The leadership of nations requires you to put pressure on the thoughts and minds of your people, left to their own devices those minds will simply be shaped by someone else.
The morality in it comes from your motivation and methods. Secretly giving piles of money to the weirdos you successfully identify as being the leaders of artistic movements to amplify those movements can't be all that bad.
The question of the day is if you were the CIA trying to do the same thing today, who and what would you fund?
I wouldn’t because the CIA is explicitly barred by Congress (Title 50 U.S.C. § 3093) from conducting influence operations intended to affect American public opinion since the Intelligence Authorization Act of 1991.
Hence why USAID was (allegedly) co-opted to perform the same role.
The right-wing areas of the internet, even now, say the decline of whatever progressive or left-wing phenomenon they’re talking about is because they ran out of money after USAID was defunded.
I love art. Contemporary art is a bunch of ugly wankery by pretentious people who are bored of actual beauty and can only amuse themselves by creating ugly stuff, then claiming "you just don't get it". The world would be a significantly better place without contemporary art in it.
If there is any change I could make to the human personality at large it would be the reflexive opinion that anything you don't understand, or even dislike, is automatically morally wrong.
The leadership of nations requires you to put pressure on the thoughts and minds of your people, left to their own devices those minds will simply be shaped by someone else.
The morality in it comes from your motivation and methods. Secretly giving piles of money to the weirdos you successfully identify as being the leaders of artistic movements to amplify those movements can't be all that bad.
The question of the day is if you were the CIA trying to do the same thing today, who and what would you fund?
I would fund things which make people less susceptible to manipulation and more equipped to think for themselves.
Because I believe in democracy not as a political tool but as a fundamental right. I don’t wish to use democracy to gain more power.
But maybe that’s why I’ll never be in that position, to make that choice.
> I would fund things which make people less susceptible to manipulation and more equipped to think for themselves.
This also would be manipulative. If you think society can provide you freedom, you are looking in the wrong places.
I wouldn’t because the CIA is explicitly barred by Congress (Title 50 U.S.C. § 3093) from conducting influence operations intended to affect American public opinion since the Intelligence Authorization Act of 1991.
Hence why USAID was (allegedly) co-opted to perform the same role.
The right-wing areas of the internet, even now, say the decline of whatever progressive or left-wing phenomenon they’re talking about is because they ran out of money after USAID was defunded.
Are you saying modern art is positive?
Do you not appreciate art?
I like bananas.
https://www.npr.org/2024/11/21/nx-s1-5199568/a-duct-taped-ba...
That's postmodern art, not modern art.
So that's a post-banana?
Okay, this is a bit too far xD. But I wouldn’t put this in the same bucket as Pollock. I genuinely find his work interesting.
Modern art is weird.
https://smarthistory.org/andres-serrano-piss-christ/
That's postmodern art, not modern art.
I agree. All I see here is someone following in the footsteps of pioneers such as Andy Warhol. His own pink banana was very polarizing in his time.
relevant! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aM4tPXaLYz8
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I love art. Contemporary art is a bunch of ugly wankery by pretentious people who are bored of actual beauty and can only amuse themselves by creating ugly stuff, then claiming "you just don't get it". The world would be a significantly better place without contemporary art in it.
This could have been written at any point after the 1850s or so.
1850? I wager we could go all the way back if we tried.
> (…) the Italian artist and writer Giorgio Vasari,who used it as early as 1530, calling Gothic art a "monstrous and barbarous" "disorder".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gothic_art
Indeed, I would not be surprised if there was someone calling the first cave paintings awful vandalism.
I just thought of mid 1800s, since around that time people got really experimental with different styles of painting.
Indeed. Once galleries became significant buyers of art, scandalous art became an attractive thing to produce: it commanded outsized attention.
The dynamics are similar in Twitter today, too.
If there is any change I could make to the human personality at large it would be the reflexive opinion that anything you don't understand, or even dislike, is automatically morally wrong.
There is nothing to understand, bunch of jerks signaling sophistication or laundering money while poisoning the soul of men.
Contemporary art is the mirror of our time.
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