Elsewhere, August 24, 2010

Western culture’s self-hatred, H.P. Lovecraft’s religious legacy, virtual ethical tests, Philly bloggers, and the secret “Scott Pilgrim” ending.
H.P. Lovecraft
H.P. Lovecraft

Elsewhere: A collection of interesting links and articles that I’ve come across in the last week or so. Follow me on Twitter for more of the same.

Why does contemporary Western culture hate itself so much?

The self-accusations are familiar. We are imperialists, racists, and purveyors of unsustainable consumption that threatens to engulf the world in an environmental disaster. The colonization of the New World amounted to genocide. Our greed supports brutal tyrants. Capitalism depends upon the exploitation of the world’s poor. On and on goes the litany of shame.

To a certain extent, our present self-laceration reflects one of the virtues of Western culture. Socratic philosophy and Old Testament prophecy combined to create a strong impulse toward self-criticism as a way to overcome self-deceptions and false loyalties. It was not an accident that St. Thomas began his analysis of the truths of Christianity by surveying the objections. As he knew, the pressure of criticism pushes us toward a fuller and more self-aware grasp of the truth.

Yet, as [Pascal] Bruckner recognizes, our postmodern age does not seem to view criticism as a way of refining and deepening our loyalty to the real achievements of Western culture, not the least of which is the freedom to criticize. We seem to relish denunciation for its own sake.

Why? To begin, the notion that the West is the Great Satan feeds our egoism. As Bruckner explains, “This is the paternalism of the guilty conscience: seeing ourselves as the kings of infamy is still a way of staying on the crest of history.”

Cults of an Unwitting Oracle: The (Unintended) Religious Legacy of H. P. Lovecraft:

There are two other possibilities for why some people are drawn to Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos. First, since Copernicus and the dawn of modernity, the Earth is no longer the center of the universe, with the gods above us watching our every move. The universe is a vast, foreboding, and empty place. Stories of extraterrestrial visitors have clamed a powerful hold on popular consciousness, despite the fact that scientists, regardless of their herculean efforts, have yet to discover one shred of tangible evidence for alien life in the cosmos. Nevertheless, aliens have clearly replaced gods and demons for many in our modern society. For some, they are watching us, living among us, giving us secret information from their highly evolved planets. Reports of alien abduction, UFO-government conspiracies, and prophets in tune with alien entities have proliferated in the media over the past few decades. Who can forget the 39 members of Heaven’s Gate who, in 1997, under the leadership of Marshall Applewhite (1931 – 1997), committed suicide in order to transmit their souls into the Hale-Bopp comet, which was “really” an alien spacecraft that would take them to an interplanetary paradise? This is just the tip of the iceberg of UFO religions that have steadily arisen. Lovecraftian religions can be seen as a part of this larger trend, albeit the Cthulhu gods are not as “caring” as some of the other alien gods.

Secondly, and related to this, Lovecraft’s mythos, in stark contrast to its creator’s own ethnocentric views and overall xenophobia, is a perfect mythology in a multicultural world. Lovecraft’s gods are not bound to any ethnicity, as are the gods of Greece, Rome, Israel, Arabia, Northern Europe, the Americas, Africa, etc. Although they were invented by a New Englander, they are by definition cosmic and out of this world. They are extra-terrestrial, extra-dimensional, and post-race. Like other alien gods, Lovecraft’s gods are of a cosmic ethnicity that makes our continued squabbling about race and ethnicity on this planet seem infinitely petty.

Scientists are using virtual reality to run ethical tests that would otherwise be unethical:

Male volunteers in the Spanish experiment see a virtual room with a woman in front of them caressing their arm. Meanwhile, the illusion is reinforced by someone actually running their fingers down their arm in real life.

Looking in the mirror, the person looking back is a young girl wearing a skirt.

A little later, things take a sinister turn. The volunteer is shown a view hovering above the scene instead of acting as the girl. The previously affectionate woman inexplicably lashes out, slapping the girl twice on the face.

The idea is that having previously been the girl, the volunteer feels the shock of what has happened more personally.

If you’re a blogger living in Philadelphia and you make any money with your blog, the city wants to charge you $300 for a “business privilege license”:

…even if your blog collects a handful of hits a day, as long as there’s the potential for it to be lucrative — and, as Mandale points out, most hosting sites set aside space for bloggers to sell advertising — the city thinks you should cut it a check. According to Andrea Mannino of the Philadelphia Department of Revenue, in fact, simply choosing the option to make money from ads — regardless of how much or little money is actually generated — qualifies a blog as a business. The same rules apply to freelance writers. As former City Paper news editor Doron Taussig once lamented [Slant, “Taxed Out,” April 28, 2005], the city considers freelancers — which both Bess and Barry are, in addition to their blog work — “businesses,” and requires them to pay for a license and pay taxes on their profits, on top of their state and federal taxes.

The Scott Pilgrim Ending That Was Never Shot (spoiler-ish):

Anyway, in the months leading up to its release in theaters this month, Edgar Wright did some last minute retooling on “Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World,” changing the ending from what test screening/preview audiences saw earlier in the year. But little did we know that Wright had another idea in mind that unfortunately he wasn’t able to get capture at least for posterity.

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