Thoughts on the Sartorialist

[Caustic Man]

It seems the man-bat has lost interest. In like a lion, out like a lamb.

 

[TheBatman]

It seems the man-bat has lost interest. In like a lion, out like a lamb.

Well hello! It's the pearl clutcher! You woke up from your fainting spell? Good to have you back.

This has been a fruitless conversation filled with nothing but personal insults and bizarre PC thought policing. So yes, I lost interest.

But I have to admit, your Victorian fainting spell was very entertaining, so it was worth it for that at least.

 

[double00]

@Mojo1990 Your reactions to other people are, to a large degree, a product of the cultural acclimatization to which you have been subjected. Further, just because you are aware of the root of your reactions does not mean that you will necessarily be able to control them. I think that it's important to remove your personal experiences as much as possible in any analysis. It's practically impossible to eliminate bias from any analysis, but certainly, you should not take your personal reactions as the starting point of any analysis. I dunno. Pretend that you are Spock or something. Or just very bored with everything.

naught to do with threak but this is an arresting thought.

do you really mean you try to remove your personal experiences (or "bias") from fit crit? i feel like i'm missing something here...

 

[LA Guy]



naught to do with threak but this is an arresting thought. 

do you really mean you try to remove your personal experiences (or "bias") from fit crit? i feel like i'm missing something here... 

I can't remove personal bias from my analysis, but I can and do try to be extremely self-critical and see whether my opinions, especially negative ones, are founded on sound principles within the realm of fashion, design, etc...

 

[Caustic Man]

I can't remove personal bias from my analysis, but I can and do try to be extremely self-critical and see whether my opinions, especially negative ones, are founded on sound principles within the realm of fashion, design, etc...

This is the correct way to go about things, IMO. Much has been said about bias in academics, for instance. Especially in the humanities. Post modernism did much damage to the notion of objectivity, however, I believe that even if we know we can't be perfectly objective it is still worth while to be as objective as possible. A healthy recognition of our limits in this regard also goes a long way.

 

[derrida26]

Lucky for me I guess that my instinctual first impressions just always happen to reflect the fundamental nature of reality?

 

[LA Guy]

This is the correct way to go about things, IMO. Much has been said about bias in academics, for instance. Especially in the humanities. Post modernism did much damage to the notion of objectivity, however, I believe that even if we know we can't be perfectly objective it is still worth while to be as objective as possible. A healthy recognition of our limits in this regard also goes a long way.

I think that a healthy approach is to assume that you are wrong, and proceed from there. Put up all of the strongest arguments against your position, and see if the arguments in favor of your position hold, or fall under assault. If they do, re-examine your position. Assume that your moral framework is flawed. That will allow you to examine your premises and value judgements critically. This goes for all political positions (assuming for a moment that all positions are inherently political.)

BTW, this goes for all political stripes. While the prevailing view here is that @TheBatman 's views are silly, and certainly, he himself lacks some critical thinking abilities, none of us should pat our backs on a job well done. When the opponent is lacking, that doesn't mean that your argument is clearly right. It just means that you have a inferior opponent. While you don't have to do this is public, it's useful to question the premise, for example, that "gender normative" is necessarily a bad thing, and that tolerance and acceptance of queer culture is necessarily a good thing. There are plenty of things that we certainly do not support, tolerate, nor condone. Why then, do we accept gender fluidity as something that should be tolerated when it could just as easily be not, has historically not been, and is still viewed by much of the world as either a psychiatric condition or worse. Even within the small minority in the "global culture" who are connected by the internet and franky, upper middle class conveniences (like relative ease of access to international travel), acceptance of queer culture is relatively new. Try finding references to transgendered individuals even a decade ago. In LGBTQ, the "T" and "Q" parts f that acronym are fairly recent. Remember that Don't ask, Don't tell was a product not of the 1950s or whatever, but of the 1990s.

tldr: don't accept anything, including your own worldview, without rigorous and critical self-examination. Also, just because your opponents are dolts doesn't mean that you are right.

Lucky for me I guess that my instinctual first impressions just always happen to reflect the fundamental nature of reality?

Right?

 

[Caustic Man]

You make several points that I think are key. The one I want to focus on is the one that I believe most of the general public has the hardest time with. Which is to say, questioning the held beliefs of what is, or what you perceive to be, the moral majority. When I saw moral majority I don't mean christian conservatives, but rather the moral ideologies of whatever in-group you might identify with. This is one of the consistent problems that undergraduates have difficulty with. As an example, there was a grad/undergrad class on the Old South that I had. When the subject of the slaveholders themselves came up the undergrads, and many of the gradate students as well, recoiled at the thought of even considering the historical situation for their point of view. The institution of slavery, and the slave-owners themselves, were immediately discounted as evil, backward, and not worthy of examination. Most of us, myself included, wouldn't hesitate to classify slavery as a great evil. However (and this is the challenge of history) a person can still assume that mantel temporarily if only they have the courage to. Imagine what it might be like to think that blacks are inferior, imagine what it might be like to think that you are doing them good by enslaving them. And then you can come out of it, come back to your world, and be better from having examined something horrible from the perspective of someone who thinks it good. This was the challenge that was issued in this class, although it was hardly met at all. Through this exercise it becomes clear how tenuous our seemingly rock solid moral assumptions are, and that no doubt the people of the future will hold moral beliefs very different from our own.

