“The Gothic speaks to this sense that we are all entangled in a messy middle, living in weird borderless biomes whose complex networks we can barely fathom.”

“Pointed arches stretch up towards God, flooding the interior with divine light and inspiring solemn awe, what one commentator called ‘an artificial infinite’.” - Roger Luckhurst

Gothic Architecture

“Monsters are cultural bodies that mark a ‘crisis of category’.” - <a href="https://www.jeffreyjeromecohen.com">Jeffery Jerome Cohen</a>

Monsters

“Humans exist in complex, interdependent, cross-species assemblages that drives a more subtle kind of monster.” - Roger Luckhurst

Cross-species Assemblages

“The octopus is likely to be ‘the closest we will come to meeting an intelligent alien’.” - Peter Godfrey-Smith, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Other-Minds-Octopus-Evolution-Intelligent-ebook/dp/B01LXKA6FO/ref=nodl_?dplnkId=e5387ccf-f186-446b-bb23-70914bd82dc1">The Octopus and the Evolution of Intelligent Life (2016)</a>

Tentacles

“The biological world of fungi is highly ordered, marked by open-ended cooperative assemblages, ecologies whose complexities scientists are still trying to grasp.” - Roger Luckhurst

Fungi

“Gothic” by Roger Luckhurst is a plentiful book full of Gothic information. Ranging from categories such as architecture, design, film and television.

A richly illustrated history of the Gothic across a wide range of media, including architecture, literature, and film The word Gothic conjures associations with the dark and melancholy, the weird and feared, and haunted places and people. In Gothic, Roger Luckhurst offers readers an unprecedented look at the ways this uncanny style has manifested itself through architecture, literature, film, art, video games, and more. From the works of Victor Hugo and E. T. A. Hoffman to Southern Gothic, ancient folklore, and classic horror movies, Roger Luckhurst explores how an aesthetic that began in the margins has been reinvented through the centuries to become part of mainstream global culture. Organizing his wide-ranging history by theme, Luckhurst begins with Gothic architecture and form, including such elements as the arch, the house, and ruins. He considers how the Gothic is depicted in rural and urban settings, as well as in the wilderness and borderlands. And he delves into Gothic traditions and settings around the world, from the sublime Alps and Australian outback to the Arctic wasteland, from the dark folkloric realm of the forest to the postindustrial landscapes of abandoned hospitals and asylums, and then beyond the bounds of the planet to unknowable cosmic horror. Luckhurst investigates the monsters that mirror ourselves and society, and demonstrates that as the Gothic has traveled across the globe and through time, it has morphed according to the shape of our changing fears and anxieties. Filled with a wealth of color illustrations, Gothic will satisfy anyone yearning to lift the veil on our fascination with the eerie, morbid, and supernatural.

books

Books

product

Product & Design

artsandculture

Society, Arts & Culture

A richly illustrated history of the Gothic across a wide range of media, including architecture, literature, and film The word Gothic conjures associations with the dark and melancholy, the weird and feared, and haunted places and people. In Gothic, Roger Luckhurst offers readers an unprecedented look at the ways this uncanny style has manifested itself through architecture, literature, film, art, video games, and more. From the works of Victor Hugo and E. T. A. Hoffmann to Southern Gothic, ancient folklore, and classic horror movies, Luckhurst explores how an aesthetic that began in the margins has been reinvented through the centuries to become part of mainstream global culture. Organizing his wide-ranging history by theme, Luckhurst begins with Gothic architecture and form, including such elements as the arch, the house, and ruins. He considers how the Gothic is depicted in rural and urban settings, as well as in the wilderness and borderlands. And he delves into Gothic traditions and settings around the world, from the sublime Alps and Australian outback to the Arctic wasteland, from the dark folkloric realm of the forest to the postindustrial landscapes of abandoned hospitals and asylums, and then beyond the bounds of the planet to unknowable cosmic horror. Luckhurst investigates the monsters that mirror ourselves and society, and demonstrates that as the Gothic has traveled across the globe and through time, it has morphed according to the shape of our changing fears and anxieties. Filled with a wealth of color illustrations, Gothic will enthrall anyone yearning to lift the veil on our fascination with the eerie, morbid, and supernatural.

