chatarra
All posts tagged "society"
El ridículo
“Todo acto que no sea ridículo, en mayor o menor medida, es un acto muerto. Esto se verifica en la más cotidiana y banal vida social. Cuando uno toma el té en un salón y vuelve a colocar la taza en su sitio, realiza un acto perfecto, un acto muerto, pues no hay consecuencias ni en su conciencia ni la de los demás. Pero ¡deja caer la taza al suelo derramando el té en la falda de una señorita que habla francés y pídele excusas tartamudeando mientras tratas de borrar la metedura de pata secando el parquet con el pañuelo de batista! Por un instante eres ridículo, pura y simplemente ridículo. De pronto, el acto se llena de innumerables virtualidades. Lo estás pasando mal y en ese instante de turbación y de pánico comprendes que tu vida es inútil, que la de los demás está vacía, que eres un mono grotesco bien vestido y perfectamente arreglado en un salón a donde se va a perder el tiempo, adonde se va empujado por el miedo a la soledad, por atracción hacia las vacuidades. Toda una filosofía a partir de una taza de té rota por descuido. ¡Y eso no es nada!, porque sólo has sido ridículo en una mínima proporción. Ve a decirles a la cara lo que piensas de su té, que en el fondo es lo que piensa todo ser dotado de razón, diles francamente que se están engañando, que llevan una vida artificial, fáctica, inútil. Diles todo eso y dilo con pasión. Entonces serás realmente ridículo, entonces la gente se burlará de ti, entonces comprenderás que no puedes vivir tu vida sin ser ridículo.”
— “Invitación al ridículo”, Mircea Eliade. El vuelo mágico, editado por Siruela y traducido por Victoria Cirlot y Amador Vega.
Leed el extracto completo allá donde mora monsieurvenus.
Las leyes fundamentales de la estupidez humana »
Esto es un clásico, pero lo mismo queda por ahí alguien que no lo ha leído. Sabiduría y risas, todo en el mismo pack.
“Los estúpidos son peligrosos y funestos porque a las personas razonables les resulta difícil imaginar y entender un comportamiento estúpido. Una persona inteligente puede entender la lógica de un bandido. Las acciones de un bandido siguen un modelo de racionalidad. El bandido quiere obtener beneficios. Puesto que no es suficientemente inteligente como para imaginar métodos con que obtener beneficios para sí procurando también beneficios a los demás, deberá obtener su beneficio causando pérdidas a su prójimo. Ciertamente, esto no es justo, pero es racional, y siendo racional, puede preverse. En definitiva, las relaciones con un bandido son posibles puesto que sus sucias maniobras y sus deplorables aspiraciones pueden preverse y, en la mayoría de los casos, se puede preparar la oportuna defensa.
Con una persona estúpida todo esto es absolutamente imposible. Tal como está implícito en la Tercera Ley Fundamental, una criatura estúpida nos perseguirá sin razón, sin un plan preciso, en los momentos y lugares más improbables y más impensables. No existe modo racional de prever si, cuando, cómo y por qué, una criatura estúpida llevará a cabo su ataque. Frente a un individuo estúpido, uno está completamente desarmado.”
Random Wikipedia Facts: Behavioral sink »
“In 1958, ethologist John B. Calhoun conducted over-population experiments on rats on a farmland in Rockville, Maryland which resulted in the publication of an article in the Scientific American of a study of behavior under conditions of overcrowding.
Calhoun provided a cage of rats with food and water replenished to support any increase in population, but the cage was fixed at a size considered sufficient for only 50 rats. Population peaked at 80 rats and thereafter exhibited a variety of abnormal, often destructive behaviors; his conclusion was that space itself is a necessity. When forced interactions exceed some threshold, social norms break down […].
Notable conditions in the behavioral sink include hyperaggression, failure to breed and nurture young normally, infant cannibalism, increased mortality at all ages, and abnormal sexual patterns. Often, population peaks, then crashes. Actual physical disease, mental illness, and psychosomatic disorders increase. There are eating disorders; in human populations, drug and alcohol use rises.
The only known counter to the effect of the behavioral sink is to reduce the frequency and intensity of social interaction.”
The Referendum »
“The Referendum is a phenomenon typical of (but not limited to) midlife, whereby people, increasingly aware of the finiteness of their time in the world, the limitations placed on them by their choices so far, and the narrowing options remaining to them, start judging their peers’ differing choices with reactions ranging from envy to contempt. The Referendum can subtly poison formerly close and uncomplicated relationships, creating tensions between the married and the single, the childless and parents, careerists and the stay-at-home. It’s exacerbated by the far greater diversity of options available to us now than a few decades ago, when everyone had to follow the same drill. We’re all anxiously sizing up how everyone else’s decisions have worked out to reassure ourselves that our own are vindicated — that we are, in some sense, winning.”
