🦋🪐🌌☄️🌠🌻

reflect critically on a profound level about themselves and their actions and beliefs and the world they live in

be increasingly open to complexity, nuance, and ambiguity

be open to major change in general

when they feel a sense of hostility. these are things that are most easily and safely done in a supportive and safe environment. & these are also things that are pretty crucial for being able to productively change your worldview.

it suckkkkssss because people are annoying and hateful and hypocritical and infuriating. and yet pressure does not always make diamonds. if you want people to be more leftist than leftist spaces and communities and the relationships people have with these ideas needs to be one which does, foundationally, make people feel seen and heard and encourages them to buy in to the group emotionally and credally.

obligatory disclaimer this is not saying tolerate misogyny racism transphobia genocide denial conspiracy theories etc etc or even to water down leftism to appeal to whoever. its about presenting these ideas in a manner and an environment that is encouraging people to drop their walls and open their mind. you can lead a horse to water and it may choose to drink, but if you try to drag it there or beat it in that direction, it probably won't. or it will take a much longer time and be a lot more stressful for everyone.

for any address to twitter you can replace the “x.com” with “nitter.net” and you will be able to browse as if you have an account. Lifesaver.

I say this as someone who sells pottery, and many people who see my art assume I am using art as an outlet to “express myself.”

I am not.

I use art to challenge myself. A lot of what I do is the equivalent of doing a hard sudoko or a half marathon, answering the question of “can I do this?”

I use art to question things and explore ideas. Finding physical synthesis between concepts and working out a design to its end state.

I use art to make money. I make some things just because I suspect they’ll sell well, and I keep making them when they do.

This idea that an artist is “putting themselves out there” every time they create is not only stupid, but harmful, and it kills critique and analysis.

Yes every creative work is influenced by its creator, but the most preliminary step of analysis is to define the purpose of a work of art (functional, narrative, entertainment, persuasive, decorative, ceremonial, etc.) and a vanishingly small percentage of that is self-expression. Even then, it’s generally tied to the self’s relationship with something else—perception, society, etc.

It’s very tiresome to have people assume they know you because they like (or dislike) your art, to make assumptions about who you are and how you approach the world. It’s nothing new— people called the Impressionists insane and the Fauvists degenerate. And now people are expected to hand out their identities and traumas to prove they have the right to explore certain subjects.