 

[LA Guy]

You make several points that I think are key. The one I want to focus on is the one that I believe most of the general public has the hardest time with. Which is to say, questioning the held beliefs of what is, or what you perceive to be, the moral majority. When I saw moral majority I don't mean christian conservatives, but rather the moral ideologies of whatever in-group you might identify with. This is one of the consistent problems that undergraduates have difficulty with. As an example, there was a grad/undergrad class on the Old South that I had. When the subject of the slaveholders themselves came up the undergrads, and many of the gradate students as well, recoiled at the thought of even considering the historical situation for their point of view. The institution of slavery, and the slave-owners themselves, were immediately discounted as evil, backward, and not worthy of examination. Most of us, myself included, wouldn't hesitate to classify slavery as a great evil. However (and this is the challenge of history) a person can still assume that mantel temporarily if only they have the courage to. Imagine what it might be like to think that blacks are inferior, imagine what it might be like to think that you are doing them good by enslaving them. And then you can come out of it, come back to your world, and be better from having examined something horrible from the perspective of someone who thinks it good. This was the challenge that was issued in this class, although it was hardly met at all. Through this exercise it becomes clear how tenuous our seemingly rock solid moral assumptions are, and that no doubt the people of the future will hold moral beliefs very different from our own.

This is one area in which I think that we are sorely missing old debate styles, in which each team or individual is GIVEN an argument to defend. They may personally agree with that position, or it may run counter to everything they hold dear. The point is to develop critical thinking skills and the ability to articulate a position without resorting to any emotional appeal.

 

[Caustic Man]

This is one area in which I think that we are sorely missing old debate styles, in which each team or individual is GIVEN an argument to defend. They may personally agree with that position, or it may run counter to everything they hold dear. The point is to develop critical thinking skills and the ability to articulate a position without resorting to any emotional appeal.

I remember doing that. Very instructional and very needed today. Especially with the insulating affects of social media (which I believe allows us to carefully select our friends and news, rather than be exposed to new ideas).

 

[accordion]

OP's conservative stance on the plastic arts died in the 60's with Herbert Read. His position is actually the untenable one. I'm not unopen to it but he'd have to describe what the universal standards of beauty are, and how it has to do with the Sartorialist picture that was posted.

The topic is timely, and has come up often given Vetement's rise. I think it's safe to say we all judge clothes/fits to an extent apart from fashion politics/labels/gender/subcultures, in that some colors go better with others, and some cuts go better on certain bodytypes.

 

[Mojo1990]



OP's conservative stance on the plastic arts died in the 60's with Herbert Read. His position is actually the untenable one. I'm not unopen to it but he'd have to describe what the universal standards of beauty are, and how it has to do with the Sartorialist picture that was posted.

The topic is timely, and has come up often given Vetement's rise. I think it's safe to say we all judge clothes/fits to an extent apart from fashion politics/labels/gender/subcultures, in that some colors go better with others, and some cuts go better on certain bodytypes.

That's easy

Just pick any beautiful well regarded celebrity and you will have most human beings nodding their collective heads. The body ratio and symmetry is key to a particular accessible beauty.

 

[accordion]

That's true, and it argues that there are common standard of beauty in the case of celebrity.

 

[wojt]

My presumption is an objective one, in that "normal" human beings (considering evolutionary biology) when left to their own devices, void of cultural influences, would primarily desire sexual relationships with that of the opposite sex.

This is objective, true, but it is also meaningless. It's impossible to prove or to draw conclusions from it because you'd never be able to take away cultural influences, even the most minor ones. Because of that you couldn't say one way or the other what the sexual repercussion of having no culture would look like, even if you could begin to define what having no cultural influences even means.

well there are some universal behaviours and values across all cultures and it would be a good starting point to look at them if you want to make some general statements about human sexuality, i guess you could draw some conlusions from that

That's easy
Just pick any beautiful well regarded celebrity and you will have most human beings nodding their collective heads. The body ratio and symmetry is key to a particular accessible beauty.

you can even go with toddlers to exclude cultural bias
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn6355-babies-prefer-to-gaze-upon-beautiful-faces/

or men blind from birth
http://www.psypost.org/2010/07/men-blind-prefer-low-waist-to-hip-ratio-women-1092

 

[Caustic Man]

you can even go with toddlers to exclude cultural bias
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn6355-babies-prefer-to-gaze-upon-beautiful-faces/

or men blind from birth
http://www.psypost.org/2010/07/men-blind-prefer-low-waist-to-hip-ratio-women-1092

What do you think the problems with studies like this could be?