Roger Luckhurst

Gothic

Social scientists are finding users are not just editing settings on social media. Users, especially women, are editing their bodies and faces. And this practice has led to a new standard of beauty.Problematically, social scientists say this standard of beauty is nearly impossible to obtain. Some people have turned to cosmetic surgery to get the results they want. Others are grappling with anxiety or eating disorders. Researchers say it’s a growing issue impacting young people worldwide.

Fake Famous

"Slim thick" is the new body ideal. Celebrities Kim Kardashian and Nikki Minaj represent this standard — slender face and arms, large breasts, flat stomach, ample hips and a "beach-ball" butt.Only a small percentage of women’s bodies are going to be able to achieve this with the targeted workouts. In the absence of being able to achieve this, women all over the world are getting plastic surgery.

Women's 2022 Body Shape Goal

Social media now provides users with a steady stream of images that are edited to fit with the new slim thick ideal. We’re constantly staring at our phones and looking at these images and it creates a normalizing effect. It’s constant comparison, mostly of the bad kind.There are multiple types of comparison. <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352250X20300464">Upward comparison</a> occurs when a person looks at images of a person they perceive as being better than themselves. Not surprisingly, studies have found that engaging in upward comparison has a negative impact on a person’s well-being.

Hyper Comparison

Another type of comparison occurs when the social media user compares their online, edited self to their real-life body. Online editing software has evolved beyond removing red-eye or whitening teeth. Users can now make their bodies look thinner, plump lips, or remove acne.The editing tools are limitless and allow you to morph your features in any way you want.Social media has changed both expectations for the ideal body type and which facial features are now considered ideal. This new ideal includes slanted, cat-like eyes, slender noses, high cheekbones and full lips.

Our Real Self Vs The Online Image

The face we show online is the pulling of features for the exoticization of beauty.Social media users can use editing tools to achieve the look in pictures. The person might be satisfied with the photo, but that sense of self-contentedness doesn’t continue when they look in the mirror.

That Online Face You Create Does Not Exist In Real Life

Studies are seeing a connection between the editing tools and plastic surgery, a trend practitioners call “<a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8823563/">Snapchat dysmorphia.”</a> One study of plastic surgery patients found social media users who edit their photos were <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8485851/">more likely to seek cosmetic enhancement</a>. Similarly, <a href="https://academic.oup.com/asj/article/41/3/NP101/5802785?login=true">in a 2020 study</a> in Aesthetic Surgery Journal, one-third of surveyed cosmetic enhancement patients said they used editing tools. Half of the respondents said social media influenced their decision to seek cosmetic surgery or fillers.

Snapchat Dysmorphia

Beauty standards have always been set out of reach of the average person.The problem is that editing software now gives people a new vision of themselves at a time when beauty standards have morphed into an impossible idea.

Impossible Beauty Standards

Studies are seeing connections between social media editing tools and plastic surgery.  

Understand yourself and those around you.

psychology

Psychology

marketingandsales

Marketing & Sales

How Is Social Media Morphing Our Self-Image?

Fame is deeply attractive because it seems to offer very significant benefits. The fantasies go like this: when you are famous, wherever you go, your good reputation will precede you. People will think well of you, because your merits have been impressively explained in advance. You will get warm smiles from admiring strangers. You won’t need to make your own case laboriously on each occasion.

The Appeal Of Fame

<ul><li>When you are famous, you will be safe from rejection. You won’t have to win over every new person.</li><li>Fame will mean other people will be flattered and delighted even if you are only slightly interested in them. They will be amazed to see you in the flesh.</li><li>When you’re not pleased with something, it will become a big problem for others.</li><li>If you say your hotel room isn’t up to scratch, the management will panic.</li><li>Your complaints will be taken very seriously.</li><li>Your happiness will become the focus of everyone’s efforts.</li><li>You will make or break other people’s reputations. You’ll be the boss.</li></ul>

When You Are Famous...

