How To Break Anything

Thoughts and insights on culture and human behavior, living blissfully at the intersection of rationality and irrationality (but mostly irrationality)

I sometimes wish we could freeze a person and examine - in a very comprehensive way - how any one person's thoughts and experiences have led them to see the world in the very specific way they perceive it. Why any one person is exactly where they are, making the decisions they believe they are making, when they could be in an infinite number of other places, thinking and deciding an infinite number of other things.

This site exists because I've come to believe that we learn something from everything we experience. It's not always big. It's not always what we expect it to be. We might think it's contrary to what we already know. Or believe. But it's always something. And it always has a greater impact on our choices and experiences than we ever realize.

Kyle Cameron Studstill's profile »

Subscribe to this posterous »

Filed under

offline inspiration

February 7, 2010

On the history of cultural style: "I am authentic" as driving force since the early 20th century

"Every age uses dress and body decoration to signal what is most important at that historical moment. Throughout most of our history that message has been "I am rich" or "I am powerful." If today more and more people use their dress to assert: "I am authentic," it is simply evidence of our hunger for the genuine article in an age which seems to so many to be one of simulation and hype."
-StreetStyle, 1993 [tedpolhemus.com for more on the historical search for 'authenticity']

Loading mentions Retweet

Filed under // culture offline inspiration

Posted from New York, NY

Comments [0]

February 7, 2010

I'm beginning to think of 'art' as that which is irreplaceable

I like this definition of poetry as "organized use of language that cannot be replaced by paraphrase."

Seth has been talking a lot lately on art, in Linchpin and otherwise, as the act of creating something that connects with and changes someone.

I like that model, and I'm beginning to incorporating the idea of irreplaceability.

As in: you don't have to worry about anyone stealing your best ideas; if they are truly that good, they are the result of an irreplicable amount of work - cognitive or otherwise.

Tags

offline inspiration

On the history of cultural style: "I am authentic" as driving force since the early 20th century

I'm beginning to think of 'art' as that which is irreplaceable