Will Wilkinson - Latest Comments in Taste

Re: Taste

Mike Giberson — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 09:17:42 -0000

"a novel about how all the most super awesome geniuses in the world get sick of all the total jerk losers so they create their own secret super awesome genius city where no jerks can ever bother them ever again."

I haven't read the book, so I don't know for sure, but it sort of sounds like the plot of Carol Gilligan's novel, "Kyra," as described in Sunday's NYT Book Review.

Re: Taste

Greg Newburn — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 00:10:44 -0000

Rand's foreign policy wasn't exactly pacifistic.

Re: Taste

mk — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 11:34:18 -0000

Uh oh, should we appreciate TN's jibe in good humor due to its excellent deployment of irony, or should we discerningly note that we are all full of shit and cry ourselves to sleep? What would Hume do?

Re: Taste

"Q" the Enchanter — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 11:31:37 -0000

"so they create their own secret super awesome genius city where no jerks can ever bother them ever again."

Is this another dig at Disneyland?

Re: Taste

will wilkinson — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 22:40:24 -0000

Touche, sir!

Re: Taste

TN DC Atty — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 21:49:00 -0000

You make an excellent point. The philistines with their vulgar taste for pomp and melodrama will never understand the liberal-individualist appreciation for subtlety and restraint.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go read a novel about how all the most super awesome geniuses in the world get sick of all the total jerk losers so they create their own secret super awesome genius city where no jerks can ever bother them ever again.

Re: Taste

Brian Moore — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 09:57:17 -0000

"But it can also be illuminating to occasionally note openly that ideologies do have an aesthetic dimension, and that some of them are just hideous."

Certainly! But I can't resist mentioning (even though as you put "some" you are allowing for it) that you could have nice aesthetics and bad ideology, and vice versa.

A critic of free markets could claim that Brittany Spears and The Enquirer are the vulgar aesthetics that arise when markets are allowed to "run wild." I pretty much look down on populism, but I have to accept that in a free system, lots of people are going to choose the tawdry over the refined, and that there's nothing wrong with that.

(I haven't tried to poke holes in this argument, just relaying it.)