[FRIAM] great man theory

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OK. But a) I don't think there was any snark in the caricatures. Your perception of it is, I think, an instance of imputation ... aspects of your model being attributed to the words. But, more importantly, b) Yes, of course it's caricature. That's the point.

Your bringing up Linda Rondstadt, Pierce, and Feynman is important. I'm sorry if I glossed over that too much. But as my trailing comment about Oprah's evolution (and Jackson's evolution) should hint toward your point. Yes, we can take a deeper look into the *actual* people (as opposed to their names as symbols Oprah is not Oprah). And assuming we're not sociopaths, we can find the humanity in there ... see the victims as people.

But that's not what we do. And we do it less and less every day, every year, every decade. Republicans are horrible monsters that need to be eradicated. That's our new touchstone for "accuracy" in caricature. And Marcus' contribution may well be even more accurate, as a socio-cultural comment, that we *must* caricature these people and things in order to build wealth/momentum to do difficult work. If that's the case, getting accurate, hours long descriptive quality, into the mix *defeats* the purpose.

The reason we put the Bohms and Gödels of the world through the wringer, so that they end up suicidal, is so we can wring our objectives from their desiccated little souls. To look at our victims as full-blown humans gets in the way of our progress.


On 3/12/21 10:07 AM, Steve Smith wrote:
> 
>> What is the quote "Methinks the lady doth protest too much"? >8^D
>>
>> Dave's post held zero resentment, as far as I can tell. Maybe Steve resents.
> I was reporting on my own experience/introspection of/on/with
> resentment, yes.   I was also noting that such lists are compressed
> caricatures.   I don't know if Glen or Dave resents these people their
> success, but it sure sounds like whomever did the caricaturing was
> looking for a (not inaccurate, but possibly very carefully contrived)
> low-dimensional silhouette of a high-dimensional
> person/phenomena/career/movement.
>> I don't and I don't think Dave does. What's at work, here, isn't resentment. It's an attempt to point out a fundamental flaw in our highly connected world ... watching as GroupThink churns from one celebrity to the next, from celebrity like Trump to the more sedate celebrity of Biden ... from the celebrity of AI to the more sedate celebrity of ML.
> Sure, there is a pop-collective over-estimation of value going on in all
> of these examples.    We here variously give folks like Pearce or
> Feynman caricatured celebrity status which in turn might evoke the
> desire in some to create a less flattering caricature.   Caricature all.
>> If we replaced the people in Dave's list with technologies, we'd see the SAME pattern.
> And some have called out the signifier "Science" and the things it
> pretends to point at as being a broad example  as well.
>> And Dave explicitly said, and Jon remarked on, the fact that *we* make these celebrities. They're the victims. And if we want to come to terms with our highly connected world, we need to look hard in the mirror.
> 
> I think that was my fundamental point as well.  I wasn't trying to
> contradict or impugn Glen or Dave or anyone else, just noticing that
> when there is snark there is ego.  If those lists of traits of "Great
> (wo)men" were not dripping with snark then you may be accurate that I
> projected my own stuff into it and I'm entirely off-base.  Wouldn't be
> the first time.
> 
> - Sieve

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