đźš‹
was just listening to sleep by godspeed you! black emperor and the monologue at the beginning really struck me with a lot i've been thinking about lately
about how america is a kind of corrosive force. its people (unless they're native americans who it actively seeks to eradicate) don't have any traditions, rituals, old knowledge passed down — their ancestors may have had these, but everything was ironed out and forgotten when they had to assimilate, not into a dominant culture but into an absence of one
but little pockets of uniquely american experiences and stories have arisen in so many places and i'm really interested in finding them. like that monologue. but with the internet homogenizing culture those bubbles dissolve, and gentrification displaces the people who built them etc. it all feels like a drive towards nothing culture.
but i guess what i want to ask is, what's your culture? have you held on to something that's yours? made something new? how can we make sure these things aren't lost? do you have any links to videos/stories/media that this makes you think of?
Mar 18, 2025
Related Recs
đź”™
We love looking backwards to try to get in touch with ourselves, our history, traditional ways of doing things. I think this is a noble pursuit but the pace of cycling through eras in the trend cycle for example has grown increasingly rapid to the point that it feels like we’re endlessly regurgitating everything all at once, without context.
Rediscovering the past can look like going back to pre-industrial ways of living which is a beautiful thing to strive toward. In a lot of ways, we’ve also abandoned a lot of traditional ways of doing things in favor of methods that are easier, faster, and simpler, not necessarily better.
On the other hand, one of the three essential elements to fascism identified by Jason Stanley is invoking a mythic past to manufacture nostalgia for a more traditional, patriarchal, and racially pure past, which is I think what we’re seeing with a lot of people who romanticize 1950s Americana as some kind of utopian traditional society.
Carl Sagan said:
“In general, human societies are not innovative. They are hierarchical and ritualistic. Suggestions for change are greeted with suspicion: they imply an unpleasant future variation in ritual and hierarchy: an exchange of one set of rituals for another, or perhaps for a less structured society with fewer rituals. And yet there are times when societies must change.”
“As a consequence of the enormous social and technological changes of the last few centuries, the world is not working well. We do not live in traditional and static societies. But our government, in resisting change, act as if we did. Unless we destroy ourselves utterly, the future belongs to those societies that, while not ignoring the reptilian and mammalian parts of our being, enable the characteristically human components of our nature to flourish; to those societies that encourage diversity rather than conformity; to those societies willing to invest resources in a variety of social, political, economic and cultural experiments, and prepared to sacrifice short-term advantage for long-term benefit; to those societies that treat new ideas as delicate, fragile and immensely valuable pathways to the future.”
So I think we need forward-thinking transformational change, though it may not be as comfortable as nostalgia…
Jan 15, 2025
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was deep diving and rabbit holing. specifically about the phenomenon we call “tall poppy syndrome” over here in australia. very very interesting.. something i’ve been thinking about for a long while.…the disassembly of supportive communities. the stunting of creative growth. gatekeeping :( have lots to think and talk about now.
Mar 25, 2024
they say "write what you know," but i often feel like i've been robbed of the ability to know a wide breadth of experiences because of the conditions that i grew up in. this video was the first time that i felt confident actually drawing from my personal experience for a piece.
reading "just kids" by patti smith (thanks again gothbubbe) was such a profoundly eye-opening experience, and it allowed me to actually articulate what annoyed me so much about my hometown and why for so long reading about cultural history felt like reading low fantasy. when i tell people i'm a youtuber (i try not to), this is the video i send their way
Feb 27, 2025
Top Recs from @FFH
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i love being alone. i know who i am when i'm alone and i love myself when i'm alone. when i'm around people it's easy to forget and i get lost and aimless.
how do you share parts of yourself without feeling overexposed? even just sharing creative work makes me feel like it's not mine any more and makes me doubt the part of myself that went into making it. but i also feel so stagnant when i'm not putting anything out into the world. where is the balance? how do you deal with this?
Feb 24, 2025
Mar 3, 2025