Nonfiction
I like this story on decision fatigue, if for no other reason than that it makes me feel justified in eating the same thing day after day-I’m saving up willpower!-and as a bonus offers a reason to eat when I want to improve my decisionmaking.
Robert M. Fogelson, Bourgeois Nightmares: Suburbia, 1870-1930: History of restrictive covenants in suburbia, not very well organized but with various interesting details. There is a great story under here, though Fogelson doesn’t do much more than scratch the surface: how did Americans, at least at the level of legal discourse, shift from thinking that “property rights” meant “no one can interfere with my property” from thinking that “any private agreements people make about land are enforceable, even if that means they can’t repaint their houses without the consent of the Governing Committee”? There’s something about the larger move from status to contract and the idea that the costs of variation in contracting can be disregarded in order to achieve more flexibility than property rights generally allow. Fogelson’s best point is that the adopters of restrictive covenants didn’t think that excluding the wrong kind of people (nonwhite, poor, and/or working-class) was sufficient: they also distrusted people with the racial and economic credentials to buy in initially, so they put other constraints on how property in these new planned communities could be used, both economic and aesthetic.
Diane Waldman, Jenny Holzer: Holzer is a feminist conceptual artist who works mainly in words. I like her work a lot. It’s more brutal than Barbara Kruger’s, but in the same vein.
Among Holzer’s Truisms (1977-79): “A relaxed man is not necessarily a better man.” “Abstraction is a type of decadence.” “Being judgmental is a sign of life.” “Being sure of yourself means you’re a fool.” “Believing in rebirth is the same as admitting defeat.” “Categorizing fear is calming.” “Class structure is as artificial as plastic.” “Everything that’s interesting is new.” “Freedom is a luxury not a necessity.” “If you can’t leave your mark give up.” “It is heroic to try to stop time.” “It’s just an accident that your parents are your parents.” “Killing is unavoidable but is nothing to be proud of.” “Lack of charisma can be fatal.” “Loving animals is a substitute activity.” “Low expectations are good protection.” “Planning for the future is escapism.” “To volunteer is reactionary.” “Trading a life for a life is fair enough.” “You have to hurt others to be extraordinary.” “Your actions are pointless if no one notices.” I like words, so I feel like they work for me about as well on the page as they do installed on LED screens, but I understand that a lot of people find the physical presentation important, and I admit it was fun to see pictures of “Lack of charisma can be fatal” under the Caesar’s Palace sign, and “Raise boys and girls the same way” on a stadium Jumbotron.
Living: “It’s nice when you decide you like someone and, without declaring yourself, do what’s possible to further his happiness. This can take the form of gifts, lovely food, publicity, or advance warning.” “It is hard to know what someone wants because you can’t actually feel his needs. You develop ways to read or anticipate demands or you wait until you’re assaulted and then his requirements become tangible.” “Effigies let you study or act upon someone with impunity. They are good for practice.” “It takes a while before you can step over inert bodies and go ahead with what you were trying to do.” “There is a period when it is clear that you have gone wrong but you continue. Sometimes there is a luxurious amount of time before anything bad happens.”
Lustmord (lust-murder) has three narratives: victim, perpetrator, outside observer. It’s perhaps the most disturbing version of Holzer’s repeated themes of violation, penetration, the creation and exploitation of holes on/in people, and the rage and disgust people feel for those they have harmed. Holzer had these words written in women’s blood, and also on women’s skin, and engraved them in silver wrapped around human bones.
Then there’s the Survival series: “Protect me from what I want.” “Outer space is where you discover wonder, where you fight and never hurt Earth. If you stop believing this, your mood turns ugly.” “Savor kindness because cruelty is always possible later.” “Spit all over someone with a mouthful of milk if you want to find out something about their personality fast.” “Use what is dominant in a culture to change it quickly.” “If you had behaved nicely the communists wouldn’t exist.” “You can’t reach the people who can kill you at will, so you have to go home and think about what to do.”
Timothy D. Wilson, Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious: Interesting look at the ways we can misperceive ourselves-our beliefs, our traits, our dependence on external conditions. Though there’s nothing particularly new here if you read a lot of behavioral psych, Wilson looks at behavioral issues from the perspective of a theoretician interested in whether there really is an unconscious mind and what’s in it. He covers unconscious racial prejudice, mistakes about our own competence, mistakes about how we actually feel about someone else, and so on. In the end, he suggests, coherent narratives are good for us (though they do need some connection to reality), and we can often improve our own lives by acting like the people we want to be-faking friendliness, or dutifulness, or other positive behaviors until we make it, in part by changing our own unconscious self-images.
comments on DW | reply there. I have invites or you can use OpenID.