A must read for anybody between 25 and 35. Particularly if they’re not married. Particularly if they feel they’re standing in the middle of some kind of existential crossroad. I insist.
(via Tiffamander)
Just be nice (bitch) »
“I am one of the most selfish bitches anyone will ever meet, but that does not mean I think - or act like - I am the only person in the world. I was raised by the last generation that worked to instill manners and social niceties in its children, and fulfilling your part of the social contract was a big part of that. Say “please” and “thank you”, be polite, and treat people how you want to be treated. JUST BE NICE. I’m not sure when it happened, but people now seem to believe that they are the only ones who have a right to behave any way they goddamn well please. “I can do what I want and you just have to deal with it, but when you do it, you’re a rude asshole”. Being polite and respectful is the price you pay for living in a functioning society. If you don’t like it, take your spoiled, immature, self-absorbed ass into the mountains and see how long you last on your own.”
En el blog de Tiffany, la borracha misántropa, siempre te partes el ojete y vuelves con algo nuevo.
Things that are common some places, but seem completely crazy to outsiders »
Ask mefi question:
I’m curious to know about other … occurances that, to an outsider, seem completely crazy but are common in daily life in certain places in the world.Many interesting answers, such as:
More than once in the middle of downtown Mexico City (a 10-million person, high-tech metropolis) I’ve walked out of a glass-and-steel skyscraper and almost collided with a donkey.When I was in Tokyo many years ago, I wondered at the audacity of their crows. I saw a few of them using a drinking fountain, with one of them holding down the button and the other drinking from it, then switch and again. But that was minor compared to what Japanese crows are reputed to do… steal food from open windows, outwit the crow patrols trying to prevent them from nesting on electric lines and shorting out the grid, even exploiting crosswalks and car traffic to open nuts for them. To quote from the NYTImes article, one expert believes “We are not sure sometimes who is smarter, us or the crows.” I find this all totally crazy, and yet totally magical.When I was living in rural-ish Spain, leaving the dog’s bowl out on the porch overnight during the winter would result in an army of tiny field mice bivouacked behind the porch sofa. When we went to the local Everything Store (part gas can dealer, part local bar, part supermarket, part butcher shop) to pick up some mousetraps, the little old lady proprietress laughed and said, in the local dialect, what amounted to “mousetraps? pshaw, those are for the tourists!”
She gave us a kitten instead. It was the most bizarre retail experience of my entire life. But when I mentioned it to a couple of friends & neighbors, they thought only notable part of the whole story was that I’d got the kitten for free.
When I lived in Saint Petersburg, Russia, my host father took me to the family’s Dacha (summer cottage), a tiny, dingy little house with no electricity outside the city. After dinner, we went into the Banya, stripped naked, and then he told me to lie down on a bench in the sweltering heat. I was terrified of this man, by the way. He started whacking me aggressively with birch leaves stringed together, whacking me everywhere to “open up the pores.” Then, he laid down and asked me to whack him. It was thus that I ended up whacking a Russian police captain, naked, with birch leaves.
Which is a totally normal thing in Russia.
In Thailand they have an official National Elephant Day. City officials fill the streets with buffets of bananas and other assorted fruits for the elephants to feast on. What you would see if you happened upon in would be a bunch of decked-out elephants perching elephant-style on the ground with their trunks in a mountain of fruit! And it’s not just one or two cursory elephant feasts, no; it happens all over the country!I’m sure there are many things around here that must seem really strange or stupid or wonderful to strangers, but, not being an outsider, I can’t really picture what they might be. I know many tourists find road signs with moose warnings so wonderful that they occasionally steal them off their poles. I can’t imagine how exotic it must seen to them, but I suppose it does.
Last year, vacationing in Croatia, we rented a car for a day. I don’t know if it was local custom or a personal quirk on the part of the owner of the car rental agency, but they had taken the time and effort to remove the seat belts in the back seat. I’m so used to seat belts that even the thought of not wearing them seems odd to me (why would you not, it takes two seconds to put them on and increases your safety tenfold), but to spend extra effort to make it impossible to wear them? I can’t even imagine a bad reason why someone would do that.
Those two quirks are pretty lame compared to the examples from metafilter, though. What’s totally normal where you live, but must seem very strange to outsiders?
Dmitry Orlov
Club Orlov se ha convertido en una de mis fuentes favoritas de información realista sobre el colapso (de la civilización, se entiende). Ya he citado a Orlov anteriormente, pero me siguen maravillando sus doctos -y sarcásticos- análisis de los procesos que pueden conducir, o que lo están haciendo ya, a una nación poderosa como Estados Unidos a un estado pre-tecnológico. El tío es una especie de Noam Chomsky del armagedón.
