#pandering

It's a biography of this one particular person and people are arguing it should be about someone else? That seems absurd on the face of it, right? You are complaining your order of x isn't y?

But it makes sense if you can see the pervasive lack of empathy or the unwillingness to entertain that different people might have valuable perspectives. Some atheist people demand a sympathetic enlightenment perspective to call out these superstitious lunatics. Some religious people demand a mainstream believer's perspective to call out these cultish heretics.

Again, it's pandering relatability they ask. They can't relate to someone who holds fundamentally different beliefs so they need a self-insert. Humanity isn't enough to connect to someone. They must be your mirror. The disease of our culture is relatability. Even more than that, they see the way the film tries to express what the Shaker's religious experience must have been like, and they are offended at the idea of letting themselves feel such sensations. It's a refusal to see the world through any other perspective than their own.

And then we wonder why the world is the way it is. Sure, capitalism does what it does. But the culture wars, the progressive infighting, the far right rise, the fracturing left etc. so much of it is fundamentally rooted in an learned unwillingness to believe there is any validity outside one's own perspective. it's true self-centredness.

It's like people need to believe otherness equals invalid in order not to have their self collapse in insecurity or something. It's genuinely so sad.

This opening scene is an embarrassment. Anyone who cares about quality writing should mock Square into oblivion for even thinking about putting it in the game.

When a character's popularity dictates how you write for that character, you're no longer a writer, you're just a performing flea.

ἐχθρὸς γάρ μοι κεῖνος ὁμῶς ᾿Αΐδαο πύλῃσιν ὅς χ’ ἕτερον μὲν κεύθῃ ἐνὶ φρεσίν, ἄλλο δὲ εἴπῃ*

- Homer, Illiad

I hate like the gates of hell whoever says one thing but hides another in his thoughts.*

Ho-hum. It’s that time of year again...

Remember the Occupy Wall Street movement? For a while corporations were genuinely threatened by angry disenfranchised youth. But corporations are run by smart people. In less than a decade they turned their attackers into defenders using this one simple trick.

There are three things I’ve learned since working in the corporate world.  Never ask a woman her age. Never ask a man, his salary. And never ask multinational corporations what their Middle Eastern logo looks like during pride month.