@@adrianaadnan9958 He is the on TH-cam not? Likely he will pass into oblivion because he hasn’t got much to say. It’s intellectually very flawed, I have to say more palatable than JP who really is a hack, but still flawed and with at its core a lack of perception of morality.
“Art for art's sake is an empty phrase. Art for the sake of truth, art for the sake of the good and the beautiful, that is the faith I am searching for.” ― George Sand
Only artists understand art for arts sake. Art for the sake of the good and the beautiful is just as "empty". Whose concept of beauty are we using? Is a view of ants eating a dead body beautiful? THAT is the point of art for art's sake. Do you like Dali's art?
@@unstrung65 Regarding around 4 minutes into the video : See here on TH-cam the Faces of Sapmi Somby Color your past. But it was a hard life with some oppression from the governments in the 4 countries they lived in
This is about the collective narcissism in Modern society brought upon by Social Media. People are measuring their worth through this hollow exercise in deifying oneself. The effects of these choices are terrible instead of it leading to a more meaningful life what has happened is people are more miserable than ever before even though we have more luxuries than previous generations in human history.
The narcissism of the modern world is due to the many inventions, especially the camera and the microphone; we are able to watch and to listen to ourselves through recordings.
you only have this degeneration because of the invention of the birth control pill. there are no more traditional values when it comes to dating and marriage. which makes men more competitive for their status giving them alone time to dedicate to their careers. its also one of the few moments in history where people almost freely can escalate in their socioeconomic classes. when it comes to survival, men will always go after money.
To pick up on your point which is rarely made (but should be) Gordon Ratray Taylor [sociologist) made point over 50 years ago that we (lets assume he meant the West) have lifestyles that only kings in the past could imagine yet we are more unhappy. He was arguing a "system break" was due, like end of Middle ages for example. Yet it hasn't happened and in my humble opinion we have more and more of the same processes locked in by influence of the world's wealth being owned by an ever smaller proportion of the populations. I agree the social media is now a major factor creating this awful narcissism and conflict in society that perversely enables control through fear and stops the changes we need to stablise and live more meaningfully and hopefully sustainably.
"Never in the history of the world has there been so many methods whereby one can communicate with others , but never in the history of the world has there been so little of worth to communicate". Kathleen Raine , Poet.
Yeah there is nothing of value to communicate nowadays only in the past. Biggest load of horseshit I've ever heard and it's insulting to anybody that produces content- painters, designers, photographers, musicians, filmmakers, actors, and many others. You'll quote this and then immediately go consume media. Damn if we only lived in the 16th century where access to information and ways to communicate was limited so we could talk about farming or the bible. Now those were the days.
@@SynthwavelLover you give credence and clout to the quote 👍 we don't need to talk about farming and the bible. Two things I have absolutely no interest in whatsover. We could talk about Gurdjieff and Ouspensky and the attainment of higher states of consciousness and the law of the heptaparaparshinokh and the triamazikamno , should you so wish
@@hermesnoelthefourthway For a guy who quotes this you sure have a lot of useless vlog videos that don't contribute much. I don't care if you do it, hell the more info the better (we've all got opinions go ahead and throw em out there), but if anything YOU prove the quote right. Even if you commenting and me commenting is kinda useless. And you've proven me right- I over-simplified the past on purpose to show you what you're doing to our present: making assumptions, using anecdotes, look dude I doubt you care about the facts of the world you just wanna feel smart so go ahead and post the quote and feel smart if you want.
@@hermesnoelthefourthway I suppose it’d be better to say that there is little worth in much of what’s communicated rather than there’s little worth communicating.
@@varaconn6708 dont know the exact answer,because materials were expensive, land was cheaper, no safety regulations from government and inflation,but just look at all the beautiful buildings from that era, all of them either belong to the rich families, kings or governments, the normal people had to leave in squares designed to sleep and eat, the luxuries that we have now among the middle clase is an exception looking back at the history
In a nutshell, Scruton is describing the loss of community, the loss of the sense of belonging and interdependence that characterized Western Civilization prior to the 20th century. When decisions began to be made solely on the basis of cost-benefit analysis and efficiency, we sacrificed the human factor to economics, spurred on by increasingly complex technologies that are both liberating and isolating. In another video, Scruton discusses "The True, the Good, and the Beautiful," all qualities that defy cost-benefit analysis. When was the last time you heard a politician or businessman or journalist give those concept more than lip service? When all values are reduced to money's worth, a civlization has lost its soul.