The desire for fame has its roots in the experience of neglect, in injury. No one would want to be famous who hadn’t also, somewhere in the past, been made to feel extremely insignificant. We sense the need for a great deal of admiring attention when we have been painfully exposed to earlier deprivation. Perhaps one’s parents were hard to impress. They never noticed one much, they were so busy with other things, focusing on other famous people, unable to have or express kind feelings, or just working too hard.

The Desire Of Fame

When one has an insignificant or even traumatic childhood, one dreams that some day the world will pay attention. We also believe then when we’re finally famous, our parents will have to admire us too (which throws up an insight into one of the great signs of good parenting: that your child has no desire to be famous).

A Need From Childhood

But even if our parents were warm and full of praise, there might still be a problem. It might be that it was the buffeting and indifference of the wider world (starting with the schoolyard) that was intolerable after all the early years of adulation at home. One might have emerged from familial warmth and been mortally hurt that strangers were not as kind and understanding as one had come to expect. The crushing experience of humiliation might even have been vicarious: one’s mother being rudely dismissed by a waiter; one’s father standing awkwardly alone.

The World Not Being Kind To Us

What is common to all dreams of fame: Being known to strangers emerges as a solution to a hurt. It presents itself as the answer to a deep need to be appreciated and treated decently by other people.And yet fame cannot accomplish what is asked of it. It does have advantages, which are evident. But it also introduces a new set of very serious disadvantages, which the modern world refuses to view as structural rather than incidental.

Fame Is Not The Answer

Every new famous person who disintegrates breaks down in public or loses their mind is judged in isolation, rather than being interpreted as a victim of an inevitable pattern within the pathology of fame.The world isn’t generally kind to the famous for very long. The reason is basic: the success of any one person involves humiliation for lots of others. The celebrity of a few people will always contrast painfully with the obscurity of the many.

Being Famous Upsets People

When we imagine fame, we forget that it is inextricably connected to being too visible in the eyes of some, to bugging them unduly, to coming to be seen as the plausible cause of their humiliation: a symbol of how the world has treated them unfairly.So soon enough, the world will start to go through the rubbish bags of the famous, it will comment negatively on their appearance, it will pour over their setbacks, it will judge their relationships, it will mock their new movies.

The Dark Side Of Fame

Fame makes people more, not less, vulnerable, because it throws them open to unlimited judgement. Everyone is wounded by a cruel assessment of their character or merit. But the famous have an added challenge in store. The assessments will come in from legions of people who would never dare to say to their faces what they can now express from the safety of the newspaper office or screen. We know from our own lives that a nasty remark can take a day or two to process.

Making People Even More Vulnerable

Social media hasn’t helped. It’s made it far easier than before to be famous. And therefore, by necessity, far easier to be hated. A minor celebrity can now regularly face all the vitriol previously accorded only to Hollywood stars.Paradoxically, the famous are the very last people on earth to be well equipped to deal with what they’re going through. After all, they only became famous because they were wounded because they had thin skin; because they were in some respects a bit ill. And now far from compensating them adequately for their disease, fame aggravates it exponentially.

And Then Comes Social Media

Every worst fear about oneself (that one is stupid, ugly, not worthy of existence) will daily be actively confirmed by strangers. One will be exposed to the fact that people one has never met, about whom one would have only goodwill, actively loathe one. One will learn that detestation of one’s personality is – in some quarters – a badge of honour. Sometimes the attacks will be horribly insightful. At other times, they’ll make no sense to anyone who really knows one. But the criticisms will lodge in people’s minds nevertheless – and no lawyer, court case or magician can ever delete them.

The Hate Speech Of Strangers Seeps Inside The Mind

Fame really just means you get noticed a great deal – not that you get understood, appreciated or loved.At an individual level, the only mature strategy is to give up on fame. The aim that lay behind the desire for fame remains important. One does still want to be appreciated and understood. But the wise person accepts that celebrity does not actually provide these things. Appreciation and understanding are only available through individuals one knows and cares about, not via groups of a thousand or a million strangers.

