"Whiteness burning": UCT Students are throwing “colonial” art on the pyre. Forgot College education
442 replies, posted
[QUOTE=HumanAbyss;49775773]And where did you pull the word objective from? Your ass? It isn't part of this discussion.
Everything is historical. Yes. That's true. Doesn't make it significant? Not true. History will be forgoten? True, but we should try not to, as we have the power to do so.
How the fuck do you reconcile this shit in your brain? You can't argue it, you can't even lay out a good reason anyone should agree with you, why are you so adamant that you're right about how little art, and the destruction of it matters?
Art fucking matters. Art is a window both into ourselves, and into the past. To lose either option of where to look is a tragedy that can never be undone. The history we've lost as it is, is a true tragedy, but you're okay with losing more?
Have you ever heard "Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it"? Because that's about YOU and your mindset.[/QUOTE]
I'm not here to convince you and I'm willing to believe otherwise, I just don't think that the loss of art is inherently a tragedy. And I brought up objectivity, btw, because you brought up subjectivity.
[QUOTE=Take_Opal;49775774]Or historical insignificance.[/QUOTE]
Fuck you, you are not someone who decides that.
It boggles my mind how can a person make such a dumb comment.
[highlight](User was banned for this post ("Flaming" - Big Dumb American))[/highlight]
[QUOTE=Xubs;49775775]Define historical insignificance[/QUOTE]
anything that take_opal, custodian of history doesn't care about
[QUOTE=HumanAbyss;49775781]well good, we've got your word saying how important something is, or isn't again!
It's totally good to know Take_Opal is able to override the comments of the experts in this field[/QUOTE]
Why do you think I'm trying to state my opinion as if a fact? It's just my opinion.
[QUOTE=Take_Opal;49775788]I'm not here to convince you and I'm willing to believe otherwise, I just don't think that the loss of art is inherently a tragedy. And I brought up objectivity, btw, because you brought up subjectivity.[/QUOTE]
Why bring up objectivity when I'm speaking about the subjectivity of the issue?
[QUOTE=ImpSnob;49775324]The world be a lot better without white people.[/QUOTE]
good lets get started
you first, please.
[QUOTE=Take_Opal;49775795]Why do you think I'm trying to state my opinion as if a fact? It's just my opinion.[/QUOTE]
Maybe because you, contrary to what you said last post, are trying to convince people that art burning is in fact, not a big deal, and we can turn a blind eye to it, and I find that wrong, and I want to understand the logical steps that lead you to that conclusion so that I can understand.
You have failed to do this in any meaningful way whilst acting like you are stating a fact the whole time.
Even the racism = power + prejudice argument doesnt work in south africa
black people hold the power there now. the fact that black people are burning paintings of white people and are making racially charged remarks is usually something that precedes genocide
south africa is in an economic and social decline, marked by a general decay of everything as an increasingly inept and corrupt government struggles to administer a country that they are incapable of ruling. the black population increasingly blames their problems on the whites and so turns to violence against them
education in south africa is falling behind what it was twenty years ago, unemployment is worsening, economic growth is stagnant, the politics is that of a country slowly morphing into an authoritarian system (like russia or venezuela). given a few more years it could get ugly
[QUOTE=BananaMed;49775790]Fuck you, you are not someone who decides that.
It boggles my mind how can a person make such a dumb comment.[/QUOTE]
I never said I would be the judge of that, I'm not burning photos and I wouldn't because I see no value from the act necessarily aside from catharsis of people.
[editline]19th February 2016[/editline]
[QUOTE=HumanAbyss;49775808]Maybe because you, contrary to what you said last post, are trying to convince people that art burning is in fact, not a big deal, and we can turn a blind eye to it, and I find that wrong, and I want to understand the logical steps that lead you to that conclusion so that I can understand.
You have failed to do this in any meaningful way whilst acting like you are stating a fact the whole time.[/QUOTE]
I'm not trying to convince anyone. I don't care if you agree, this is just a discussion.
But I'll leave this alone because I feel like I've become hotter than a stack of Velvet Elvises on fire and you're all just talking about me and my posts instead of OP it seems.
