Comment by inglor_cz
2 days ago
"What's wrong with this tho?"
The thing that is wrong about it is that the purity spiral may get out of control and result in wholesale purging of art, Iconoclast-style (or perhaps Cultural Revolution-style).
I don't trust people with an instinct to purge history. They rarely know when to stop.
Plus, standards change a lot. Picasso had a teenage mistress. It wasn't as scandalous back then. Should we really be so arrogant as to push our current standards on the entire humanity that once was? If yes, we will be obliterated by the next generation that applies the same logic to us, only with a different set of taboos.
"Acknowledge the ugliness and try to do better" and purging art and history are different things. The comment you replied to above did not call for a purging of Adams' work or life from history.
It seems to me that, even here in this discussion, people call for avoiding work of such authors. Would that entail, say, pressure on galleries not to show such art? If so, that is more than half way to a purge.
People often like to conflate criticism and personal choice with censorship, but they're not the same.
We're allowed to avoid consuming the work of artists we think are horrible humans. We're allowed to encourage others to do that too even. None of that is purging or censorship.
That's not purging at all, words have meaning. If you grep my comment you might be encountering a massive bug if you found the word purge.
You can still stream all of Crystal Castles songs on every platform, you can still buy their music, their albums still have hundreds of seeders on trackers. Just as I'm sure you can buy your Dilbert books.
Telling people to maybe look up to better humans, which it needs to be stated have always existed and aren't a modern invention, should be encouraged.
One of the other threads in here an OP states that we should use this moment to reflect and do better in our own lives, what is wrong with this viewpoint?
We've seen countless examples of people getting sucked into social media holes and I've yet to encounter a single case where this has ever led to healthy outcomes.
Personally avoiding consumption and calling for a purge from history are not equivalent.
Even calling for a boycott or lack of commercialization of something is not purging from history.
The purity spiral on the other side is already batshit. "If you support that we're going to say you're bad and not buy your work" is quite a way from widespread physical and media violence.
Adams was a mediocre bureaucrat who discovered he could make a living as a competent comedian. His success at that persuaded him that he was an Important Moral Authority.
He started as a banker and ended as a self-harming prosperity preacher - not exactly a rare archetype in the US.
The funny parts were funny. The rest, not so much.
"His success at that persuaded him that he was an Important Moral Authority."
Isn't this rather common in artists? Bono of U2 comes to mind as a very pronounced example.
The problem with being a well-known artist is that you have way too many sycophants. Imagine getting dozens of ChatGPT-like fawning messages every day, but from real people, and not just over e-mail, but whenever you stray out of your house and someone recognizes you.
That will mess with self-image of almost everyone except the most stoic personalities.