Curt Doolittle

Source: Facebook

  • TOUGH LOVE: THE REASON FOR ASYMMETRY IN ARREST, PROSECUTION, AND CONVICTION Agai

    TOUGH LOVE: THE REASON FOR ASYMMETRY IN ARREST, PROSECUTION, AND CONVICTION

    Again, assuming the same crime, the reason for asymmetry of prosecution and conviction is ‘fleeing officers, non-compliance with officers, resistance to arrest, lack of remorse, lack of family and parental guarantee of constraint, known associates, general demeanor (conform or non-conforming), behavior in custody, lack of restitution, likelihood of recidivism.” That’s why. No secret here. Everyone knows it. The fact that your family and friends pressure you into language, manner, dress, behavior, or that rivals will threaten you if you appear vulnerable or signaling mainstream conformity is no excuse – it just means you haven’t got the willpower, character, or family structure, to behave as a ‘citizen’ meaning ‘a member of commercial society demonstrating adherence to middle class (commercial) norm custom manner, and signal. Man up. Shut up. Don’t Trash Down, Gang Down, or Ghetto Down or speak, act and dress like you’re rebelling against the commercial civilization that made your participation in it’s rewards possible – no matter how small they may be.

    Source date (UTC): 2019-10-21 16:41:00 UTC

  • WHY DO PUNISHMENTS FOR CRIMES VARY? (from elsewhere) —“The reason for differen

    WHY DO PUNISHMENTS FOR CRIMES VARY?

    (from elsewhere)

    —“The reason for differences in sentencing, which are true, result from the law having three objectives 1) restitution (if possible), 2) prevention of repetition (repeating), 3) prevention of imitation (spreading). Those who have more to lose are more able to perform restitution and less likely to engage in repetition, and their punishments more likely to limit imitation. The only way to shorten punishments is to create good families good homes, good parenting, good education so that current losers have incentive not to enter the system.”—

    Source date (UTC): 2019-10-21 16:16:00 UTC

  • WRITING CHARACTERS: SORRY BUT YES, FEMALES AND MALES SPEAK (VERY) DIFFERENTLY. A

    WRITING CHARACTERS: SORRY BUT YES, FEMALES AND MALES SPEAK (VERY) DIFFERENTLY.

    And we speak differently whether or not members of the opposite sex are the the room or hearing distance. Both are more reserved in the presence of the opposite sex.

    So when writing characters, don’t force the audience out of suspension of disbelief.

    Laurelle asked: —“Why does Cane find it necessary, in a 2009 publication, to include an essay (within the chapter on J.D. Salinger) titled, “How to create female characters that readers remember?” I mean, really.’—

    Because men are as notoriously bad at creating female characters, as women are at creating men. Dialog that is counter to type (falling out of character) is one of the most common failings of authors, with misgendered speech the most common means of creating cardboard characters. Sensitivity tends to vary between male and female cognition with empathizing minds (dominantly female) tolerating it (not breaking suspension of disbelief), and systematizing minds (dominantly male) not tolerating it (breaking suspension of disbelief). In fact, it’s rather humorous that you even mention this because you’re demonstrating it. The most common demonstrably female cognitive bias is NAXALT (“not all x are like that”) meaning failure to grasp a distribution.

    Now all of us vary in our distribution of systematizing(autistic extreme) male bias and empathizing (psychotic extreme) female bias and we find masculinely biased females and femininely biased males. But that doesn’t change the fact that while some of us are insensitive (empathic) to patterns of behavior and some of us are extremely sensitive to behavioral patterns (systematizing), that the audience’s (marketplace’s) tolerance (willingness to keep investing time in the author’s work) is unaffected by one’s ability to construct a believable character that meets the target market’s demand for suspension of disbelief.

    Same is for age, same is for occupation, same is for socio-economic class. Same is for time period.

    BTW: Stereotypes are the most accurate measurement in the social sciences, for obvious reasons: they’re continually tested empirically every day. Analytic males have the most accurate judgement of groups (patterns of action), and slightly sensitive females have the most accurate judgement of individuals (patterns of empathy(feeling)). This measure averages out at somewhere between .2 and .5. So it isn’t an extreme advantage or disadvantage. But it does matter. ie: If you write a romance novel it doesn’t matter as much as if you write a spy thriller.