Fame Means You Get Noticed, That's All

For those who are already famous, the only way to stay sane is to stop listening to what the wider world is saying. This applies to the good things as much as to the bad. It is best not to know. The wise person knows that their products need attention. But they make a clear distinction between the purely practical needs of marketing and advocacy and the intimate desire to be liked and treated with justice and kindness by people they don’t know.

Tip For The Already Famous

At a collective, political level we should pay great attention to the fact that, today, so many people (particularly young ones) want to be famous – and even see fame as a necessary condition for a successful life. Rather than dismiss this wish, we should grasp its underlying worrying meaning: they want to be famous because they are not being respected because citizens have forgotten how to accord one another the degree of civility, appreciation and decency that everyone craves and deserves. The desire for fame is a sign that ordinary life has ceased to be good enough.

The Bottom Line

Everything we thought about being famous is wrong.

Read our article - On the Desire for Fame. The School Of Life has a huge collection of interesting articles, read now.

communication

Communication

On the Desire for Fame

Have you ever watched a movie or TV show and noticed that a line of dialogue or a <a href="https://masterclass.com/articles/how-to-write-the-first-plot-point-of-your-story">plot point</a> seemed familiar? Maybe a character says, "let’s get the hell out of dodge," or the film's hero is a prophesied "chosen one." These are both examples of clichés. If you're a beginner <a href="https://masterclass.com/articles/tips-for-becoming-a-screenwriter">screenwriter</a> wondering how to avoid using clichés in your own writing, there’s no better guide than <a href="https://www.masterclass.com/classes/shonda-rhimes-teaches-writing-for-television">acclaimed television writer and producer Shonda Rhimes</a>.

Clichés Everywhere

A cliché is an expression that was once innovative but has lost its novelty due to overuse. Take the phrase “as red as a rose” for example—it is a universal descriptor for the colour red that is now commonplace and unoriginal. Other examples of clichés include demarcations of time, such as “in the nick of time” and “at the speed of light.” Clichés also include expressions about emotions, such as “head over heels” to describe love, or the phrase “every cloud has a silver lining” to express hope in difficult situations.

Defining A Cliché

Any line of dialogue that you've ever heard anybody say before is already a cliché, so don't write it down.When there are seemingly limitless ways to express a sentiment, why wouldn't you create an original sentence? If you're struggling to come up with fresh words, use a thesaurus—just be careful to not misuse an unfamiliar word.

6 Tips for Avoiding Clichés in Writing: If Your Dialogue Sounds Familiar, Write Something New

Your goal isn't to copy somebody that you admire, your goal is to be the thing that other people would admire themselves. Instead of borrowing from someone else's writing, make your own writing completely original. Make it your goal to write something so innovative that it becomes a new cliché.

Strive to Create a New Cliché

There's almost nothing new under the sun. But there are different interpretations and different ways of thinking of things that are new." It's impossible to be one hundred percent unique all the time, so try putting a new twist on a familiar concept. Use a familiar idea as inspiration, and approach it from a new point of view. A great way to <a href="https://www.masterclass.com/articles/tips-for-writing-a-killer-plot-twist">create an effective plot twist</a> is to start with a clichéd premise, then subvert the audience’s expectations by going in a different direction.

Put A Spin On It

You want your dialogue to have a real quality that doesn't feel like 'TV talk.' Authentic dialogue should sound the way people actually talk. In real life, people don't talk in complete sentences, they use the wrong words, they talk over each other, and nobody says all the perfect things at the perfect times.

Write Realistic Dialogue

You can think of the dialogue you write as being the conversations that real people have—the kind you would overhear someone having if you were hiding in a closet in their house." One of the best ways to get a feel for how people actually talk is to pay attention to how people talk in the real world.

Eavesdrop on Real Conversations for Inspiration

Get somebody else to read your dialogue out loud for you, because then you can really hear how it sounds. ” You might not realize you used a cliché until you hear it spoken out loud. When you finish your first draft, either read your dialogue aloud yourself or ask someone else to read it aloud for you. If you notice any overused phrases, go back and rewrite them in a fresh way.

