u/Wonderful_West3188

Since at least the mid-1990s, different artists from different fields of art have - seemingly more or less independently of one another - begun using the labyrinth as a metaphor for the modern art world, the production of art, and the artistic process, and the minotaur as a metaphor for a kind of murderous nihilistic horror at the heart of this labyrinth (i. e. of modern art itself). I can name four examples just off the top of my head.

• David Bowie's 1. Outside from 1995 is the oldest example I could find. It tells the story of a murderer identified with the Minotaur who stages his murders as art installations, surrounded by a labyrinthine artistic culture who precisely licenses such crimes as art. The album goes into topics of body modification, (self-)mutilation, suicide, murder and the desecration of corpses as "art". In a way, it is also the most radical of these examples.

• Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves is a 2000 horror novel about the horrors of modern photography, film, and architecture - focusing not on the grand architectural masterpieces, but on the eerieness of everyday living. The minotaur in this novel symbolizes a connection between artistic ambition and social and emotional alienation. The novel itself is labyrinthine, structured as a kind of matroshka doll of different narratives nestled within one another.

• Einstürzende Neubauten, a German experimental avant-garde rock band, published the album Silence is Sexy in 2000, only a few months after Danielewski's book. At least two songs - Redukt and Zampano - take up the myth of Theseus in the labyrinth of Minos, though the Minotaurus seems to lurk more in the background here. Much like 1. Outside, Redukt has a strong theme of self-dismemberment. Zampano seems to be a direct reference to Danielewski's novel, which features a character of the same name. The text also fits that character.

• The 2017 surrealist dark comedy movie Dave Made A Maze tells about a young man who creates a maze-like structure out of cardboard in his living room - which, much like Danielewski's House of Leaves, is bigger on the inside and develops a life of its own. In the course of the movie, Dave's unbridled artistic ambition assumes the shape of a murderous minotaur.

I'm in search of further examples for this motif in any art form, as well as possible interpretations of it and explanations for its strange recurrence since the mid-90s.

To what extent is Bea actually responsible for her own situation?

When Mae says "everyone has a choice", she's a way out of line privileged little shit and she doesn't understand what she's talking about, but I also think she kind of has somewhat of a point - just not in the way she thinks. It seems to me that Bea actually does have a problem with being choice-avoidant. For all her talk about how much she hates her situation, she does actually act surprisingly preserving towards it, to the point of outright taking offense to any suggestion of changing something about it. But the problem with this is that she's working herself to death to keep a failing business just barely afloat - and that isn't a sustainable situation. Sooner or later, she will be forced to start making choices - and the later she starts, the harder it will be.

Now I understand Bea's unwillingness to leave her father stranded. Bea intuitively (probably not even fully consciously) understands something that Mae doesn't: It's the fact that freedom is painful. It's just that Bea seems to be running from that pain (of freedom!) into the more dull pain of routine in unfreedom, because at least it's easier to detach yourself from and complain about. This kind of choice-avoidance can easily leave people bitter and/or broken though. It's actually exactly the mindset that organizations like the Cult are looking for in new recruits.

Now just because she doesn't want to leave her father stranded, doesn't mean things can go on between them as is. She's pretty much running the shop while he becomes progressively dysfunctional from his alcoholism and he treats her like an ordinary worker. This is quite frankly an unsustainable situation for both her emotional state and for the business. But just because Bea doesn't really want to abandon her father, that doesn't mean she couldn't use his dependence on her to negotiate better conditions. If he wants her to run the shop for him because he prefers to drink himself into an early grave over becoming a useful part of his own company, he should officially give her a managerial position, along with the competence she needs to make the relevant decisions to keep the thing afloat, and take a step back himself from trying to micromanage her work. In fact, his behavior is extremely unprofessional, puts the business in jeopardy, and putting her in charge might in fact be the only way to keep the Ol' Pickaxe afloat long-term at all. If he's too prideful to do that, then maybe he should be left to sit on his pride and manage the shop on his own. But then that would be his own decision, not Bea's.