    Hope this is useful for other writers.

    Cheers.

    Source date (UTC): 2019-10-21 15:52:00 UTC

  • THE ZONE REQUIRES FREE ASSOCIATION WITHOUT EXTERNAL “INFECTION” —“A man of imm

    THE ZONE REQUIRES FREE ASSOCIATION WITHOUT EXTERNAL “INFECTION”

    —“A man of immense creativity and endless ideas, Balzac was yet a creature of habit; indeed, a fixed routine was a large part of his success. He isolated himself from the world so that he could concentrate on his writing. He did this in two ways: first, by staying in his home with the blinds drawn,§- and second, by working at night while the world slept. Unless you distance yourself from the ceaseless distractions of the everyday world, like most successful writers (Conrad locked himself into a room, Salinger wrote in a concrete bunker, Fleming completed all the Bond novels in a Jamaican hideaway), unless you take steps to isolate yourself from the madding crowd, distractions are liable to make sustained work impossible. But perhaps even more than isolation, Balzac’s secret was coffee. His procedure was to keep himself alert during the wee hours of the night with murderously black and concentrated and above all thick-brewed coffee, which he made in a big coffeepot and sipped while he worked. He was so fond of coffee that he devoted a chapter to it in a scientific treatise on modern stimulants, singing its praises in glowing terms “[C]offee is a great power in my life,” he confessed. “I have observed its effects on an epic scale.” It kept him awake at night and enabled him to write. It stimulated his creative powers. It allowed him to marshal his thoughts. It gave him so many ideas he could barely keep up with them and his fingers flew across the pages, writing novel after novel at breakneck speed.”—

    Source date (UTC): 2019-10-21 15:32:00 UTC

  • WRITING FICTION AND THE GRAMMARS I suppose I ought to point out that I treat fic

    WRITING FICTION AND THE GRAMMARS

    I suppose I ought to point out that I treat fiction as one of the “Grammars” in P, and I include the “archetypes, plots, and sentences” (the grammar(logic) of fiction) in the book. It might be helpful or disheartening to see all the forms of human communication reduced to algorithmic format, tied back to geometry, but it provides extraordinary clarity just like all the sciences help provide extraordinary clarity across phenomenon that otherwise appear incomprehensibly different.

    Source date (UTC): 2019-10-21 15:15:00 UTC

  • DEFENSE AGAINST AD HOMS (ART) 0) I started writing fiction in first grade. I rea

    DEFENSE AGAINST AD HOMS (ART)

    0) I started writing fiction in first grade. I read … a lot. I never went anywhere without books (plural).

    1) I wrote my first 100+ page book at 13. (it was interesting but formulaic and terrible. I did a lot of drawing (very good) in pencil. And then pen and ink. I did a weekly comic (esoteric) in college ridiculing the college. lol.

    2) I have years of one of the best art theory schools in the world behind me. I was taught by full time practicing NY based artists, most of some note, during the end of the minimalist period and the re-transition to craftsmanship. The oddities that might interest you is that the staff chose Rand’s art theory as the basis of the program. I still think it’s her most important work, no matter how brief.

    3) In our university you could take creative writing every semester – I did. I’ve studied literature, fiction (yes they are different), and film. (Ya think I wasn’t just as obsessive about the writing discipline as I am about everything else?)

    4) I’ve been teaching the creative process for years. There are good books on it. They all say the same thing. I just explain what’s going on in your brain to legitimize the explanatory evidence. In other words, we know why the authors of those books are correct.

    5) the art of writing is pretty much a science at this point. We vary in our ability to sentence-make, and I use Hemmingway (a sequence of photos), and dickens (every sentence a balanced aphorism – almost impossible to imitate), King (good characters) and Heinlein bad characters) as myth makers; flemming; macdonald, and clancey as modern hero makers; pynchon and mccarthy as ‘literature’, and Herbert and now Martin as World Makers. (I avoid the 20th socialist authors entirely.)

