Copy > Paste #35

"According to the gurus of sexual liberation, the real purpose of sex is not to express love or to generate children (which is another way of expressing love) but to obtain pleasurable sensations. Sexual initiation, according to their view of things, means learning to overcome guilt and shame, to put aside our hesitations, and to enjoy what is described in their literature (which is rapidly becoming the literature of 'sex education' in our schools) as 'good sex'. This can occur with any partner of either sex, and requires no institutional preparation and no social endorsement.

That picture leaves out of consideration the phenomenon that distinguishes us from the other animals, and that also generates the need for a sexual morality, namely desire. Sexual desire is not a desire for sensations. It is a desire for a person: and I mean a person, not his or her body, conceived as an object in the physical world, but the person conceived as an incarnate subject, in whom the light of self-consciousness shines and who confronts me eye to eye and I to I. True desire is also a kind of petition: It demands reciprocity, mutuality, and a shared surrender. It is therefore compromising, jealous, and also threatening. No pursuit of a mere sensation could be compromising, jealous, or threatening in this way. Here lies the distinction between the erotic and the pornographic. Erotic literature is about wanting another person; pornography is about wanting sex."

by Roger Scruton in "The Moral Birds and The Bees. Sex and Marriage Properly Understood"

A outra persona deste blog

Não são apenas as pessoas que mantêm heterónimos. Há quem já se tenha referido a este blog tratando-o por megalomanias. Talvez, talvez...

Motto of the day

Live your life today as someone were to write your biography tomorrow.

Naivety is an advantage

There's no process of unlearning what you've learned from life. And how will you ever manage to comment on things again with such gaiety and such disregard for truth?

All About Eve

Smartly written and figured out, with an exceptional cast, and dating as far back as 1950.

Introduction overcome; now to what really matters. At one point - the emotional climax, I would name it - the main character, Margot Channing (performed by an intense Bette Davis in her fourties) is uttering a monologue of which I've transcripted the following:

Funny business, a woman's career. The things you drop on your way up the ladder so you can move faster. You forget you'll need them again when you get back to being a woman.

That's one career all females have in common, whether we like it or not.

Being a woman. Sooner or later, we've got to work at it. No matter how any other careers we've had or wanted. And in the last analysis, nothing's any good unless you can look up just before dinner or turn around in bed and there he is. Without that, you're not a woman.

You're something with a french provincial of fire... or a book full of clippings. But you're not a woman.

Slow curtain. The end.

Dramatic, consistent, feminine. Striking, and yet so tender with its honesty.

Text becomes actresse's words and her words, the viewer's toughts.

All About Eve is in fact, some awkward truth about all women. But should there be something natural about truth?

Lemonades are the pick of the day

Na sequência de um comentário da Menina Limão em post anterior (cf. Does it sound familiar?), apressei a leitura de The Brand Gap. Para o efeito recorri à apresentação online feita por Marty Neumeier (link palavras atrás para os interessados e distraídos). A manter este tipo de percurso, arrisco-me a só ler livros que foram realmente escritos para serem lidos. E vistos, neste caso em particular, pelo esforço de design implicado.

Quanto a uma resposta, ainda não tenho... Percorri os slides desta apresentação como um gourmet que não come há três dias, mas o livro do Thom Braun ainda está por terminar. My own fault... I'm a promiscuous reader.

Metaphor: no longer what it used to be

While I was dancing in my room to Franz Ferdinand's "This Fire", I looked out of the window and realized a fire truck was being parked nearby. And I thought irony was a misunderstood figure of speech.

Yawn

Tediousness ought to be considered the most dangerous of plagues and boring people the worst of the human kind.

Because being bored is worse than being dead.

Coloured vitamins

Cinco dias consecutivos a pôr gelo na cara, abro de novo a porta do congelador e hesito: um saco de legumes era cor, para variar.

Thrilled to make your acquaintance

As personalidades que as pessoas mais gostariam de ter conhecido cultivavam o género de personalidade que as pessoas menos gostariam de ter encarado.

Excepto, talvez, Oscar Wilde...


PS: "Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf? Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf?"

Feeling better post of the day

With your computer you may gain access to an almost unlimited world of variety, with knowledge and entertainment at the reach of a finger, your finger. But after an entire week without the chance to leave your room - physically, I mean - nothing on the web will seem as fascinating as a single drop of water pouring from the sky directly to your forehead. Unfortunately, it's August.

We promise to be back to our senses after this short deviation through non-Wildean logics.

Syllogism in denial

Nada é normal e tudo é normal. A interpretação varia com o contexto.

Does it sound familiar?

"Imagine, Plato said, a large, dark room in an ancient Athenian house. Facing one wall in a row of chairs sit a group of ten consumers. They have been told that they must focus their gaze only on the wall in front of them; they are not allowed to turn round.

At the back of the room a large fiery torch is lit. It casts light all around, and in particular onto the wall at which the consumers are gazing. Between the torch and the row of consumers are placed in turn various well-known Ancient Greek objects: an earthenware pot, a pair of sandals, a comb. Each object can be defined both in terms of its function (we know what is is) and its particular 'branded' style (eg the handles of the pot are distinctive, the sandals have a unique form of strapping, the comb a characteristic shape).

The objects throw shadows onto the wall in front of the audience, and the consumers are able to recognize the various brands on this basis. This early 'magic lantern show' is the equivalent of a modern-day presentation of brand logos, pack designs, or advertising executions.

The point being made is quite simple. The audience may be able to recognize one object from another, even one brand from another, on the basis of what is projected onto the wall- but what is being experienced is far less than 'reality'.

Plato is saying that, in the same way that the shadows on the wall are a limited and superficial projection of the different objects, so too are brands as we most immediately experience them a superficial projection of something more real."

in The Philosophy of Branding, by Thom Braun



O autor deste livro propõe-nos uma revisão das linhas principais das teorias filosóficas mais conhecidas, numa adaptação pouco convencional às temáticas da marca e do marketing. Thom Braun coloca Sócrates, Platão, Descartes ou mesmo Nietzsche a "falar" de marcas. O excerto transcrito mostra uma adaptação livre da Alegoria da Caverna de Platão para quem estiver interessado em encontrar the deeper meaning of branding.

Probably the most entertaining phylosophy book I have ever read. I only wish school would have been this much fun.

Out of the box thinking

mixxed quotes:

"What is a good idea?
One that happens is."

"Steal.

Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination.

Devour films, music, books, paintings, poems, photographs, conversations, dreams, trees, architecture, street signs, clouds, light and shadows.

Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic.

Authenticity in invaluable.

Originality is non-existent. Don't bother concealing your thievery - celebrate it if you feel like it.

Remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: 'It's not where you take things from - it's where you take them to'.

I stole this from Jim Jarmusch."

Not too much reality please

Too much reality can kill a man
But when he gets none of it, that should mean he's already dead.

Ridicule is nothing to be scared of...