But Bea isn't doing that, because she hates the Ol' Pickaxe and her job, and going this road would mean her current course in life becomes "locked in". She'd have to give up her dream of going to college some day. But she can't, because that's the only thing that keeps her from complete despair. I understand it, really, it's the old Lacanian joke about a "gritty realism" sustained by an imaginary fantasy completely divorced from symbolic reality. But I think it's dishonest to frame it as her circumstances leaving her with no choice at all. This kind of choice- and conflict-avoidance is a form of self-sabotage in my opinion. And again, I understand why she does it, but that doesn't change the fact.

This might have implications for her politics as well, by the way. We know she has a socialist Chattrbox (which Mae should absolutely join, by the way), but her form of conflict avoidance in my opinion makes her unlikely to ever actually engage in any radical politics. I say that because I struggle with similar problems myself. We don't know what goes on in that Chattrbox, but if the other members are in any way like her, my guess that it's dedicated more to moping about the status quo and dreaming about a completely different society than to actually organizing radical political praxis. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if she actively discouraged and disparaged any attempt to do the latter as "unrealistic" or even dangerous, because deep down, her disavowed, but still dominant attitude to a lot of things seems to be "better the devil you know..." - If this is the case, her socialist dreams might be serving the same ideological function as her dream to go to college: allowing her to continue participating in the status quo without breaking under the pressure. But this might not be sustainable either, particularly if the rest of her Chattrbox group ever starts pushing for more engagement in actual political praxis of whatever kind. This is largely conjecture, but here, again, she might eventually have to make a choice.

Word is "brains are computers"

A quick argument:

1) Computers were invented by humans no earlier than the 19th century

2) Brains are computers

3) Therefore, brains were invented by humans no earlier than the 19th century (1, 2)

4) All people who lived before 19th century were brainless (3)

Suppose someone denies 1 and suppose we grant it. Presumably, the objection targets the exact century or time period when computers were invented. In that case, we can run the following argument:

1) Computers are man-made objects

2) Brains are computers

3) Therefore, brains are man-made objects (1, 2)

4) Dinosaurs required brains for life

5) Therefore, dinosaurs required man-made objects for life (3, 4)

6) But dinosaurs went exctinct long before humans even existed

7) Humans travelled in the past and animated dinosaurs (5, 6)

In any case, computers are human invention, so since 3 is obviously false, we should deny 2

So I've been a "soft" proponent of team blue ever since this discussion started, and this isn't going to change any time soon. But I did notice something about the discussions. I think the red side is kinda done a disservice by making the scenario involve all of humanity. Suddenly, you get a lot of questions that the scenario probably didn't intend. What about children and the elderly? What about mentally ill people? What about the consequences for human civilization and global supply chains of Billions of people dying if red wins, but blue still got a ton of votes?

All of these considerations are taken out if we make it about only 100 people instead of all of humanity. Red gets a huge psychological morale boost because suddenly, the risks and consequences of a red win seem way more controllable, and there's much less reason to vote blue. But blue also gets a small statistical boost, because a majority is more easily reachable.

Reframing the scenario in this way mostly benefits red, but without disadvantaging blue too much, and it also has the advantage of taking most of the heat out of the discussion. It also makes the scenario way easier to grasp for the human mind.

This makes me wonder why the scenario was framed as involving all of humanity in the first place.

I've noticed a certain trend in Western media, starting around the 1980s. The genre of the coming of age story is of course way older than that, but from about the 1980s onwards, there seems to be a persistent trend in media to associate the protagonist's coming of age with an apocalyptic end of the world, or an end of everything. Here are a few examples:

* Donnie Darko

* Penguin Highway (a non-Western example)

* Night in the Woods

* Until Then (subtly)

I'm interested in collecting further examples, and also in discussing the philosophical and cultural implications of this. What does it say about society that we increasingly come to think of growing up not as finding our place in the world, but as losing the world? Are we at a point where we actually think about children as still having a world and about adults as worldless, thrown into a void?