h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I canna believe it! It actually works! Go there, and share your information and inspiration.

What worked ?

Right then. Next contraversial debate: We live in a cultural vacuum. Free thinking, inspiration and creativity are lost. There is no real culture any more - just endless consumerism and cynicism (not my sort. That's good. the manipulative kind. which is bad). Discuss.

Uncle, you happen to live in a particular country at a particular moment in its history. What you say may be true of your specific situation but it's not true globally. There are islands of sense, sanity and culture around the world and they are preparing for the next flowering of thought and free inquiry. Western civilisation is merely going through an inevitable crisis, but I believe it is going to get out of it changed for the better. I can't go into the details here, but many of my postings will relate to it. We need a new world view, a new attitude towards life and other people, and slowly but surely we're getting. It's happening all around the world - it's still very small, but the mere fact that it exists is already significant and promises great things.

This post has been removed.

Yay, pie throwing

Hmm... I tend to be more on the pessamistic side... sure, there are *some* good things happening in our culture, but it's far outweighted with all the cr*p pouring into our lives. And it's getting increasingly difficult to say what's good and right; with the current evolution of the media and politics, truth has become a relative concept, and we have got used to lies being a core element of political statements. Like it or not we're brainwashed into believing that humanity is making progress, when we are actually making even more of a hash of environmental, political and social situations than we ever have before.

But then, I'm always cynical

purplejenny, there's one question I've been wanting to ask you: You work in the fashion business, yet you're fully aware of the public deception created by the media, sports manufacturers, and (I hope) the fashion business. I'm not saying fashion is downright wrong, but to me it's always seemed to be based on lies and elitism. How do you justify encouraging people to buy labelled clothing?

(That came out a little harsh, don't take offence!)

Go to Jenny's website and I think you will that PurpleJenny is a differnt kind of Fashion company from the norm.

Hello all,

peregrin, the fashion business is weird and fukked up, no doubt about it, but I'm still a sucker for a pretty dress, and there's nothing wrong with that. PJ is an indie label, we make the stuff oursleves, not in sweatshops, and we try to give choice and the freedom to our customers to choose for themselves...

Like happydude sez, theres more about that on the website (the 'about us' bit). At any rate, I value working for myself over woring for LMVH (the group that owns Gucci, Louis Vitton, Moet and many of the luxury fashion brands) or M&S (especially now they source so much from abroad) or THE GAP with its uniform clothing, blanket advertsising and appaling sub-sub-sub contractors making the clothes in awful conditions.

I could rant for a long time about fashion...

pj

Good I'm glad to hear you say that, I just wanted to make sure...

This sounds like a great idea! I don't have time to wade through the backlog, but I'll come back later in the week!

Curator
Kathy

Ahh the web cam is (as are most things on my collage network) FORBIDEN
ahhh.

poor deprieved thing

I could never have awebcam on me. I'd feel too insecure. Well, even more insecure...

I'm sorry, but despite all your suggestions that we aren't culturally vacuuous, I can't credit it. What we call art: that exhibition in london. I forget its name, but it had a pece by Jake and Dinos chapman entitled Hell. That's not art. Nor is Damien Hurst or whatever. It is pure cynicism. They don't cut plastic figurines because they actually believ it comes from deep inside them (whether they claim it does or not), but because they now people with turtlenecks, goatees and cheroots will spend time effort and most importantly money on looking at it. they make their stuff as shocking as possible for DELIBERATE noteriety, not for artistic kudos.

And that is a 'high brow' example. Whether you accept it or not, our culture is now one of consummerism. Where Christmas presents and Santa (who, incidentally used to be green until a successful coke campaign turned him red. true) are more important to receive than to get. where they start in August. Where spirituality and 'populist' buddism is all the rage with people who think it makes them deeper to selectively believe in a fashionable religion, and then go on to read Freud and Sartre merely to be able to interject at one of their empty, self-congratulatory dinner parties that Freud was more of a Platonist than his student Jung, who went on to become a fervent Aristotelian. Where 'younger looking skin' is all 'she' wants. Where 50 % of the country cannot live without mobile phones but actually prefer to live in sceulsion. where mothers now refer to their children as 'mine' rather than 'ours' (with the father). Where...it's all so traumatic. And then you get moralising people like me who sit there and take the moral high ground with out doing anything to make a change for the better, possibly at the very same dinner party where they have announced that... I could go on. But I'm burnt out.

I have a depth of feeling on this matter, as you can probably tell.

This post has been removed.

Don't forgot not to leave out the Cephlopods, Chiroptera, and Arachnids. They're my favouites!

art is any medium that conveys meaning and feeling. This encompasses painting, poetry, acting, singing, cartoons... even, unfortunately, sometimes half a cow (which conveys the feelings 'yuk', 'is this art,' 'I'm going to register a complaint against this artist,' or 'this is a pile of cr*p')

oh and whether the work of art is Good or not is a different matter entirely.

Must Art be Beuatafull?
I dont think so.
Must an art be a picture?
I think all conversation is in a way art.
Not to confuse that with the art of conversation through
wich is a skill

no. that was entirely un the point. Image, if you will, Damien Hurst. He thinks:

I need some money. I know. I'll do some art. I've never been that good at it, so classical paintings won't work. I need regognition for the big bucks. I know! To get recognition, I need people to remember me. Therefore I'll do something memerable. Something no one has done before. I'll cut up a cow and stick it in formaldehyde. People will call it art. I'll say it came from deep within me. They'll swallow it and give me £££s. It's so easy.

He didn't do it for its artistic merit, he did it so people would become emotional one way or another about his work and then give him money, or tell other people not to go, which should make them go, which will give him other money.

But that wasn't really my main point. My main point is that culture doesn't mean culture any more. It means 'not culture'.