[QUOTE=Take_Opal;49775774]Or historical insignificance.[/QUOTE]
There is no such thing.
In fact, what people tend to describe as "insignifgant" can tell us so much about a people or period. Everything is signifigant in recreating the past.
[QUOTE=Take_Opal;49775814]I'm not trying to convince anyone. I don't care if you agree, this is just a discussion.[/QUOTE]
If you cannot explain why you hold that opinion then you should seriously consider that your opinion is irrational.
[QUOTE=Take_Opal;49775814]I never said I would be the judge of that, I'm not burning photos and I wouldn't because I see no value from the act necessarily aside from catharsis of people.
[editline]19th February 2016[/editline]
I'm not trying to convince anyone. I don't care if you agree, this is just a discussion.[/QUOTE]
So you DO see a reason even though earlier in the same sentence, you said you don't see a reason? I'm confused, and apparently, so are you.
What is a discussion but an attempt to lay out logical reasons on both sides of the field. You have not done this. You just keep relying on the same basic irrelavent premise.
[QUOTE=Take_Opal;49775814]I never said I would be the judge of that, I'm not burning photos and I wouldn't because I see no value from the act necessarily aside from catharsis of people.
[editline]19th February 2016[/editline]
I'm not trying to convince anyone. I don't care if you agree, this is just a discussion.[/QUOTE]
You call that catharsis? Big words for just burining SOME HISTORICAL INSIGNIFICANCE.
I'd rather have them blueballed than have cultural treasures destroyed. Why not burn a photo-copy? Like any other normal group of protesters?
I'm pretty sure the entirety of the history and anthropological fields disagree with you 100% Take_Opal. Hell pretty sure almost the entirety of any academic field would disagree with you.
I really hope this doesn't descend into violence over there. If this happens at my university I'm leaving as soon as possible.
[QUOTE=BananaMed;49775840]You call that catharsis? Big words for just burining SOME HISTORICAL INSIGNIFICANCE.?[/QUOTE]
This is a loss for everyone. Every culture plays a part in our collective history and every persons story played in part in creating the world we live in today.
Letting any group decide what history is "valuable" only means less perspectives to learn from and less truth.
History, like all other forms of knowledge, is both intrinsically and instrumentally valuable.
Let's just burn everything related to world war 2 while we're at it. Who cares if it tells a cautionary tale about xenophobia and dictatorships? People were treated like[I] cattle[/I] and [I]gassed[/I] and that makes me really, really uncomfortable. Also, I don't even think it's historically significant!
[t]http://totallyhistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/book-burning.jpg[/t]
I bet if you reverse the colors and ask Opal if he supports this, he'll say yes.
Nothing was gained from this except for a few fleeting moments of "FUCK YEAAAH SCREW WHITE PEOPLE". Whatever catharsis these people might have felt is nothing compared to the value of the paintings they destroyed. There is no good reason to destroy historical artifacts, ever.
Fantastic movement folks. Lets be just as ignorant and racist as people were to you back then.
Things have gone full circle at this point. I'm pretty sure this will die down just like any petty cause but I feel bad that lots of historical artifacts are needlessly being destroyed because "fukk white pipple lol". This is 2016 and people are still making issues of race, god damned bigots, all of them.
[QUOTE=Take_Opal;49775771]Perhaps I'm a bit more sci-fi than I should be, but I don't buy that digital archives are entirely useless.[/QUOTE]
it isn't that they are entirely useless, its that we're making a lot of assumptions about the future by relying only on them. society is fragile, and we could be knocked back a few hundred years by anything from solar storms to global warming causing societal collapse. the technology we enjoy today could be lost for some time, and anything we had in digital storage could easily be lost forever.
and it may not even be any sort of apocalyptic reasons why digital archival doesn't cut it for the long run. except for that brand spanking new glass storage thing that just came out and m-disks, we've got 50 years tops of being in perfect storage conditions on magnetic tape before the data degrades. that is an incredibly short amount of time. yes, we've advanced a lot in that time but that is another side of the problem. we easily could advance far enough past current methods of archive to the point where we've forgotten how to interface with them. it is already happening with technology not even 30 years old and there is no reason to expect that to stop happening. yes you could just continually upgrade the archives, and you should, but it would be stupid to not keep a physical backup, something which has been proven to withstand time.