Listen to Your Dialogue Read Aloud

When working on your own screenplays, avoid these common clichés:“The wrong side of the bed.”“Think outside the box.”“Loose canon.”“Can of worms.”“What goes around comes around.”“Dead as a doornail.”“Plenty of fish in the sea.”“Ignorance is bliss.”“Like a kid in a candy store.”“You can’t judge a book by its cover.”“Take the tiger by the tail.”“Every rose has its thorn.”“Good things come to those who wait.”“In the nick of time.”"If only walls could talk.”“The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”“The pot calling the kettle black.”“The grass is always greener on the other side.”

Common Clichés to Avoid in Your Writing

Write stuff people haven't heard or seen already.

writing

Reading & Writing

Avoid Writing Clichés

Trees have enchantment and self-clarification to artists. “The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing which stands in the way,” wrote William Blake.

The artist and trees

In a 1924 lecture about the creative process, German artist Paul Klee has insightfully intersected the canon of sylvan metaphors with the canon of theories of creativity.
"The artist has studied this world of variety and has, we may suppose, unobtrusively found his way in it. His sense of direction has brought order into the passing stream of image and experience. This sense of direction in nature and life, this branching and spreading array, I shall compare with the root of the tree.
From the root the sap flows to the artist, flows through him, flows to his eye."

Paul Klee likens the artist to a tree

Klee cautions that It is rather the work of transmutation for which the artist is both the agent and the vessel: "Nobody would affirm that the tree grows its crown in the image of its root. Between above and below can be no mirrored reflection. It is obvious that different functions expanding in different elements must produce divergences.[...] And yet, standing at his appointed place, the trunk of the tree, he does nothing other than gather and pass on what comes to him from the depths. He neither serves nor rules — he transmits."

The work of art is not a direct translation of the subconscious

creativity

Creativity

How an Artist is Like a Tree: Paul Klee on Creativity

How was Twitter's first quarter? The company will still report Q1 earnings on Thursday, but in light of the deal, there will not be a conference call for analysts.

How was Twitter's First Quarter?

"What does Musk think Twitter is for?" That's what Casey Newton asked in his Platformer newsletter Monday night. "All we have to go on is a series of cryptic tweets and statements that are short enough to allow for wide interpretation."

What Does Musk Think Twitter is For?

So: When will Musk elaborate on his plans? Will he do it through Twitter or through methods that allow for more detail and nuance?

So: When will Musk elaborate on his plans?

Will Twitter employees want to work for Musk? Some reacted to Musk's takeover "with shock and dismay," The Washington Post's Elizabeth Dwoskin reported. "Some tweeted tear-filled emoji and memes of people having emotional breakdowns, while others told The Post they were too in shock to speak."

Will Twitter Employees Want to Work for Musk?

What will happen to Twitter's current leadership team? At an all-hands meeting on Monday, Agrawal said he was "optimistic" about the future of the company, saying Musk "wants Twitter to be a powerful, positive force in the world, just like all of us." But it is hard to imagine Agrawal staying put.

What will happen to Twitter's current leadership team? 

What will Jack Dorsey's role be? On Monday night he tweeted that “Elon's goal of creating a platform that is 'maximally trusted and broadly inclusive' is the right one. This is also [Agrawal's] goal, and why I chose him. Thank you both for getting the company out of an impossible situation. This is the right path... I believe it with all my heart.”

What Wil Jack Dorsey's Role be?

What about Twitter's HQ? The SF Chronicle's Roland Li flagged the potential ramifications for the city since Musk has expressed “scepticism around remote work.”

What About Twitter's HQ?

How contentious will Musk v. Jeff Bezos become? As The Verge's Richard Lawler noted, "Jeff Bezos is already testing Elon Musk's commitment to free speech by trolling" Musk with some Monday night tweets about China...

How contentious will Musk v. Jeff Bezos become?

