art is a waste of time; reducing suffering is all that matters

tried to read this but it was increasing my suffering

even iggy pop comes across as just another old white guy who just fucking die, in the article

I lol’d + googled “richard mumby”

There are a ton of reasons to hate on my town but I do luxuriate in the remarkable distance it puts between my family and whatever that article is about. Like, we have some free museums open to the public, and you can catch an opera at the Kennedy Center. AFAIK there’s no dinners for everyone who spent $50,000 at Balmain, or big ideas about exhibits devoted to Britney. Just nerds and trained killers and spies, for miles around.

Lesson: Beaches give people the worst ideas

So then, I guess you must you live in Alexandria, or right near it.

Xpost Don't shit on Bette Midler yo

El Tomboto can and prolly will answer this but no, El Tomboto emphatically does not live in Alexandria

I was mistaken. That's what I get for playing at Where's Waldo with an ilxor.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/06/t-magazine/romantic-relationships.html

Q: Can you help with art suggestions for my severe fear of engulfment when it comes to being involved with someone romantically? This leads me to miss out on opportunities to be with really great guys with whom I connect initially. — Elizabeth, New York City

A: In some ways I am the wrong person to answer this question, as all my life I have willingly gone headlong in search of engulfment. Of course there’s fear. If nothing is at stake — if there’s no risk of grief and desolation when you come out the other side — how can you ever really feel anything? To be wholly dissolved and lost, whether in another person or in the presence of a work of art, in a spiritual encounter or in a greater cause: This can be dangerous, but also freeing — an escape from the prison of the self. You should not be able to walk away unscathed, which is to say, unchanged.

Nothing to do with the thread subject, but you can put a hell of a lot of skin in the game and risk plenty of grief when you come out the other side without seeking "engulfment". That sounds rather unhealthy to me. The words to describe what I seek are more on the order of "complete engagement with and commitment to" my relationship.

i think a primary objective of much art, and a silver lining of darker art, is reduction of suffering by reminding us we're not alone, or simarly, "the only one"

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/18/opinion/sonny-rollins-art.html

When I go to the museum and I look at a piece of art, I’m transported. I don’t know how, or where, but I know that it’s not a part of the material world. It’s beyond modern culture’s political, technological soul. We’re not here to live forever. Humans and materialism die. But there’s no dying in art.

wow

eating breakfast is a waste of time; reducing coronavirus infections is all that mattera

tom morello, 1992 pic.twitter.com/jBHKMJKVZ1

— chelsea (@cheIseahaynes) June 6, 2020

is sex important or is reducing suffering all that matters
is ilxor.com important
are hot dogs important

has hip hop helped reduce suffering of those who feel suppressed, powerless, trapped, unheard

the cure helps me especially when I was younger

i like that tom morello quote tho it does little to explain audioslave

well, in 1996, there was no indication they were going to happen.

I know ilx likes to ride for this dude and ratm is alright but his singer-songwriter material is some of the most execrable music I have ever heard

why are you always such a wet blanket, paul ponzi

perhaps he is suffering

does that mean that we have to

yes, if are we sentient

One man's suffering is another man's reverse schadenfreude.

his singer-songwriter material is some of the most execrable music I have ever heard

Singer-songwriter music is a pestilence.

except when it's the best stuff ever

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/08/magazine/what-do-we-mean-when-we-call-art-necessary.html

The prospect of “necessary” art allows members of the audience to free themselves from having to make choices while offering the critic a nifty shorthand to convey the significance of her task, which may itself be one day condemned as dispensable. The effect is something like an absurd and endless syllabus, constantly updating to remind you of ways you might flunk as a moral being. It’s a slightly subtler version of the 2016 marketing tagline for the first late-night satirical news show with a female host, “Full Frontal With Samantha Bee”: “Watch or you’re sexist.”

I LOVE music. I’ve essentially dedicated my life to it.. but no song has ever changed the world, not even “We Are The World”

— mrk (@MerkSays) June 17, 2020

false

What the hell is “changing the world” anyway

true

You must ain’t never heard “OLD TOWN ROAD” 🙄

— OG $ILKY PSALM ONE 👩🏾‍🔬 (@PsalmOne) June 17, 2020

I have heard tell of a guitar that kills fascists.

Are you suggesting that this is not so?

lol this thread is an ilx first mention for “Effective Altruism”. The original article has disappeared, so THANK GOD for the Internet Archive Wayback Machine.

https://web.archive.org/web/20140322045146/http://aeon.co/magazine/living-together/art-is-a-selfish-waste-of-time-says-effective-altruism/