“Fast food outfits such as McDonalds have more ways to cut costs, and so may prove a bit more resilient in the face of economic collapse than supermarket chains, but they are no substitute for food security, because they too depend industrial agribusiness. Their food inputs, such as high-fructose corn syrup, genetically modified potatoes, various soy-based fillers, factory-farmed beef, pork and chicken, and so forth, are derived from oil, two-thirds of which is imported, as well as fertilizer made from natural gas. They may be able to stay in business longer, supplying food-that-isn’t-really-food, but eventually they will run out of inputs along with the rest of the supply chain. Before they do, they may for a time sell burgers that aren’t really burgers, like the bread that wasn’t really bread that the Soviet government distributed in Leningrad during the Nazi blockade. It was mostly sawdust, with a bit of rye flour added for flavor.”
Algunos de mis posts favoritos:
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Five Stages of Collapse
“If Stage 1 collapse can be observed by watching television, observing Stage 2 might require a hike or a bicycle ride to the nearest population center, while Stage 3 collapse is more than likely to be visible directly through one’s own living-room window, which may or may not still have glass in it.” -
Social Collapse Best Practices
“I happened to be in Russia during a time of gasoline shortages. On one occasion, I found out by word of mouth that a certain gas station was open and distributing 10 liters apiece. I brought along my uncle’s wife, who at the time was 8 months pregnant, and we tried use her huge belly to convince the gas station attendant to give us an extra 10 liters with which to drive her to the hospital when the time came. No dice. The pat answer was: “Everybody is 8 months pregnant!” How can you argue with that logic?” -
Burning Our Bridges to the XXI Century
“We are making an effort to save financial institutions, which are the ultimate ephemera of industrial civilization, and are absolutely guaranteed to have no reason to continue into a future in which debt, denominated in future earnings that will be meager at best, and money, which will only hold its value for as long as it guarantees access to sources of pure, concentrated energy, all steadily dwindle to nothing. It is as if the doctors decided to only try to save persistent vegetative quadriplegics with terminal cancer, or if the environmentalists decided that the endangered species list only has room for one animal: the vampire bat.” -
Bullets from Drug War
“This is no longer a war against drugs; it is now a contest between alternative drug distribution systems. One alternative is a centralized, paramilitary organization run by CIA remnants, former military, and former police. Another alternative is ethnic mafias, which will diversify into many other kinds of trade. The third, nautrally most cost-effective alternative will be provided by informal, local distribution networks based on barter, which will be all that is left once the dust settles. The downside of all this is that it will be hard to find anyone sober enough to operate a light switch. The upside to that is that the national electrical grid will go away, so there will be little need of that.” -
Superpower Similarities
“The rationale for imprisoning over two million people in the United States, the world’s highest rate of incarceration, is that it deters crime. Sociologists slice and dice crime statistics looking for a correlation between increased rates of incarceration and decreased crime rates. The best they seem to be able to find is a correlation of about 0.25 between an increased rate of incarceration and a decrease in the crime rate. It is sometimes possible to find a stronger correlation between, say, rain dances and rainfall amounts.”
Por cierto, leyendo a Orlov se da uno cuenta de que muchas de las cosas que asociamos con el fin del mundo ya han sucedido en Rusia en algún momento de su historia.
Disfrutadlo.
"El quinto en discordia" de Robertson Davies.
Enorme.
Siempre me he burlado de las autobiografías y memorias en las que el autor aparece al principio como un encantador e inteligente jovencito, lleno de una perspicacia y una agudeza que ofrece con falsa ingenuidad al lector, como si pretendiera decir: “Yo era una maravilla y, a la vez, era un niño”. ¿Tienen los escritores alguna noción o algún recuerdo real de lo que es un niño?
Yo lo tengo, y lo he reforzado durante cuarenta y cinco años de dar clases a niños. Un niño es un hombre en miniatura, y aunque a veces pueda mostrar una notable virtud, así como características que pueden resultar encantadoras por lo ingenuo, también es intrigante, egoísta, traidor, Judas, sinvergüenza y villano; en pocas palabras: un hombre. ¡Ah, esas autobiografías en las que el autor se sonríe y posa como un David Copperfield o un Huck Finn! ¡Falsas; falsas como juramentos de ramera!
Jourdon Anderson, an ex- Tennessee slave, answers to his former master's invitation to return as a laborer on his plantation »
Milly, Jane and Grundy, go to school and are learning well; the teacher says grundy has a head for a preacher. They go to Sunday- School, and Mandy and me attend church regularly. We are kindly treated; sometimes we overhear others saying, “The colored people were slaves” down in Tennessee. The children feel hurt when they hear such remarks, but I tell them it was no disgrace in Tennessee to belong to Col. Anderson. Many darkies would have been proud, as I used to was, to call you master.
Full reading a must.
(via The Ingoing)
(via bullshit)