Money's worth or wealth and power have always been the main objective of humanity. Only a few achieve it. There were Emperors, Kings, Lords and serfs. Now there are CEOs and workers. The common good has never been common. Which civilisation ever had a soul?
@@TTTzzzz There's some pretty considerable differences between attitudes towards money and wealth in pre-modern and non-capitalist societies and ours. Yes, economics is always important, but afaik the capitalist way of treating *everything* as something to be reduced to a salable commodity that a market can be built around and whose entire worth centers on nothing else but an arbitrary monetary value, is pretty unique to itself. OUtside of it, wealth has been an objective b/c it costs to have a vital functioning society; we, OTOH, make its acquisition an end in itself. Plenty of other civilizations had souls, a civilization doesn't have rulers who actively foster and encourage the arts, for example, if it doesn't have a soul. Who are our rulers who do that? Instead, they actively and aggressively attack the arts as often as not, at very least they don't understand and don't respect them. The differences are quite vast in fact.
@@almishti About souls and art: All works of art are 'manifestations' of the culture they were created in. Indeed, all cultures and civilizations have have a soul and even a heart. But nearly all of them (if not all) required obedience / serfdom. Go against the established state moral and you could be jailed. put to death or at least banished. In many countries this was and still is the case. For me, art is an expression of the human mind. That mind must be free to express itself and not be coerced by the state, If the mind is not free, art degenerates into propaganda which has been by far the foremost expression of cultures and civilizations for at least the past 12.000 years. Freedom of thought and expression is a very young concept.
All very interesting, but the reason why people didn't smile on photos in the nineteenth century is because the photographic plate required a long exposure time and when you smile you can't keep your face still for that long. Every smiling face photo would have been destroyed because it was blurred. Photographers soon learned to tell their sitters not to smile. Also, having your photo taken was expensive and so it was a regarded as a portrait, not the capture of a spontaneous moment. Nineteenth century people were just like us, but with different technology. I think if you read classical Greek literature, you will find that they were moaning about how their culture was degenerating. It's the human thing to do.
@@nigerianprince5389 Mate, if the sign of a decadent culture is that nobody owns a dictionary any more, you seem to be an examplar. 'Denigrate' is a transitive verb and ... well, I'll let you look it up.
I miss this man so much. I only wish I could have met him. Without a doubt one of the most brilliant philosophers of the last 100 years. And from all appearances, a very genuine and kind man. We miss you Sir Roger. RIP
Many people missed something amazing in this. They are both speaking of a society turning nhilistic. The selfie example was a testament to the nhilist thinking taking place today. We live in a society where people do not care anymore.
Maybe that is true. But these men have selected great things of the past but ignore the horrors. People have abandoned religion because it's often a malevolent fairytale filled with bad dogma and deed and scapegoat many. People lose their sense of belongingness because it was based on falsehoods because we just know more today. Ever hear the expression happy-idiot? Well people were more idiotic back then and clung to biases and traditions. People used to have to wait a long time for their photos to be shot and so the serious faces. Young and old are disillusioned and have less hope. One can find a lot wrong with culture today but take a look back at older times. It's a double-edge sword. We have welfare for the poor and sick; what did these people do? They took in their sick and old which makes them better in that way for sure. See tricked you on that one. Nietzsche wrote about decaying culture and civilization. Elite Leftist Intellectuals think they know everything with their phony ideologies but they are in some ways destroying us. Same for the Right. People dont want to know the truth then or now; we hide from reality and the more you do the better off you can be. Take it away now, imaginary god.
@@oppothumbs1 Your hypothesis is society’s downfall. We are in an anti-Christian, anti-biblical culture now an there had never been a more lost and nihilistic world than the one we are in now. Repent and receive Christ. No other road.
@@oppothumbs1 people also overlook the huge positives religions have given. The creation of hospitals. The largest provider of Humanitarian work around the world. It’s input on law and the written word. The creation off AA. Etc etc. Nihilism brings nothing positive to the world.
There are too many people, yet we are atomized. we are social and tribal animals, which is totally absent on our societies, because there are too many people. when there is too much of anything, its value goes down.
