I was just watching Enchanted on television, a typical fantasy comedy made up in sugar rush - and special effects that make your eyes bleed -, and I liked it. I like many things that temporarily eat away my brains (who knows, the effect may be permanent, too), but I just don´t usually admit it, because it makes me look less cultivated. Less cultivated, oh noooo xD What a nightmare to certain people...
Solution:
There are dos and don´ts invented by sophisticated know-it-alls. For instance, listening to classical radio and reading Dostojevski are dos, watching chick flicks and listening to main stream music don´ts. I used to divide occupations according to their cultivating effect, too. I boycotted unintelligent interests, and felt like I should always be doing something developing. It was almost like a mania for me, a hampering paradigm.
Lately I´ve started to realize how wrong it is to mourn about such trivial matters. People who live in developed countries are given all the possibilities in the world to enjoy life - and they are wasting it by setting artificial intellectual limits to their lives. After that I have been teaching myself to do the things I´ve never dared to do before, like stayng up late watching crappy stand-up comedy.
I think everyone should try it.
A practical example: For certain people (look above) it would seem a problem to like this music, as I do. So, good practice to learn out of the cultural pales is to listen to it anyway. Sorry, trolling you poor readers with this is not too civilized... which I believe is the idea ;)
The Finnish: watch this & be proud
Others: No, I cannot explain what happens at 2:00. That´s because I died at 1:56 XDDD
????
hahahaha rakastan tota love me tender -biisii XD
VastaaPoistaPlus, now that the exams are over, it's okay to have our brains eaten and finally be as unti-cultivated as we want to be!!
thank you for your mental support, you are absolutely right!
PoistaIhan outoa vastata englanniksi, mut joo, voisin kuunnella tota kappaletta päivät läpeensä xD
but with so many good books in the world, i mean the sophisticated ones like the classics, is it not a waste of time to read other things that are really not that good? i calculated that in a lifetime, if you read like a normal person or even more, you will only read a few thousand books in your life. that is not even a fraction of how many good ones that actually exist.
VastaaPoistaWonderful that someone comments :D
VastaaPoistaWhat you say is true, but I think you forget that one can´t always do something utilitarian. Think about it this way: how many hours per day you actually do something, instead of just thinking or being, if you´re not made to do anything? How many times you just read a comic instead of a kafka? I can say I have done so million times, and I don´t believe there´s anything wrong with that.
I think cultivation is important, but so is entertainment. People need both sophistication and something they enjoy: for example, for someone, reading not-so-good literature is a way to relax their mind, even if it may seem a waste of time to some people.
oh how well that you appreciate that im commenting! (though the problem will probably be to make me stop writing, i love discussing these things too much. besides, to use english for a change is nice (instead of german, i live in berlin now but i come from sweden)
VastaaPoistato the subject: i definitely think that one should read because you like it and not because its considered to be cultivated by other people. but i guess the idea with me anyway is, that if you read books that are supposed to be sophisticated or relevant, maybe it helps you understand more of other literature, art or society in general. maybe it gives you tips on what other books to read (that you will like) and i think it might also be good in the way that if other people know it aswell, you can use it as a common point of reference. but okay, i dont exactly read the heaviest literature i know on all my free time. and i guess there is some special charm about doing something for absolutely no use.
It´s nice to notice there is somebody that has the same views about reading as me! I agree on all you say about reading sophisticated books. I just think people shouldn´t stress too much about reading or anything else that may or may not be cultivating. The challenge (for me at least) is to find the balance between two extremities: "devouring food for thought", that is, reading and watching and listening too much too fast - and letting the brain idle (incoherent metaphors, but I hope you got the idea).
VastaaPoistaThe charm that you mentioned is by the way exactly the subject I talked about in this post! I have only recently discovered it myself.
Oh, and why would I want you to stop commenting? Provoking thoughts and talking about them is what I created this blog for :D
Och jag kan också tala på svenska, men jag tänkte att det skulle kanske vara mer intressant för (möjliga) andra läsare om vi fortsatte vår kloka diskussion på engelska. Plus jag är litet osäker över mina språkkunskaper.
ahh shit du kan svenska, haha! mitt guilty pleasure ända sen jag såg henne i på spåret har varit johanna koljonen (älskar henne), så jag förknippar allt som är finlandssvenskt med henne. hon har ju förresten pluggat litteratur på oxford, på tal om finkultur. men när jag träffat finnar så har vi alltid pratat engelska.
VastaaPoistaoh well i mean to what degree is it good or even sustainable to see yourself as a project, something to make better and better, so that in the end you can have instrumental use for it?
in a way it is infact necessary to see yourself a project to a certain degree, because in society you are forced to compete to be able to make yourself heard (and to exist).
as you have already stated, you need a balance between doing heavy things and light things, and also between fun/boring. so we have two parameters, and they do indeed intersect, which makes everything so much more complicated! i do have figured out (is that a bad sentence?) that you need some time away from just concentrating, if not to be able to read effectively, then to keep it interesting. im thinking badminton would be a nice thing :p. also discussing what you have read with other people can be lots of fun. but the thing that kept me thinking that this sophisticated culture was still fun, was deciding to allow myself to disrespect it, that is, not to always be so serious about it, to do it more spontaneously and unstructured and for fun than as a job. and sometomes it really is not that bad to start in the middle of a book or to read what other people thought about it before you make your own opinion.
you have again numerous good points, especially with the culture being more enjoyable if you let yourself disrespect it sometimes. I think sometimes a little bit of "disrespect" is actually only way to process the western culture, literature, cinema etc., because the quality of the sophisticated culture can be rather poor. In literature a good example of this are overrated classics. For instance, if you observe Wuthering Heights, without the glamour of celebrity you are used to associate with it, you may realize that in fact the whole book is rather disorganised and absurd (in a negative way). So, in the end your comprehension of the book may be better if you analyse it with little disrespecting boldness than with respect.
VastaaPoistaI know this is little bit different from what you meant by disrespecting (I assume you meant combining different areas of culture in an unprejudiced manner), but I wanted to point it out anyway.
About your last sentence: I think in reality most of the opinions we have are other´s, even though they seem to be our own. To me it is horrid fact, but still fact. Only way to make sure you make up your OWN mind is to read a book without reading any reviews first. I don´t anyway think that it´s always that important to have your own view. An opinion about everything - that is overrated.
yeah, definitely. i think many classics seem overrated and im not planning on reading as many of them as possible before i die. while we're speaking of quality and objective ways to measure it, i think that even if you should try to not just follow everone elses opinion, its still a bit difficult to be objective since everything is always meaningful in relation to something else and also in relation to other peoples opinions. i can honestly say that i care more about what other people think than most people would admit they do. i dont really believe in the inner inspiration, i believe that you are always shaped by your surroundings. you already say this in your reply, but my point here is that you wont even be able to make your own opinion about something even if you experience it without knowing anything about how its recepted by others. or i dont know, am i just stretching everything too far here?
VastaaPoista