Donald Jurney - The Potting Shed, 2020
My son didn’t blow off his science worksheet because he’s a fuckup; he fucked up because he blew off his science worksheet. Readers of the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre will recognize here a formulation of his classic argument that existence precedes essence, best explicated in Being and Nothingness with his example of the soldier who deserts from war. People say he deserted because he’s a coward, but really he’s a coward because he deserted. He could have hung around and been scared in his uniform with his squadmates, but he chose to run. We can identify an essential cowardice within this choice, but it only emerges after the choice is made, as an epiphenomenon.
This admittedly fine point is not just a matter of language; it also carries an ethical implication. The coward can’t really be blamed for doing cowardly stuff, because that’s his nature — the same way you can’t blame the kitchen table for being hard and heavy when you stub your toe. But the difference between human beings and objects is that we do not have fixed natures that determine our behavior. When I say I didn’t do the dishes because I’m lazy, I’m talking around the fact that I could have done them but chose not to. The illusion of a fixed nature gives us an excuse to repeat bad behavior. To insist that what we do determines who we are — and not the other way around — is to make freedom and therefore responsibility a part of our worldview at the most basic level.
Freedom is scary, though, because it is the freedom to become something other than what you are now — something you cannot predict. It’s easier to think of yourself as a type of person, riding along with yourself and playing out the behaviors your type does. It’s comforting to think that you did what you did because of who you are, even if who you are is bad, because nothing is more frightening than the feeling that you are about to change into someone else. Ask any 12 year-old.
Mine recently started a conversation with me by saying, “You know how I’m a low-empathy person?” No, man, I do not know that. It turned out he listened to a podcast about how some people don’t feel other people’s suffering as deeply as everyone else, and he decided that’s why he’ll probably act selfish forever.
Tree South Korea-based artist Myoung Ho Lee frames trees to create beautiful natural portraits. This series, soberly titled Tree, was exhibited at the Yossi Milo Gallery in New York.
Source: fubiz.net
“Things don’t have purposes, as if the universe were a machine, where every part has a useful function. What’s the function of a galaxy? I don’t know if our life has a purpose and I don’t see that it matters. What does matter is that we’re a part. Like a thread in a cloth or a grass-blade in a field. It is and we are. What we do is like wind blowing on the grass. […] We’re in the world, not against it. […] The world is, no matter how we think it ought to be. You have to be with it. You have to let it be.”
— Ursula Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven
“In a 1994 Harvard study that examined people who had radically changed their lives, for instance, researchers found that some people had remade their habits after a personal tragedy, such as a divorce or a life-threatening illness. Others changed after they saw a friend go through something awful, the same way that Dungy’s players watched him struggle.
Just as frequently, however, there was no tragedy that preceded people’s transformations. Rather, they changed because they were embedded in social groups that made change easier. One woman said her entire life shifted when she signed up for a psychology class and met a wonderful group. “It opened a Pandora’s box,” the woman told researchers. “I could not tolerate the status quo any longer. I had changed in my core.” Another man said that he found new friends among whom he could practice being gregarious. “When I do make the effort to overcome my shyness, I feel that it is not really me acting, that it’s someone else,” he said. But by practicing with his new group, it stopped feeling like acting. He started to believe he wasn’t shy, and then, eventually, he wasn’t anymore. When people join groups where change seems possible, the potential for that change to occur becomes more real. For most people who overhaul their lives, there are no seminal moments or life-altering disasters. There are simply communities⏤sometimes of just one other person⏤who make change believable.
One woman told researchers her life transformed after a day spent cleaning toilets⏤and after weeks of discussing with the rest of the cleaning crew whether she should leave her husband.
“Change occurs among other people,” one of the psychologists involved in the study, Todd Heatherton, told me. “It seems real when we can see it in other people’s eyes.”
The precise mechanisms of belief are little understand. No one is certain why a group encountered in a psychology class can convince a woman that everything is different, or why Dungy’s team came together after their coach’s son passed away. Plenty of people talk to friends about unhappy marriages and never leave their spouse; lots of teams watch their coaches experience adversity and never gel.
But we do know that for habits to permanently change, people must believe that change is feasible. The same process that makes AA so effective⏤the power of a group to teach individuals how to believe⏤happens whenever people come together to help one another change. Belief is easier when it occurs within a community.”
⏤ The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg
i have a hill to die on real quick
phrases like “you don’t owe anyone anything” and “relationships aren’t transactional” have the power to be used in ways that are very backwards and harmful
for example, no you don’t owe anyone anything in that if some creep is trying to get with you, you can block him without feeling bad. you don’t owe kindness to people who are transphobic or racist or bigoted.
but, you can’t use this as an excuse to fuck over people who have helped you. “you don’t owe anyone anything” isn’t an excuse to allow yourself to forget compassion and basic empathy, it isn’t an excuse for you to be an asshole just because you find it easier to be one
relationships aren’t transactional in that if your partner does something nice for you, you are indebted to them. they do these things because they love you; it is their choice to express love through these gestures
but they are transactional in that you both actively need to be putting time and care into the relationship. ignoring the dynamic of one person caring too much (and putting in excessive (emotional an literal) work and labor) while the other does nothing isn’t healthy. one person can’t solely take and the other person can’t solely give- that’s dangerous, and you can’t put the bandaid of “this isn’t transactional” over a relationship that is draining you in all capacities
i’m tired of seeing these things being misconstrued and used as an excuse to hurt people, while framing it as a way of taking care of yourself
Key cultural influences of Avatar: The Last Airbender.
People instantly categorizing each nation to a single real-life counterpart has been sort of my pet peeve for a while. Each nation was influenced by multiple real-life cultures as stated by creators and artists and this is very evident in the show.
This is my attempt at making a simplified visual representation. Of course, reality is much more intricate and detailed, but this is the best I could do without having to write paragraphs after paragraphs or listing thousands of pictures.
“Basically, the entire movie is a comic book that moves. Co-director Phil Lord said, “If you freeze any part of the move at any time, it will look like an illustration with hand-drawn touches and all.”
- MOVIES INSIDER (How ‘Spider-man: Into the Spider-Verse’ Was Animated)
LIKE WHAT’S UP, DANGER? CAN’T STOP ME NOW
Lord of the Rings is the rare case where the book is a musical and the movie isn’t
i saw into the spiderverse today
Happy Hanukkah, everyone, from these two jerks! I’m posting this a little early this year. Line art by the amazing Ro Stein & Ted Brandt, and colour art by @deecunniffe.
I want to point out what a technical achievement this story is on the art side. There’s a real joy to creating a whole story in eight panels, but this? This is some magic. We introduce four new characters. In panel 5, SIX PEOPLE are talking. SIX. In the world of comics, that’s almost un-doable.
Yet Ro and Ted arranged everything so the conversations flow and are sensibly grouped, all the “acting” is fantastic, and then Dee laid on top these beautiful, almost fairytale colours – look at the subtle work, the blush in Henry’s cheeks, Frank’s five o-clock shadow, the shine of the wine bottle’s glass surface, the light texturing in the backgrounds… and of course the snow! This is some first-class illustration work on an incredibly hard script. (I fear Ro and Ted always get me at my worst – my very formalist script for them in the 24 Panels anthology was no cakewalk either. (The problem is, they’re just so damn good at it… check out their work on the Image comic Crowded!)
As always, if you like what we do in Hells Kitchen Movie Club, consider donating a little to a veteran’s charity.
(I also have a thriller novel I’m crowdfunding, please check it out, we are more than halfway there. The book is all written…)
bringing this one back in honor of William Goldman