    6) Pretty much every successful author works today by the same methods. It’s much easier when you know what it is you need to accomplish next and only need to help your characters and the reader get there. (I have the two main writer’s apps but I find I don’t really need them except for outlining because i write arguments instead of scenes and there is no art to organizing them. I prefer to write in a text editor with indent capability. )

    I don’t do painting because I lack the color facility (badly). I don’t do sculpture because it’s all but financially impossible today, and the marxists and pomos have destroyed the art. I don’t do movies ’cause the biz is skeevy and all but the writers shallow – seriously so. (writers tend to be interesting.) And I don’t write reviews of art because most of what I would say would be negative and it would be repetitious and tedious for for the reader. I have occasionally written about some of the arts, and will teach a class at the institute in art history and theory – I have it outlined, but I have to get ‘adapted’ to my new situation a bit more, and finish the Foundations Course before I produce it – and the military and the economic courses…. But I’ll go toe to toe with any critic on the arts no problem.

    I choose philosophy as my art, because it suits me – no materials other than a laptop internet connection and time. I’m an entrepreneur to fund my social science experiments and information gathering – and because working for others when I was younger was exasperating. I’m an artist because I practice the creative method as my primary skill. I like to fight because I was raised in a period where one had to. 😉

    -hugs )

    Source date (UTC): 2019-10-21 15:10:00 UTC

  • (from elsewhere) yep. any country can be great if it first creates a good discip

    (from elsewhere)

    yep. any country can be great if it first creates a good disciplined nationalist military that then produce a judiciary, that then produces a government, that then produces a market, that then funds commons. People think it’s the other way around. it isn’t. Its military on down. One step at a time.

    Source date (UTC): 2019-10-21 14:47:00 UTC

  • ECONOMIC INFLUENCES ON TODAY”S ART WORLD 1) spaces are now general purpose rathe

    ECONOMIC INFLUENCES ON TODAY”S ART WORLD

    1) spaces are now general purpose rather than designed for function. This makes them less amenable to artistic treatment because they have to be ‘resold’.

    2) Postwar materials (steel, glass, and panel products) are not amenable to organic arts, and it’s organic arts that constitute the majority of the western thematic tradition – particularly the human form.

    3) Architectural software is .. great for engineering and tradesmen but tends to produce ‘sh-tty’ attempts at imitating Lloyd Wright – to mid century, as if the Craftsman never happened. But at least soviet concrete brutalism is done. Fk. Great for government buildings. Sh-t for the artwork they decorated it with.

    4) Hollywood is a black hole for the arts, because it’s possible to make money at it on and off, while keeping ‘other jobs’ going.

    5) Camera first, large printers second and Digital third has eliminated much of the handicraft that went into the production of durable arts.

    6) Decoration will fit anywhere but “Art” (meaning, craftsmanship, materials) has been successfully undermined by the marxist-pomo-feminist tradition, and intentional deprivation of citizens from education in the heroic tradition – replaced with the victim tradition has made high art impossible or unmarketable.

    7) The economics of producing inventory vs the percent of sales is such that, say, if you want to produce 200k of income for a gallery and 60K of income for yourself, you have to do the math on how much time and materials you can put into each work. So at an average of 10k per piece, that means 20ps must sell, that means no less than five galleries, that means 40 pcs in inventory at all times. And that’s only so many days or weeks per piece. Most people produce a production line, and use it to finance their artwork. (I know art jewelry, print and panting the best.) Scale up to sculpture then to play, then to film, and down to print and farther down to photo and farther down to posters and kitch but the general math is the same -just like every other biz. There is a reason single digits of artists make a living, and instead work to fund their art hobby that generates lunch money.

    Source date (UTC): 2019-10-21 14:44:00 UTC

  • NO YOU DON”T HAVE WRITER’S BLOCK – HOW TO WRITE You can’t write from a feeling –

    NO YOU DON”T HAVE WRITER’S BLOCK – HOW TO WRITE

    You can’t write from a feeling – you can’t maintain it. You can’t write from inspiration – it will dissipate.

    OR….

    You can identify a question or a problem, or an argument (persuasion), and write a record of your exploration of it. You can identify a theory, and write your character’s investigation of it. You can identify a strategy given the history of “the technology of storytelling using archetypes, fundamental invariant human experiences, plot combinations, points of view (narrator, first, second), and past present and future contexts, to create a novelty, or an adaptation, revisiting the human experience to make an observation relevant to the day or era.” You can maintain your interests and attention mentally and emotionally.