I hope UCT expels everyone involved and distributes the damages among them, this type of behavior cannot go unpunished, because if it does they will do it again, and again, and then students at other universities will start doing this as well, rinse and repeat.
[QUOTE=Toro;49775934]I hope UCT expels everyone involved and distributes the damages among them, this type of behavior cannot go unpunished, because if it does they will do it again, and again, and then students at other universities will start doing this as well, rinse and repeat.[/QUOTE]
I'd support them being expelled even if this wasn't historical artifacts. Burning buses and storming buildings to loot stuff is just inappropriate behavior.
[QUOTE=Take_Opal;49775758]No because there is no objective truth to this stuff that matters. Everything is historical, that doesn't make it significant and history will be and is forgotten.[/QUOTE]
The problem is, that art is generally subjective in nature. As such you generally have to assign some objective value to it. We generally do that based on two principles.
a) the test of time - the art itself transcends mere art. It's an important link to the past. And we generally as a society ought to protect something as old as these works. Even a child's scribbles might easily be worth preserving if they're 300 years old.
b) the impact it might have - once a piece of art has a profound impact on society - be it in monetary value or cultural, we generally try to protect it.
It's why randomly destroying a piece from Banksy would be frowned upon, Likewise destroying modern art that has made some significant impact, just because you don't like it, would be frowned upon.
Contrary to that, destroying a recent painting by an amateur painter would rarely elicit an emotion.
So yes, old shit has an actual objective value.
You guys need to realise that, assuming Opal isn't just trolling, he's arguing based on his feelings.
He "feels" this art is not of value, therefore he believes it's objectively of no value. Logic and reason will not convince him because he isn't using it. His feelings are what he clings to, if you challenge them with facts he will hold onto them harder. It's like arguing with a religious fundamentalist, there will be no changing of opinion with logic, facts, constructive arguments because when his feelings are challenged he will come up with any excuse to validate them. He might legit not give a crap about history and art, or he may feel that this art burning is a good thing for some reason. Maybe he doesn't like white people. We're never going to know the truth here because he's not communicating in a way where information can be properly understood.
Just give up, he's beyond convincing.
[QUOTE=SleepyAl;49775962]You guys need to realise that, assuming Opal isn't just trolling, he's arguing based on his feelings.
He "feels" this art is not of value, therefore he believes it's objectively of no value. Logic and reason will not convince him because he isn't using it. His feelings are what he clings to, if you challenge them with facts he will hold onto them harder. It's like arguing with a religious fundamentalist, there will be no changing of opinion with logic, facts, constructive arguments because when his feelings are challenged he will come up with any excuse to validate them. He might legit not give a crap about history and art, or he may feel that this art burning is a good thing for some reason. Maybe he doesn't like white people. We're never going to know the truth here because he's not communicating in a way where information can be properly understood.
Just give up, he's beyond convincing.[/QUOTE]
It's important to argue against people who value things based on their feeling rather than logic or reason. Not because you will convince them they are wrong, but because others will see and hear your arguments and evaluate them for themselves. If you just let people justify things with "Muh feels" without opposing them you are implicitly saying you are okay with such petty reasons, even if you actually aren't okay with them.
[QUOTE=Take_Opal;49775558]
But no, you can't be racist towards white people.[/QUOTE]
Just pointing out that people who think like this do actually exist, and there are more than one in this thread.
Some deny they exist because they think its a straw man that makes thier "side" look worse, but picking sides is a mind killer.
[QUOTE=Janus Vesta;49776013]It's important to argue against people who value things based on their feeling rather than logic or reason. Not because you will convince them they are wrong, but because others will see and hear your arguments and evaluate them for themselves. If you just let people justify things with "Muh feels" without opposing them you are implicitly saying you are okay with such petty reasons, even if you actually aren't okay with them.[/QUOTE]
This. If nothing else, then the arguments must be there to serve to educate and energize the people who are already on your side of things, and it entrenches them with you further; then they'll carry on the message, and your side gains momentum. Might not be a lot of momentum, but some is still better than none.
racism has officially come full-circle.
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