"All language is but a poor translation."
Franz Kafka
"Immature people falling in love destroy each other’s freedom, create a bondage, make a prison. Mature persons in love help each other to be free; they help each other to destroy all sorts of bondages. And when love flows with freedom there is beauty. When love flows with dependence there is ugliness.
A mature person does not fall in love, he or she rises in love. Only immature people fall; they stumble and fall down in love. Somehow they were managing and standing. Now they cannot manage and they cannot stand. They were always ready to fall on the ground and to creep. They don’t have the backbone, the spine; they don’t have the integrity to stand alone.
A mature person has the integrity to stand alone. And when a mature person gives love, he or she gives without any strings attached to it. When two mature persons are in love, one of the great paradoxes of life happens, one of the most beautiful phenomena: they are together and yet tremendously alone. They are together so much that they are almost one. Two mature persons in love help each other to become more free. There is no politics involved, no diplomacy, no effort to dominate. Only freedom and love."
Osho (via electrichoney)
(via fuckyeahexistentialism)
(via emilyh)
"Be peaceful, be courteous, obey the law, respect everyone; but if someone puts his hand on you, send him to the cemetery."
Malcolm X (via 5ft1)
(Source: significantquotes, via 5ft1)
gpoy
VQR » What Is the Business of Literature?
As technology disrupts the business model of traditional publishers, the industry must imagine new ways of capturing the value of a book.
holy shit
have not read an article written this well for a very long time
excellent
It all comes down to that urge to fascism — maybe a big word to use for art, but I think the right word — it comes down to that urge to fascism to know what’s best for people, to know that some people are of the best and some people are of the worst; the urge to separate the good from the bad and to praise oneself; to decide what covers on what books people ought to read, what songs people ought to be moved by, what art they ought to make, an urge that makes art into a set of laws that take away your freedom rather than a kind of activity that creates freedom or reveals it. It all comes down to the notion that, in the end, there is a social explanation for art, which is to say an explanation of what kind of art you should be ashamed of and what kind of art you should be proud of. It’s the reduction of the mystery of art, where it comes from, where it goes…
-Greil Marcus via
(Source: paleblck)
fobs have all the wisdom
Schulz: Why I Despise The Great Gatsby
It is the only book I have read five times despite failing to derive almost any pleasure at all from the experience.
best article i’ve read about gatsby and i’ve read like 20 articles on the fucking movie/book despite possessing no intention to reread/watch (after the film version of norwegian wood i just refuse to see the film versions of certain books. also, the best reviews seem to echo the same sentiment: “The movie is juvenile but could have been so much worse.”
on feminism, comedy, and daniel tosh
regarding the controversy of daniel tosh saying “wouldn’t it be funny if that woman got raped by like 5 guys right now” to a female heckler during one of his shows who called him out on his rape jokes…honestly, i originally took the side of tosh. maybe because i was immune to the vulgarity and thoughtlessness of his “joke” (as someone who thoroughly enjoys vulgarity and is thoroughly exposed to thoughtlessness in all its forms), so that the implications of that statement for the woman didn’t resonate with me. i sympathized more with tosh—hecklers are fucking annoying and disrespectful, and people who automatically assume that all rape jokes condone rape confuse the object and subject of humor, and therefore humor itself.
i began thinking about this again after reading this thing on whether violence against women is ever an appropriate topic for humor. yes, it is. the main point: “…the success or failure of a comedy bit depends on timing, context, and delivery. Tell a dirty joke badly and you’re a filthy minded loser. Tell it well and you are transgressing social norms to prove a point more effectively than any sober-minded discussion ever could.”
so, the article argues, Tosh’s joke was offensive not only because it reinforced the pervasiveness of rape culture, but because it did so by being so egregiously not funny. the problem with humor about controversial subject matter lies not in its choice of content but in the skillfulness of its execution.
which probably points to the core issue behind discrimination (of all sorts) and rape culture. do people want to undercut their own humanity by reducing entire segments of their population? how much guilt do you assign a child cultivated in a swamp of nazi propaganda, or a son who learns from his father that the only way to treat a woman is to deprive her of her will and autonomy through force? the crime lies in the thoughtlessness and the passivity that allows malignant values to thrive and to dominate in a society’s treatment of women. and when that passive thoughtlessness transforms into a willfulness, a deliberate intent to ignore and even uphold the consequences of the status quo, that is when the seeds of narcissism and evil and hatred take hold. (see peck’s people of lie).
on the other hand, i see the same kind of narrowmindedness with some feminists. in response to louis ck’s comments on the issue (he states: “stereotypically speaking, feminists have no sense of humor, and comedians can’t take criticism”. which is patently unfair to most feminists, but there are the select few who see everything in terms of black and white, who evaluate everything through the frame of feminism or racism or classism or social injustice…as sara benincasa writes: “I think he wasn’t specific enough. Regular mainline feminists aren’t the problem. Radical feminists are enemies of comedians, because radicalism of any kind has no sense of humor about itself. “
People who depend on other people are often in hiding from themselves. via
Love In The Time Of Tumblr
Before the onset of the Digital Revolution, how many discretely worded ads in the Personals section of the daily paper included some self-aggrandizing variant of âI enjoy long walks on the beachâ? …
omg i’m so ironic
i want to kill myself