Robert M. Fogelson, Bourgeois Nightmares: Suburbia, 1870-1930: History of restrictive covenants in suburbia, not very well organized but with various interesting details. There is a great story under here, though Fogelson doesn’t do much more than scratch the surface: how did Americans, at least at the level of legal discourse, shift from thinking that “property rights” meant “no one can interfere with my property” from thinking that “any private agreements people make about land are enforceable, even if that means they can’t repaint their houses without the consent of the Governing Committee”? There’s something about the larger move from status to contract and the idea that the costs of variation in contracting can be disregarded in order to achieve more flexibility than property rights generally allow. Fogelson’s best point is that the adopters of restrictive covenants didn’t think that excluding the wrong kind of people (nonwhite, poor, and/or working-class) was sufficient: they also distrusted people with the racial and economic credentials to buy in initially, so they put other constraints on how property in these new planned communities could be used, both economic and aesthetic.
Diane Waldman, Jenny Holzer: Holzer is a feminist conceptual artist who works mainly in words. I like her work a lot. It’s more brutal than Barbara Kruger’s, but in the same vein.
Among Holzer’s Truisms (1977-79): “A relaxed man is not necessarily a better man.” “Abstraction is a type of decadence.” “Being judgmental is a sign of life.” “Being sure of yourself means you’re a fool.” “Believing in rebirth is the same as admitting defeat.” “Categorizing fear is calming.” “Class structure is as artificial as plastic.” “Everything that’s interesting is new.” “Freedom is a luxury not a necessity.” “If you can’t leave your mark give up.” “It is heroic to try to stop time.” “It’s just an accident that your parents are your parents.” “Killing is unavoidable but is nothing to be proud of.” “Lack of charisma can be fatal.” “Loving animals is a substitute activity.” “Low expectations are good protection.” “Planning for the future is escapism.” “To volunteer is reactionary.” “Trading a life for a life is fair enough.” “You have to hurt others to be extraordinary.” “Your actions are pointless if no one notices.” I like words, so I feel like they work for me about as well on the page as they do installed on LED screens, but I understand that a lot of people find the physical presentation important, and I admit it was fun to see pictures of “Lack of charisma can be fatal” under the Caesar’s Palace sign, and “Raise boys and girls the same way” on a stadium Jumbotron.
Living: “It’s nice when you decide you like someone and, without declaring yourself, do what’s possible to further his happiness. This can take the form of gifts, lovely food, publicity, or advance warning.” “It is hard to know what someone wants because you can’t actually feel his needs. You develop ways to read or anticipate demands or you wait until you’re assaulted and then his requirements become tangible.” “Effigies let you study or act upon someone with impunity. They are good for practice.” “It takes a while before you can step over inert bodies and go ahead with what you were trying to do.” “There is a period when it is clear that you have gone wrong but you continue. Sometimes there is a luxurious amount of time before anything bad happens.”
Lustmord (lust-murder) has three narratives: victim, perpetrator, outside observer. It’s perhaps the most disturbing version of Holzer’s repeated themes of violation, penetration, the creation and exploitation of holes on/in people, and the rage and disgust people feel for those they have harmed. Holzer had these words written in women’s blood, and also on women’s skin, and engraved them in silver wrapped around human bones.
Then there’s the Survival series: “Protect me from what I want.” “Outer space is where you discover wonder, where you fight and never hurt Earth. If you stop believing this, your mood turns ugly.” “Savor kindness because cruelty is always possible later.” “Spit all over someone with a mouthful of milk if you want to find out something about their personality fast.” “Use what is dominant in a culture to change it quickly.” “If you had behaved nicely the communists wouldn’t exist.” “You can’t reach the people who can kill you at will, so you have to go home and think about what to do.”
Timothy D. Wilson, Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious: Interesting look at the ways we can misperceive ourselves-our beliefs, our traits, our dependence on external conditions. Though there’s nothing particularly new here if you read a lot of behavioral psych, Wilson looks at behavioral issues from the perspective of a theoretician interested in whether there really is an unconscious mind and what’s in it. He covers unconscious racial prejudice, mistakes about our own competence, mistakes about how we actually feel about someone else, and so on. In the end, he suggests, coherent narratives are good for us (though they do need some connection to reality), and we can often improve our own lives by acting like the people we want to be-faking friendliness, or dutifulness, or other positive behaviors until we make it, in part by changing our own unconscious self-images.
comments on DW | reply there. I have invites or you can use OpenID.