I am a long-time user of Twitter, and Musk's takeover alarms me. As a Queer Anarchist, I am already threatened and abused on the site on a daily basis! 

Three of the most honest words in journalism are "I don't know." The words are mighty useful right now, as the entire tech and media universe digests the ever-unpredictable Elon Musk's uncanny deal to take Twitter private.

technologyandthefuture

Technology & The Future

leadershipandmanagement

Leadership & Management

Eight questions about Twitter's future now that Elon Musk is taking over

We all know that human brain is a very mysterious thing that we're yet to be discover fully.There are things beyond the human intelligence & some psychologists who are deeply engraved in depths of mind are only able to give them words & faces.

Mysterious brain

As we dig deeper inside brain, there are layers Of brain that uncover . Psychologists divide them in 3 layers- <ul><li>Conscious - What we see, feel,and react to situations,etc functions of which we are AWARE of.</li><li>Subconscious - Actions we do, not knowingly,without thinking like-Calling out 'mom' whenever comes home,grooving on songs,etc .</li><li>Unconscious - Processes in the mind which occur automatically (eg-during sleep) and are not available to introspection and include thought processes, memories, interests, and motivations.</li></ul>

Depths Of Brain. 

People do things either subconsciously or consciously ,unconscious pattern is really deep &not achievable easily.<ul><li>When things we do subconsciously comes into conscious brain,there starts the problem.</li><li>Means, you know every reason of 'Why am I doing this work?'</li><li>Because-Things get really confusing as brain start overthinking(start calculating every possibility, pros, cons, effect,affect,why...) i.e.QUESTIONING related useless things ,sometimes directing brain away from the present task.</li></ul>

Why Depths Are Scary? 

People do some actions subconsciously(without giving much thought) & when they start thinking of reason (overthinking) , they get distracted from giving 100% of their brain power to the present task which results in 'CLUTTERED' work,spending more time than usual,ultimately not satisfactory output.ALSO, due to this the person cannot achieve "STATE OF FLOW".

Conclusion

KEEP IT SIMPLE

What Can We Do? 

Sometimes, people think more & not able to start or end a work due to overthinking &thinking deeply. 

scienceandnature

Science & Nature

Scary depths of BRAIN

The torrent of accelerated time without narrative is disorienting our society and fragmenting community, says philosopher Byung-Chul Han. Art can help put the pieces back together.Byung-Chul Han is a South Korea-born German philosopher and cultural theorist whose recent books include “The Burnout Society” and “The Disappearance of Rituals.” He recently spoke to Nathan Gardels, Noema’s editor-in-chief.

The Torrent of Time

Nathan Gardels: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe once commented that: “When eras are on the decline, all tendencies are subjective; but, on the other hand, when matters are ripening for a new epoch, all tendencies are objective. Each worthy effort turns its force from the inward to the outward world.” By that definition, ours is an era of decline that has turned from the outward to the inward obsession with identity and “authenticity,” both personal and tribal, fueled by digital connectivity.

Digital Connectivity

Paradoxically, social media in this sense is anti-social, leading to the disintegration of community through a kind of connected isolation. What is the dynamic and what are the mechanisms behind what you call “the crisis of community?” What are the consequences in how we feel and live in our daily lives?

The Crisi of Community

Byung-Chul Han: The inwardly turned, narcissistic ego with purely subjective access to the world is not the cause of social disintegration but the result of a fateful process at the objective level. Everything that binds and connects is disappearing. There are hardly any shared values or symbols, no common narratives that unite people. Truth, the provider of meaning and orientation, is also a narrative. We are very well informed, yet somehow we cannot orient ourselves. The informatization of reality leads to its atomization — separated spheres of what is thought to be true.

Atomization

But truth, unlike information, has a centripetal force that holds society together. Information, on the other hand, is centrifugal, with very destructive effects on social cohesion. If we want to comprehend what kind of society we are living in, we need to understand the nature of information. Bits of information provide neither meaning nor orientation. They do not congeal into a narrative. They are purely additive. From a certain point onwards, they no longer inform — they deform. They can even darken the world. This puts them in opposition to truth.