    If you’re just writing from feeling or inspiration, thats why you’re failing yourself and your audience, because since you aren’t learning anything – neither are they. You have have something interesting in your head to write something interesting. The propensity to imagine is a talent, but writing is a craft like any other.

    Never confuse writing with therapy, nor work with avoidance, nor art with entertainment, nor sex with masturbation.

    Unless you’re being taught writing by the upper .01% you’re wasting your time. Writing is another form of engineering raised to an art. You can’t create an art without learning the science (engineering), the craft (practice) and the art (innovation).

    It’s not worth talented people’s time to help you find therapy, entertainment, or self gratification.

    My first ‘tough love’ review in art school was the question ‘why are you making art?’ I foolishly said “because it is fun” (meaning therapeutic). The response was “let me know when it’s work. bEcause then you’re learning, then you might have something to say. Until you’re working and working hard, you’re wasting our time, your time, and the audience’s time.”

    You can’t get a good education in the arts today. It’s just not possible. Even at Yale. Maybe CCAC. It’s almost impossible to get a good education today. You are a customer whose satisfaction is to be earned with the least conflict, not a student who the teachers and professors bear the burden to transforming into an innovator or aesthete.

    So you have to educate yourself, or find a group of mentors for whom your potential is worth their investment.

    Writers block doesn’t exist.

    A head empty of ideas because it’s not full of opportunities for free association exists.

    Creativity is not magic. It’s a discipline.

    Fill the shelves of your mind with related material.

    Go do something playful that doesn’t require you refill those shelves with something else.

    Take a shower. Go for a drive. Go for a walk. Go shopping. Anything that’s pleasingly stimulating for your senses but doesn’t occupy your brain.

    The answer will come to you when your bundles of neurons are done with their process of auto association.

    The brain accumulates novelties.

    So go research something somehow related to the characters or context or plot – and fill the shelves of your mind so it can use free association (auto-association) to identify and create novelties.

    If you’re sitting in a chair you’re just wasting your time.

    If you’re out and about and engaged in social activities, or any form of entertainment you’re wasting your time.

    Gather, observe people (what I do), Listen to people, play, exercise, relax, contemplate, and then try.

    If not, then repeat until it works.

    If you are exhausted by the topic start another one on a different topic. Doing so will cause you to auto-associate with your last topic or tory.

    There is nothing magic to this process.

    It’s just training yourself to insulate your five faculties from one another: senses, emotions, intuitions, reason, and actions, so that you use only use the one you need in the moment.

    For creativity you need your intuition: free association.

    Most memories are time and location dependent. Memories are saved by replaying three or more sequential episodes. When they are replaying (below your conscious threshold) they are auto-associating, and with every replay the breadth of auto association increases because neural connections increase. you are trying to let auto association not THINKING do the work for you until you find an idea. Then you think how to move your character or plot or argument from here to there.

    Creativity is just a discipline like meditation or stoicism or studying – a means of training your brain to delivery what your mind wants from it. Creative people just want novelty more than those less creative. They’re novelty junkies. But novelty requires new material to cause auto association. When I teach people anything from storytelling, to argument, to engineering, to web design to system architecture I say the same thing: go do some research on what others have done. you aren’t smarter or more creative than anyone else. You’re either identifying an opportunity to attract audience attention, and filling your mind with tools of auto-association, or you’re living under the illusion that you have some magic talent. You don’t ARt is just the generation of novelty in the craft you are experimenting upon by narrative, composition (aesthetics), materials, or technique. It doesn’t matter what art we talk about.

    A brain is a very big but very simple thing that does just one thing: It performs free (auto) associations until something is interesting enough to raise to your attention.

    You just have to train your mind to let your brain do its work.

    And then think (work) at getting from where you are to where you want to be given that interesting idea.

    Cheers

    Curt Doolittle

    Source date (UTC): 2019-10-21 13:30:00 UTC

  • Updated Oct 21, 2019, 12:51 PM

    Updated Oct 21, 2019, 12:51 PM

    Source date (UTC): 2019-10-21 12:51:00 UTC