lives or fill their lives with equal measures of value, as opposed to the social progress, which goes stage after stage.

So society does not convey an absolute value, however tempting to compliment ourselves with it. Societies can be advanced and complex and functional but goodness or badness remains in the life of the individual.

Optimism, Pessimism, Perspective and the Question of Society and Art

Recently I experienced an emotional antinomy in regards of how current technology and social media affect art.

My first observation was that it multiplies the art outlets and creates a vast stock of memorabilia about artists for the ages to come. How nice would it be to read Fitzgerald’s tumblr posts.

The second observation was that the increased outlets and the conservation of everything brings about a horrific picture about our age. As cheap horror flicks went down the sewers a hundred years ago and then disintegrated from human remembering, we cannot anticipate today’s trash to just disappear because it will haunt the internet forever.

But just today I woke up with a realization that alleviated my passionate opinions. I remembered that people read and watch and touch what they choose to. The internet does not change the people fundamentally, it is exactly the other way around. However the current society wishes to shape the world of art, it is not a danger on the bigger arc of things. The case has never been changed, not even slightly, dumb people have always been into dumb things and smart people have always been into smart things. Any alternation that has ever happened happened in the individual’s life. We, as persons, and not as society, move forward. It is because of each individual’s limited time on earth: we start from nil and run as fast as we can to get the farthest possible but it does not affect society, as it survives the individual. Unless people can somehow learn to give birth to children with a refined sense of society in their heads, society will not become smarter or dumber, just a mass of us.

#pier #river #water #sport #nature

You'll find another.' God! Banish the thought. Why don't you tell me that 'if the girl had been worth having she'd have waited for you'? No, sir, the girl really worth having won't wait for anybody.

F Scott Fitzgerald - This Side of Paradise

Fitzgerald and Class

I talked to a friend of mine about Hamlet yesterday. He hasn’t read it (not a literary man), so he asked me about its merits. I told him a little bit about this, a little bit about that and then I mentioned how the protagonist is considered to be the first modern man. I said this is probably one of the drama’s heaviest assets, as it’s remained relevant for centuries, to which my friend replied, “Yeah, classics sorta tend to stand the test of time. Suppose that’s why they’re, you know, classics.”

Coming from an art-novice it has the potential of being no more than a piece of conventional wisdom. Perhaps it really isn’t more than a common place but it made me wonder. I’ve had this thought for quite a while now that Fitzgerald was ahead of his time a great deal.

In his works This Side of Paradise and Beautiful and the Damned he wrote quite a few dialogues, where intellectual, authoritative characters contemplate thinking methods and philosophies but they all transcended the early twentieth century, as they almost always reached their climaxes in settling with critical theories.

Oh and he did it with such ease and elegance. Fitzgerald embodied what contemporary thinkers and artists want to become and he did it without ever coming off as artificial or fake. Fitzgerald’s works are classics because in them there are ideas, which were not borne by the time or the general opinion but of an unparalleled artistic mind.

EVERYONE NEEDS THIS ON THEIR BLOG.

A great social success is a pretty girl who plays her cards as carefully as if she were plain

F. Scott Fitzgerald (via hippyness)

Man has not a single right which is the product of anything but might. Not a single right is indestructible: a new might can at any time abolish it, hence, man possesses not a single permanent right.

Mark Twain

Spring-sickness and Nostalgia

It’s May 2015. When have the days passed me by? Last time I looked out the window it was two years ago and it was a today. Wasn’t 2013 the future just enough?

I have a friend, who likes to refer to the 1920′s, as a good age and I guess I feel it, too, but it’s always just an intellectual longing to something currently romanticized. At the same time there exists a predominant nostalgia in me, which is personal. I have lost a very good time, when I was healthier than now, fresher, more beautiful.

My spring is always about losing time. I have a favorite interval in my past, which I’d love to bring back--not because I wasted it away but because I couldn’t hold on to it. Spring is also like that: it’s romantic, it’s crisp and it gives me a warm feeling about life but at the same time, I can’t hold on to it.

I’m not talking about fear of change. The idea is changing for worse. Not the possibility but the actual thing. Summer’s a nice season but it is not as appealing to me as spring. It has to do with my taste, so it doesn’t necessarily apply to you but what does is that everything around you is constantly disappearing. And it’s an irrecoverable state.

Well, let it pass; April is over, April is over. There are all kinds of love in the world, but never the same love twice.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, “The Sensible Thing”  (via wordsnquotes)

Listen without interrupting. ( PROVERBS 18 )

Speak without accusing. ( JAMES 1:19 )

Give without sparing. ( PROVERBS 21:26 )

Pray without ceasing. ( COLOSSIANS 1:9 )

Answer without arguing. ( PROVERBS 17:1 )

Share without pretending. ( EPHESIANS 4:15 )

Enjoy without complaint. ( PHILIPPIANS 2:14 )

Trust without wavering. ( CORINTHIANS 13:7 )

Forgive without punishing. ( COLOSSIANS 3:13 )

Promise without forgetting. ( PROVERBS 13:12 )

Ten Ways To Love

Steam rising from the bed of the Waimakariri River in New Zealand, 1946. (George Silk—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images) #newzealand

Querying

I finished my novel a couple months back and have been on and off the polishing business. But this week (ending today) I have finally arrived at the point of sending it to literary agents. It is an exhilarating and unnerving moment at the same time because I’m young, inexperienced and most of all, a terrible self-selling man. I hold it to be a huge injustice against artists, looking for representation, that they have to be able to promote themselves, market themselves because all through history it’s been common sense that they are the most shy, introverted people. Well, I’m not the typical introverted person but I still don’t like talking about what I’ve written. I like writing it fine, even discussing it but not like a used car salesman, who’s trying to point out why a wreck is still something to be wanted. Anyway, it’s beside the point--it would be if I had a point. I guess I’m just trying to get some feelings out of my system. I genuinely love the period of writing and creating but now I feel like an alien, who’s destined to fail, though I hope I’m destined to succeed but my emotions are hard to control. But now, off to bed, off to sweet dreams.

inspiring, although I’d argue with Wilde because immoral books don’t always show the world its flaws but sometimes encourage and multiply them (this was a tough lesson for me as an aspiring writer)

“That is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you’re not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong.”  ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald

“I should like to make life beautiful–I mean everybody’s life. And then all this immense expense of art, that seems somehow to lie outside life and make it no better for the world, pains one. It spoils my enjoyment of anything when I am made to think that most people are shut out from it.“  ~ George Eliot

“Madame, all stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and he is no true-story teller who would keep that from you.”  ~ Ernest Hemingway

“The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.” ~ Oscar Wilde  

“Writing in English is the most ingenious torture ever devised for sins committed in previous lives. The English reading public explains the reason why.” ~ James Joyce

“A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.” ~ Franz Kafka

“Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality.” ~ Edgar Allan Poe

There’s no happy ending with me.

...you say that it’s a confession of weakness for a scientist not to write.

Fitzgerald - Tender is the Night

an important reminder

#southbound to Her, to the dentist and to sweet innocent dreams from the past

We all must try to be good.

Tender is the Night - F. Scott Fitzgerald

Winter lights on Her face

my head is hurting because i thought about my future for 0.3 seconds

Do not speak unless you can improve upon the silence.

Quaker saying (via austinkleon)

(actually it’s a communication principle based on Kant’s maxims but yeah, way to go)

this guy... still hilarious and still helps a lot when it comes down to survival

I was within and without. Simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.

The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald

The loneliest moment in someone’s life is when they are watching their whole world fall apart, and all they can do is stare blankly.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby  (via sunst0ne)