I’m no longer satisfied by the explanation that there is no correlation between great art and great pain. I think that Vincent Van Gogh deserved to feel better and to be happy, and I think that he would have gone on to create many more beautiful paintings. But I take comfort in the idea that his art was about survival, that every beautiful thing he created was an affirmative commentary on the question, “Why live?”
The world hurts so goddamn much and I am so sorry. I don’t think pain makes artists great and I think that great artists got that way because they worked for it, but when I say that I mean they wrestled for the things they bring to light in their art, grabbing on tight to the miraculousness of light and sunflowers and living like they were drowning, because they were. And I mean that Van Gogh’s paintings all feel like they’re trying to save my life. This is beautiful, and it’s important. Beauty is important. Life is important. Light is important, and irises are important, and the color yellow is important, are you listening to me?
Pain doesn’t make artists great, but I think great art is always trying to respond to the question how can we stay alive? I think that’s an important distinction.
Depression will rot your soul in a way that will make you forget what beauty is and how to see it. When I was 17, I made a list of reasons to live, and it was like wading through deep mud. It fought me with every step. That heavy, aching numbness. It felt exhausting to write them down. Fireflies. The kindness of strangers. Libraries. Small birds. And if you understand the feeling I describe, you know that if you want to survive, you must become someone who sharply experiences the goodness of life. You have to dig your fingernails into it and drag it out of its hiding places around you.
This is about survival. Like when I say that this is great art, I mean that you can tell that there is something that is so so so important here, and that important thing is something like look, existence is beautiful. I can wish that Van Gogh had a chance to live a much longer, happier life, and at the same time be…cognizant? grateful? that his work doesn’t communicate Today I will paint cypresses but instead Today the world is beautiful, and I will live in it, and I will show you.
I don’t know how I got on this topic or why I’m so emotional. I can’t even tell most of the people that have saved my life; they are long gone. Thank you. For showing me.
There’s a really deep and well researched podcast on these kinds of black community massacres called Dreams of Black Wall Street. It’s covered the Greenwood, Tulsa and Okoe massacres as well as Rosewood and others. I already knew these things happened generally, but the set up of context, scope, details of the events and the generational effects that it illuminates, have both blown my mind and given me an even deeper appreciation for black survival and joy in country the United States, even though I was already about my people.
If you care about the histories and liberation of oppressed peoples, this is an important one to listen to.
why is the sims so addictive but only for a short amount of time??? like all u do is play the sims u don’t sleep u don’t eat it’s like you’re on drugs for around two days and then forget about it for the next whole year
God creating Adam and Eve then fucking off for the rest of the eternity like
While I’m writing things that I’ve been intending to write for a while… one of the things that I think that a lot of people who haven’t been involved in like… banking or corporate shenaniganry miss about why our economy is its current flavor of total fuckery is the concept of “fiduciary duty to shareholders.”
“Why does every corporation pursue endless growth?” Fiduciary duty to shareholders.
“Why do corporations treat workers the way they do?” Fiduciary duty to shareholders.
“Why do corporations make such bass-ackwards decisions about what’s ‘good for’ the company?” Fiduciary duty to shareholders.
The legal purpose of a corporation with shareholders – its only true purpose – is the generation of revenue/returns for shareholders. Period. That’s it. Anything else it does is secondary to that. Sustainability of business, treatment of workers, sustainability and quality of product, those things are functionally and legally second to generating revenue for shareholders. Again, period, end of story. There is no other function of a corporation, and all of its extensive legal privileges exist to allow it to do that.
“But Spider,” you might say, “that sounds like corporations only exist in current business in order to extract as much money and value as possible from the people actually doing the work and transfer it up to the people who aren’t actually doing the work!”
Yes. You are correct. Thank you for coming with me to that realization. You are incredibly smart and also attractive.
You might also say, “but Spider, is this a legal obligation? Could those running a company be held legally responsible for failing their obligations if they prioritize sustainability or quality of product or care of workers above returns for shareholders?”
Yes! They absolutely can! Isn’t that terrifying? Also you look great today, you’re terribly clever for thinking about these things. The board and officers of a corporation can be held legally responsible to varying degrees for failing to maximize shareholder value.
And that, my friends, is why corporations do things that don’t seem to make any fucking sense, and why 'continuous growth’ is valued above literally anything else: because it fucking has to be.
If you’re thinking that this doesn’t sound like a sustainable economic model, you’re not alone. People who are much smarter than both of us, and probably nearly as attractive, have written a proposal for how to change corporate law in order to create a more sensible and sustainable economy. This is one of several proposals, and while I don’t agree with all of this stuff, I think that reading it will really help people as a springboard to understanding exactly why our economy is as fucked up as it is, and why just saying 'well then don’t pursue eternal growth’ isn’t going to work – because right now it legally can’t. We’d need to change – and we can change – the laws around corporate governance.
This concept of 'shareholder primacy’ and the fiduciary duty to shareholders is one I had to learn when I was getting my securities licenses, and every time I see people confusedly asking why corporations try to grow grow grow in a way that only makes sense if you’re a tumor, I sigh and think, 'yeah, fiduciary duty to shareholders.’
(And this is why Emet and I have refused to seek investors for NK – we might become beholden to make decisions which maximize investor return, and that would get in the way of being able to fully support our people and our values and say the things we started this company to say.)
Anyway, you should read up on these concepts if you’re not familiar. It’s pretty eye-opening.
Yeah, there’s actually such a thing as “Criminal Mismanagement”, and while it normally applies to corruption, it can, has, and will be used to say “You made a decision that was good for the public. You made a decision that was good for your workers. You made a decision based in ethics. That is the legal equivalent of stealing from the stakeholders.”
You know that people don’t know what they don’t know, right? That it’s impossible to know that you don’t know something like this?
And that’s why I wrote this post in the first place, because I realized that people don’t seem to know this?
To be blunt, this information is not made readily available to most people, and that’s by design. Most of us aren’t taught this in school on purpose. Most of us don’t get this explained to us on purpose.
The reaction in the notes of this post is why that’s the case! But people don’t know that they don’t know this fact, which… yeah. That’s how knowing things works.
Anyway, that’s why I wrote the post in the first place.
