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4.08 AVERAGE
4.08 AVERAGE
reflective
Really interesting read. There's a lot of talk of desensitization and 'brainrot' on short-form media platforms that I have obviously been exposed to but I'd never given the subject much thought. As others have said, I'd love to hear Sontag's thoughts about current events and the way we've been informed about them. Imagery of suffering is no longer the photographer's domain. We're getting pleas and testimonies from the sufferers beamed straight onto our funny video apps.
There is such thing as too many parentheticals. Some of these sentences were like comma and EM dash inception where I was trying to piece together where one phrase ended, picked back up, was concluded two phrases ago, is starting up again...
There is such thing as too many parentheticals. Some of these sentences were like comma and EM dash inception where I was trying to piece together where one phrase ended, picked back up, was concluded two phrases ago, is starting up again...
"To designate a hell is not, of course, to tell us anything about how to extract people from that hell, how to moderate Hell's flames. Still, it seems a good in itself to acknowledge, to have enlarged, one sense of how much suffering caused by human wickedness there is in the world we share with others. Someone who is perennially surprised that depravity exists, who continues to feel disillusioned, even incredulous, when confronted with evidence of what humans are capable of inflicting in the way of gruesome hands-on cruelties upon other humans, has not reached moral or psychological adulthood. No one, after a certain age, has the right to this kind of innocence, of superficiality, to this degree of ignorance or amnesia. There now exists a vast repository of images that make it harder to maintain this kind of moral defectiveness. Let the atrocious images haunt us. Even if they are only tokens and cannot possibly encompass most of the reality to which they refer, they still perform a vital function. The images say - this is what human beings are capable of doing. May volunteer to do enthusiastically. Self-righteously. Don't forget."
Susan Sontag
Susan Sontag
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
challenging
informative
slow-paced
informative
reflective
fast-paced
slow-paced
It is Sontag, so the writing can be dense at points and you'll have to google a lot of words. There is a lot if crossover with On Photography, but this time dealing with mass atrocities. Lots of things here made me think. Good ending.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Death, Blood, War
dark
informative
medium-paced
Rip Susan Sontag, you would probably have to write a continuation of this if you saw genocides being live streamed to our phone while we scroll to the next short form video.
reflective
sad
A call to be present and reflective when viewing images of war, to recognize the depravity humanity is and has always been capable of. Not to rely solely on images of war, which can be manipulated, but to reflect on them through historical/political context and narrative.
“Compassion is an unstable emotion. It needs to be translated into action, or it withers.”
“Citizens of modernity, consumers of violence as spectacle, adepts of proximity without risk, are schooled to be cynical about the possibility of sincerity. Some people will do anything to keep from being moved. How much easier, from ones chair, far from danger, to claim the position of superiority”.
“Compassion is an unstable emotion. It needs to be translated into action, or it withers.”
“Citizens of modernity, consumers of violence as spectacle, adepts of proximity without risk, are schooled to be cynical about the possibility of sincerity. Some people will do anything to keep from being moved. How much easier, from ones chair, far from danger, to claim the position of superiority”.
challenging
dark
informative
reflective
slow-paced
challenging
informative