My friend used to climb massive pine trees late at night in a park across his street, and place traffic cones on top. No one knew who was doing it or why. Many people thought it was the local council marking the trees to be cut down which upset residents. He started noticing police regularly patrolling the area, but he kept doing it and never got caught. It made the local paper, explaining how much confusion and disruption it was causing the police and local council. He hung the article on his wall.
Went on to become a stuntman https://imdb.com/name/nm3068647/
Surrealism is always antifascist. Cruelty and absurdity are two sides of the same coin, or perhaps the same side of two coins.
You don’t find it so? Maybe I read too much Vonnegut as a kid, it seems clear to me.
You say surrealism is anti-fascist. Then you say cruelty and absurdity are the same thing (two sides of the same coin). Then you try to clarify by saying they are two separate things but have a commonality (two coins same side). I think ying/yang is more fitting, and quicker to the punch, in that there can be a little cruelty in absurdity and vise versa, which you were dancing around with your ill fitting metaphor. So, yes, I don’t think so. Clarity is in the eye of the beer holder.
I actually think I see a little of what you’re getting at, but maybe it’s just my willful interpretation.
The absurd is the gap between what we expect to happen, and what actually happens. We expect to go to work today, it’ll be mundane and boring, and then an asteroid hits the road and we can’t go in today. How absurd.
Cruelty is often a tool people use to gain control. The absurd by definition is outside of our control. I can see how these could be related in some way
Surrealism is always antifascist.
I dunno. Doublethink is pretty surreal, but it supports fascism. If you’re just talking about art, I think you could make the case that the Italian Futurists were at least Surrealist-adjacent, and some of them supported fascism.
I’d argue semantically that surrealism is that which lies under reality whereas Doublethink (and other Orwellian language) lies over reality
You may be thinking of 'Pataphysics:
the science of that which is superinduced upon metaphysics, whether within or beyond the latter’s limitations, extending as far beyond metaphysics as the latter extends beyond physics
Suspicousmaxxing to gaslight the authorities and waste their time is a very wholesome thing to do
This reminded me of a glass artist named Josh Simpson who is known for his glass spheres he calls “planets” that have amazingly complex scenes in them. For over two decades he’s had what he calls the “Infinity Project” where he encourages people to hide them out in the open where folks are unlikely to find one. If you submit a proposal to him that he likes then he’ll send you two of his smaller planets, one for you to hide and one to keep for yourself.
This is a great illustration of Chaotic Neutral
