{"id":73860,"date":"2022-09-28T01:00:59","date_gmt":"2022-09-28T05:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=73860"},"modified":"2022-09-27T10:23:10","modified_gmt":"2022-09-27T14:23:10","slug":"qotd-yearning-for-the-endless-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2022\/09\/28\/qotd-yearning-for-the-endless-now\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Yearning for the “endless now”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>My guess \u2014 and I am NOT an art historian, I can’t stress that enough \u2014 is that this reflects the increasing emphasis on the individual [in the late 15th century]. Which, again, is tied to the acceptance of linear time \u2014 the desire to be commemorated as an individual, unique person, not as a type. The more people who could afford portraits, the more people wanted them, and the more the individual<\/em> commemoration mattered. High-medieval “portraits” are extremely accurate as funeral sculptures, but illustrations in manuscripts are often little better than stick figures.<\/p>\n

By the (I think) 16th, and certainly by the 17th, centuries, you’ve got portraits of people as Classical throwbacks \u2014 contemporary figures tricked out in Roman togas and whatnot. This is the full acceptance of linear time \u2014 you can move a distinct individual both forward and back along not just the course of his life, but the course of linear history.<\/p>\n

Contrast this to the Juggalos, whose first impulse in any situation is to take a selfie … but who never, ever look<\/em> at those selfies. Basic College Girl “culture” is often described as narcissistic \u2014 lord knows I’ve done it enough myself \u2014 but the funny thing is, for as self-involved as they are, they have almost no pictures of themselves hanging around. They don’t decorate their office cubicles with pictures of their families. Nothing could be easier than “flipping” through a digital photo “book”, but they never do. They go to extraordinary lengths to arrange the perfect selfie … but then they could instantly delete it, for all the impact it has.<\/p>\n

I think this is because they actively shun the idea of linear time. When I was a young man, every girl had a photo album in her dorm room, and part of the “getting to know you” process was flipping through it with her. Half the fun was seeing the brutal fashions of yesteryear; you both had a good laugh over it.<\/p>\n

I think that would be actively painful for Juggalos, and not just because they can’t stand to have others see them as less than 100% perfect at all times. Rather, I think the problem is the fundamental one \u2014 they don’t want to be reminded that time passes<\/em>.<\/p>\n

They want<\/em> the endless now. They want to be ghosts.<\/p>\n

Severian, “The Ghosts (II)”, Founding Questions<\/em><\/a>, 2022-05-18.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My guess \u2014 and I am NOT an art historian, I can’t stress that enough \u2014 is that this reflects the increasing emphasis on the individual [in the late 15th century]. Which, again, is tied to the acceptance of linear time \u2014 the desire to be commemorated as an individual, unique person, not as a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,53,41,13],"tags":[262,1020,1462],"class_list":["post-73860","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-politics","category-quotations","category-usa","tag-culture","tag-progressives","tag-severian"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-jdi","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73860","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73860"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73860\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":76799,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73860\/revisions\/76799"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}