A thread to ask about cultural stuff you should know

[OneFrenchEgg]

Ok so there's loads of stuff other people know and stuff I know.
Where do I start with Noam Chomsky and why? Is he left wing? Why is he so relevant?

@SheilaFentiman I followed a similar path after reading a crime novel about a diver... she dived underwater forests -
fascinating stuff, especially the science behind it.

I also find it interesting that in the 19th century many European ruling houses (ok, one in particular) gave their adult 2nd sons "Kingdoms" in far flug places.
Take Maximilian I of Mexico or Otto of Greece.

Which crime novel please also loving @SheilaFentiman 's name

I'm not. I think you're focusing on modernism as an art genre. That's only part of it. Prior to the emergence of modernism in art was so much change in society, culture and thinking.

I found this which may help.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modernera

This is an interesting sentence:
Sometimes distinct from the modern periods themselves, the terms "modernity" and "modernism" refer to a new way of thinking, distinct, from previous ways of thinking such as medieval thinking.

Modernity and modernism are not discrete.

I learned this in Psychology at uni and used it when studying for exams. I used to visualise putting key points into 7 houses in my street and could then retrieve the information by just visualising each house.

I'm really enjoying this thread (and bookmarking the podcast recommendations) as it's everything I'm interested in- Philosophy, Economics, Language and History of Art.

An important thing about the offside rule that no one has mentioned…. you can’t be offside (irrespective of where the defenders are) if you’re behind the ball - ie if the ball is closer to the end of the pitch you are attacking towards, you’re not offside. It’s why you can’t be offside from a corner - because the ball is at the very end of the pitch.
so if there is a breakaway of two attackers and only the goalie left, one attacker can pass to the other to beat the goalie, so long as the person being passed to is behind the ball when it is kicked.

If you’re ahead of the ball at the moment it is passed to you, you have to be behind goalie + one other defender as stated. It’s when the ball is kicked that counts for evaluating if you’re offside, not where you are when the ball comes to you

That’s really interesting,@Zonder. I was thinking about Modernism as applied to the arts, design and literature, you’re right. That said, I don’t think I’ve ever heard the term applied more widely to the ethos of the historical modern era.

Sorry, I really don't remember I read it years ago... I do read a lot for just relaxing & forgetting. It was about 2 sisters one stayed in the home town (village) and the other moved away- that was the diver. I think first it was thought she committed suicide, but the sister didn't believe it. Maybe the power of MN can find it?

Thank you @aramox1 😀

Same here, it is a really good way of chunking information that you need to learn.

Oooh, psychology people - what is a good intro book to the subject and the various evolutions of theories from freud onwards?

I am also up for reading a summary that one of you writes, but don’t want to impose!

Fantastic thread. Thanks all.
I studied Freud as part of my German degree and the theory that sticks with me is 'the narcissism of small differences', essentially, two people or groups of people that are extremely similar to each other, hating each other more than groups that are wildly different. You see it everywhere: Catholics and protestants, local rivalries like England/Scotland and France/Belgium and local football derbies. Also very noticeable in individual relationships.

I am reading Bryan Magee's autobiography atm (he had a brilliant philosophy series on the BBC where he would interview different academics – you can see them on Youtube). In one chapter, he describes meeting Bertrand Russell and asking him about all the famous people he'd known (Russell had met Einstein, Lenin, H. G. Wells, D. H. Lawrence, Aldous Huxley, T. S. Eliot, William James, you name them). Magee recalls asking Russell who was the most intelligent person he'd ever met, and Russell said Keynes!

It's interesting isn't it? I guess if you're more of an arts person that would be your first thought. Shows how different words mean different things to different people.

Teentaxidriver

But why shouldn’t we fear drugs, crime etc????

Because the fear is more of a problem and effect on our day to day life than the actual rational likelihood of any of that happening.

As Franklin D Roosevelt said - All we have to fear is fear itself

Thank you for this thread - I shall come back and read properly later.

Keynes - ‘The government should pay people to dig holes in the ground and then fill them up.’

What a great thread. I'm going to spend some investigating Agamemnon (sp?) and his shenanigans 😁

Interesting thread.

What was there before opera?

@dapsnotplimsolls i recommend A Thousand Ships (written and read by Natalie Haynes) for an overview of the Trojan war that includes Clytemnestra and Agamemnon

Commenting so I can come back later. Brilliant thread. Thanks to those contributing

Facts are such amazing stepping stones, the way one thing leads to another - eg, Roman mythology >> politics >> history >> archaeology, as Romans' love of gods and stories shaped local politics across the empire, as they 'merged' their Roman gods with existing local deities as part of their integration. You can see this in Bath, and the temple of Sulis Minerva.

Nothing wrong with bite-sized facts as a way into bigger topics. I loved General Studies at school. 45 minutes of random teachers' soapboxing on subjects I knew nothing about, delivered in a more animated way than normal because it was off-syllabus. I'll never forget the faraway look in our English teacher's eye as he explained the Cultural Significance of Woodstock - I certainly wouldn't have listened to Joan Baez or Canned Heat otherwise.

I'm hazy on the details, but it was part of the Renaissance idea of bringing back the classics. Opera was thus a modern version of Greek drama. (Highly simplistic explanation, sorry. Hopefully someone else can enlighten us. It must surely have drawn inspiration from living traditions somehow, instead of just being an attempt at reviving a dead art form?)

Before opera there was choral music. This was often polyphonic so no one clear melody.

The idea arose that you could set scenes to music, with one clear dramatic line, and use non-religious plots. This emerged in late Renaissance Florence where you have families like the Medicis who can fund it, a lot of interest in ancient mythology and Greek/Roman texts and a courtly culture wanting entertainment.

Thank you @AnnaMagnani

Did opera with a story come before ballet with a story, do you know?

@AnnaMagnani Thanks! Like Monteverdi's Orfeo for example? (Earliest-written opera that I've personally heard )

While I have read a book on the history of opera, my entire knowledge of the history of ballet comes from the Ladybird Book of Ballet.

But Wikipedia tells me, that ballet emerges in the same Italian Renaissance courts as opera. Which makes sense really. And early 'plots' are again from Greek mythology.

Catherine de Medici exports it to France and at the French court it takes off in a big way.

I like the fact that early performances are for the royal family to take part in and show how good they are at dancing, plus some kind of kinship with mythological characters.

I think I'd like our royal family better if they all took part in a dance number.