I believe the long exposure time of older cameras made holding a smile difficult and increased the risk of the photograph coming out blurry. Plus photos were much rarer and thus more formal and people often followed the example of paintings where subjects had not traditionally smiled much.
@@CornerTalker think about modern apartments and condos. Because of zoning laws and endless restrictions and regulations building anything in most modern cities is extremely expensive. But we stil need to increase the stock of housing. And since we don’t value beautiful architecture anymore the result is giant ugly towers ruining the landscape that allow more people to cram into the city. If they made these buildings beautiful in the current content a condo in Vancouver would be 1.5 million instead of 1 million. S’problem
This stuff about the 19th century photos having 'solemnity' and some sort of dignity is BS. The reason the people aren't smiling is because it took time to actually capture the image so they had to maintain a pose for that amount of time. They weren't going to sit there with a stupid grin for ten minutes.
Roger Scruton's attitude to religion is that of a typical Conservative. He doesn't personally believe in a God but supports the idea as a means to help glue society together.
The reason that people in older photographs didn't smile was because it took around a minute or longer to capture the image as the lens were slow and you couldn't move. It's difficult to smile when you have to hold it for a long time, your cheeks start to hurt.
More concerned with the aesthetics of a building than the thousands who died within it; more concerned with gay marriage than the degradation caused each and every day by the scourge of capitalism which is the true root of all civilization's woes. What a fool.
make your own video and talk about what interests you. Don't call someone a fool for discussing aspects of these events and culture which THEY are interested in.
Apparently none of them thought of the fact that when your photograph was taken in the 19th century, you had to be exactly still for a while, which meant you couldn't be smiling.
@7:10 "...that Czech writer who talks about the uglification of the world." Sir Roger was referring to Milan Kundera, in The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Although Western cities were more developed, shiny, and clean than those behind the Iron Curtain, he marveled at how soulless and sterile modern buildings were. He called modernism in art and architecture "the ongoing uglification of our world."
They're not smiling in the early photographs predominantly because the exposure time was too long then. Though apparently smiling was also seen as lower-class, too.
What is modern culture? It takes centuries to create a culture. Decades at the very least. Nothing in modern society has achieved anything of value. People have devolved into their technology staring at tiny little screens. I think because they are frightened. Thank the push towards diversity which is not a strength but a detriment to society, all societies.
In fact, I wouldn't consider "modern culture" a separate culture. Just like you said, modern society hasn't achieved much, and therefore it can't be considered a culture, doing otherwise would eulogize a very precarious lifestyle, look at Tik Tok for instance, do you consider that to be something that belongs to a culture? That's not culture, its the reflection of our idleness as a society.
yet here you are, making use of modern technology. Do you have electronics in your home? Efficient means of travel? Comfortable home cooling and heating? Modern medical and dental care? Reliable food sources? Why is diversity a detriment?
"Our whole culture is based on the proliferation of images, meaningless images" to rephrase it - our whole culture is bases on the proliferation of self-centered, egoic, self-aggrandizing images which only leads to suffering and division.
The photography commentary is nonsense. In the early days of photography, the photosensitive emulsions were not as responsive as modern films and thus required long exposure times. It required subjects to remain still for many seconds while the shutter was open and it's much easier to hold a resting bitch face stock still than some smiley gawk. This is the reason for the serious facial expressions, not this conservative fantasy how about how the good old days were so much better and people were more dignified, blah blah blah. This is conservative cow dung wrapped in false erudition.
I do agree with a lot of what they say but I must point one thing out that they get horribly wrong: People didn't smile way back in the day because photography was not as advanced as it is now. Today it takes less than a second to snap a picture, but back then it could take around a minute to capture the picture and the subject had to be as still as possible or it would be blurred.
And don't forget the expense of photography in those days. People might be photographed a handful of times in their entire lives. Not an occasion for frivolity.
Totally agree; I think this footage reveals a certain overintellectualisation that in one moment (will get the timestamp later) actually shows Scruton near-lauding the hijacker of one of the planes that crashed into the Twin Towers on account of his distaste for ugly architecture. Yep, overintellectualisation on a superlatively inhuman scale.
The thing that strikes me about old photos is how black and white people were in the 19th century. It's like their entire skin tones and clothing consisted only of black, white and grey, or occasionally sepia. I think it must be something to do with how serious people were back then. People probably only started getting pink or brown skin and coloured clothing in the late 20th century, when people started becoming frivolous and silly. I think we should go back to being black and white. I think the amish still do it. and they are all nice people.