A Centripetal Force

Truth illuminates the world, while information lives off the attraction of surprise, pulling us into a permanent frenzy of fleeting moments. We greet information with a fundamental suspicion: Things might be otherwise. Contingency is a trait of information, and for this reason fake news is a necessary element of the informational order. So fake news is just another piece of information, and before any process of verification can begin, it has already done its work. It rushes past truth, and truth cannot catch up. Fake news is truth-proof.

Fake News

“Bits of information provide neither meaning nor orientation. They do not congeal into a narrative.”Information goes along with fundamental suspicion. The more we are confronted with information, the more our suspicion grows. Information is Janus-faced, produces certainty and uncertainty. A fundamental structural ambivalence is inherent in an information society. Truth, by contrast, reduces contingency. We cannot build a stable community or stable democracy on a mass of contingencies. Democracy requires binding values and ideals, and shared convictions. Today, democracy gives way to infocracy.

Information is Janus-faced

As you suggest in your question, another reason for the crisis of community, which is a crisis of democracy, is digitalization. Digital communication redirects the flows of communication. Information is spread without forming a public sphere. It is produced in private spaces and distributed to private spaces. The web does not create a public. This has highly deleterious consequences for the democratic process. Social media intensify this kind of communication without community. You cannot forge a public sphere out of influencers and followers.

Communication Without Community

Digital communities have the form of commodities; ultimately, they are commodities.“Today, we no longer have any narratives that provide meaning and orientation for our lives. Narratives crumble and decay into information.”Of course, there was information in the past, too. But it did not determine society to such a degree as today. In antiquity, mythical narratives determined people’s lives and behavior. The Middle Ages were, for many, determined by the Christian narrative. But information was embedded in narration: An outbreak of the plague was not pure, simple information.

Communities like Commodities

It was integrated into the Christian narrative of sin.  Today, by contrast, we no longer have any narratives that provide meaning and orientation for our lives. Narratives crumble and decay into information. With some exaggeration, we might say that there is nothing butinformation without any hermeneutic horizon for interpretation, without any method of explanation.Pieces of information do not coalesce into knowledge or truth, which are forms of narration. The narrative vacuum in an information society makes people feel discontent, especially in times of crisis, such as the pandemic.

The Narrative of Sin

People invent narratives to explain a tsunami of disorienting figures and data. Often these narratives are called conspiracy theories, but they cannot simply be reduced to collective narcissism. They readily explain the world. On the web, spaces open to make experiences of identity and collectivity possible again. The web, thus, is tribalized — predominantly among right-wing political groups where there is a very strong need for identity. In these circles, conspiracy theories are taken up as offers for assuming an identity.

Conspiracy Theories

Friedrich Nietzsche once said that our happiness consists of the possession of a non-negotiable truth. Today, we no longer have such non-negotiable truths. Instead, we have an over-abundance of information. I am not sure that the information society is a continuation of the Enlightenment. Maybe we need a new kind of enlightenment. On a new enlightenment, Nietzsche noted: “It does not suffice that you realize the ignorance in which humans and animals live, you also have to have the will to be ignorant and learn more.

Over-Abundance of Information

You need to comprehend that without this kind of ignorance life would become impossible, that only on condition of this ignorance can what lives preserve itself and flourish.”Gardels: As you wrote in your most recent book, societal rituals once created that objective narrative bond that held societies together. They “stabilized life” as you put it.

Societal Rituals

Now such rituals are under assault by the wrecking ball of deconstruction as nothing more than the designs of the privileged of the past who had the power to impose them. In today’s horizontal world with no legitimate value hierarchy, subjective projection steps in to fill the vacuum. Out of these ruins of an objective order, how can stabilizing anchors of ritual ever be reestablished? On what basis? On whose authority? What will life look like if that is not possible?

A Horizontal World

Han: I would not promote a reactivation of past rituals. This is simply not possible because the rituals of Western culture are very closely associated with the Christian narrative. And everywhere the Christian narrative is losing its power. There is little left of it beyond Christmastime.Rituals found a community. Contrary to the suggestion in your question, it is not inevitable that rituals solidify existing power relations. Quite the opposite. During Carnival, power relations are reversed, so that the slaves can criticize and even mock their masters.

