Tag: 07.26.18

Your Mind Is Not Like An Iceberg, With Masses Of Stuff Hidden Below The Surface

Behavioral scientist Nick Chater: “This whole idea of uncovering things from the unconscious and making them conscious has the presupposition that they are of the same type. … The tip of the iceberg is made of the same stuff as the rest of the iceberg, which is an invisible mass. And I think that’s really a mistake. The reality is that the things we’re conscious of — experiences, thoughts, fragments of conversation — are completely different in type from the things we’re unconscious of — all these mysterious brain processes, which lay down and retrieve memories, piece fragments of information together, and so on. The brain is doing lots of unconscious work — but it is not thought in any way we understand it.”

Have We Lost Our Sense Of Moral Rigor And Equivalency?

The outrage over a police shooting of an unarmed black teenager unfolds at the same level of intensity as the outrage over what might or might not be a case of racial profiling by a sales clerk in a small Brooklyn boutique. This is intentional: The general feeling seems to be that distinguishing between degrees of morally repugnant conduct will lead to some sort of blanket pardon of all such conduct; that to understand is always to forgive. Such concern is understandable, but misplaced — it flattens and obfuscates, rather than clarifies.

The Theatre Director Who Seeks To Divide His Audiences Rather Than Unite Them

“Dissatisfaction itself has become a commodity. Every day I see the headhunters from Western Europe’s theatres searching for fresh blood from problematic countries. At one point, everybody was asking me if I knew any directors from Ukraine. Then the focus shifted to Syria and Poland. There’s something deeply humiliating and colonial in the reduction of the work of an artist to her or his country of birth and the political problems of that same country.”

Warren Brown, Washington Post Auto Columnist Who Co-Wrote Memoir On Kidney Transplant, Dead At 70

“He described himself as a ‘servant’ to his readers — a representative who looked out for their financial interests while also trying to satisfy car enthusiasts’ passions for details about fuel efficiency, horsepower and torque. But in writing about one of the largest sectors of the U.S. economy, he also challenged readers who might have preferred that he stick to interiors and exteriors, penning columns that could veer sharply into politics and race.” In 2002, he and Post colleague Martha McNeil Hamilton published Black & White & Red All Over, about her donation of one of her kidneys to him.

Filmmaker Theo Angelopoulos’s Archives Destroyed In Greek Wildfires

“‘My husband’s books, his letters from celebrities, all the texts that authors had dedicated to him’ were destroyed in the fire, Phoebe Angelopoulou told local television. … The filmmaker, who won the prestigious Palme d’Or at Cannes in 1998 for Eternity and a Day, often spent summers with his family at the house in Mati, east of the capital.”

Robert Lepage Cancels Second Controversial Production

Earlier this month, the Canadian director’s piece SLĀV, which featured African-American slave songs performed by white singers, was cut from the Montreal Jazz Festival after protests. Now Lepage has called off Kanata, a show about the relationship between European settlers in Canada and First Nations peoples which he created for Ariane Mnouchkine’s Théâtre du Soleil in Paris. Indigenous Canadian artists had objected to work about them being made without their participation, and the controversy led several North American co-producers to back out of the project.

Some World Music Artists Are Skipping WOMAD Because Trying To Get UK Visas Is So Awful

“Acts from 128 countries are due to attend this year’s festival. But [organiser Chris] Smith said some had accepted the invitation to perform, only to withdraw after looking into the visa process. He blamed the situation on the 2016 decision to leave the European Union, which sent a message out that the UK was closed to foreigners.”