Western Culture

Often roles are exchanged: The masters serve their slaves. And the fool ascends the throne as king. This ritualized temporary suspension of the power structure stabilizes the community.“After the pandemic, what is most in need of recovery is culture.”In a world that is completely without rituals and wholly profane, all that is left are consumption and the satisfaction of needs. It is Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World,” in which every want is immediately gratified. The people are kept in good spirits with the help of fun, consumption and entertainment.

Recovery of Culture

The state distributes a drug called soma in order to increase feelings of happiness in the population. Maybe in our brave new world, people will receive a universal basic income and have unlimited access to video games. That would be the new version of panem et circensem (“bread and circuses”).I am, however, not completely pessimistic. Perhaps we shall develop new narratives, ones that do not presuppose a hierarchy. We can easily imagine a flat narrative. Every narrative develops rituals for the purposes of making it habitual, embedding it in the physical body. Culture founds community.

Panem et Circensem

After the pandemic, what is most in need of recovery is culture. Cultural events such as theater, dance and even football have a ritual character. The only way in which we can revitalize community is through ritual forms. Today, culture is held together solely by instrumental and economic relations. But that does not found communities — it isolates people. Art, in particular, should play a central role in the revitalization of rituals.“Rituals stabilize life by structuring time.”

Revitalization of Rituals

What we need most are temporal structures that stabilize life. When everything is short-term, life loses all stability. Stability comes over long stretches of time: faithfulness, bonds, integrity, commitment, promises, trust. These are the social practices that hold a community together. They all have a ritual character. They all require a lot of time. Today’s terror of short-termism — which, with fatal consequences, we mistake for freedom — destroys the practices that require time. To combat this terror, we need a very different temporal politics.

A Very Different Temporal Politics

In “The Little Prince,” the fox wants to be visited by the little prince always at the same hour, so that his visit becomes a ritual. The little prince asks the fox what a ritual is, and the fox replies: “Those also are actions too often neglected. … They are what make one day different from other days, one hour from other hours.” Rituals can be defined as temporal technologies for housing oneself. They turn being in the world into being at home. Rituals are in time as things are in space. They stabilize life by structuring time.

Rituals

They give us festive spaces, so to speak, spaces we can enter in celebration. As temporal structures, rituals arrest time. Temporal spaces we can enter in celebration do not pass away. Without such temporal structures, time becomes a torrent that tears us apart from each other and away from ourselves. Gardels: You have said that you look to art as “the savior” from the conditions you’ve been describing since philosophy today lacks the transformational quality it once had. What did you mean by that?

Temporal Structures

Han: Philosophy has the power to change the world: European science began only with Plato and Aristotle; without Rousseau, Voltaire and Kant, the European Enlightenment would be unthinkable. Nietzsche made the world appear in an entirely new light. Marx’s “Capital” founded a new epoch. Today, however, philosophy has completely lost this world-changing power. It is no longer capable of producing a novel narrative. Philosophy degenerates into an academic, specialist discipline. It is not turned toward the world and the present. “Art is nearer to the heart of creation than philosophy.”

Change the World

How can we reverse this development and make sure that philosophy regains its world-changing power, its magic? My feeling is that art, as opposed to philosophy, is still in a position where it can evoke the glimmer of a new form of life. Art has always brought forth a new reality, a new form of perception. All his life, Paul Klee said: “Immanently, I cannot be grasped at all. Because I live with the dead, just as I live with the unborn. A bit nearer to the heart of creation than is usual. And not near enough at all yet.”

A New Form of Perception

It is possible that art is nearer to the heart of creation than philosophy. It is therefore capable of letting something entirely new begin. The revolution can begin with as little as an unheard-of color, an unheard-of sound.

The Heart of Creation

Philosopher Byung-Chul Han: Art can “evoke the glimmer of a new form of life.”

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