It seems everybody left a comment about why people didn't smile as much in older photos without reading the other comments, most of which said the exact same thing. I have seen older photos of smiling people, most of whom were outlaws.
Well, the reason they weren't smiling in early photographs was because the exposure took quite a long time due to the light sensitivity of the medium at the time, and they had to hold completely still.
Not smiling in old photographs. A reason I have encountered, don't recall the source, is the slow shutter speed of early cameras made holding a smile tedious. The same would be true of painted portraits. Still, there is something to be said against the risible insistence of constant smiling in American culture.
I agree with the solemnity of photos in the 19th century. But a lot of that has to do with the long exposure of photos back then. The photo would be exposed to light for more than a few seconds, so it was difficult to hold a smile for a long time. Photographers asked their subjects to stay still without smiling.
"One common explanation for the lack of smiles in old photos is that long exposure times - the time a camera needs to take a picture - made it important for the subject of a picture to stay as still as possible" - it's technical, not philosophical.
I am not a photograph expert but as far as I know, there were techniques from the 1870's that allowed photographers to take pictures in a few seconds at most. This guy is a relatively famous wet plate photographer taking pictures with a 150 year old camera in just about 2-3 seconds. Check him out. th-cam.com/video/AE1bMc8tGWs/w-d-xo.html
@@schrodingershat599 It's interesting, but there were several processes of making photos and this one was prevalent for about 25 years(from 1855 to about 1881). www.khanacademy.org/partner-content/getty-museum/getty-photographs-films/photographic-processes/a/understanding-the-wet-collodion-process
@@rutessian Nice. It seems even before 1870 there were ways to make a picture within seconds or minutes! So maybe they are actually "full of themselves" but maybe, they just know what they are talking about. I will just assume the latter for now.
4:30 One major reason why no one smiled in the old photographs of the 1800s was that camera shutter speed was extremely slow, so any movement had to be kept at an absolute minimum regardless of a person's mood at the time.
They didn't smile in pictures for several reasons, none of them had to do with if they were happy or not. It took extremely long exposures back then to capture pictures, so holding a false pose for 10-20 minutes would have been extremely uncomfortable and created many very blurry exposures
The old photographs were solemn, yes, but that was because photography was in its infancy, and the exposure legnth was longer than how long most people could hold a smile.
Degeneration and deterioration are aspects of existence, as, in reality, all things are in a state of constant change. It will never be possible for the King Canutes of the world to stop this from occurring..
One of the reasons that people weren't smiling in 19th century photographs is the that they had to sit still for long periods of time because the time to achieve a good recorded image. Try smiling and not moving for several minutes.
In which way gay people living together (we are NOT talking about Church marriage) harms other people? If we give up the use of reason in thinking morality we end up endorsing all sorts of atrocities in name of tradition. We need roots, but we need reason. Scruton's philosophy is guided by fear, he hides himself under tradition.
Yes it’s hard to reconcile the existence even of gay people with calling them sinners. If anything it’s gay people reconciling and adapting to religious people condemning them. They started, gays turn their cheeks. it’s basically hate speech against a group of people. If anything is decadent it’s Scruton making gay marriage somehow an issue whilst not even addressing the huge beam in his own eye.
@@gdsupreme5040 It seems that, unfortunately (or not), comments were suppressed. In any case, I would like to add that my deceased husband was a member of a catholic gay association, called 'Dignity'. So there we go with the religion, church and tradition question. He once drove from Saskatchewan (Canada) to Chicago, just to attend a meeting. He did so with joy.
@@contacaodehistoriasdetrist2627 That really doesn't answer my point at all. I'm saying that without an authority such as God or the church, morality is arbitrary and abstract.
Not degenerating, but self-consuming, like an auto-immune disorder in which the body attacks itself for failing to recognize itself or its crucial component parts and its architectural reliance and need of those imperfect structures and their imperfect socially obligated service.
Christian values. You can't have a free and ordered society without shared common values. Without that, you either have ordered tyranny, or chaotic freedom, neither of which is conducive to prosperity. I don't know when last you've been in Orania, but the town has really been booming lately.
@T J Yes, large swats of South Africa is Christian, but none of it is Christian only, and that's the point. South Africa is a multicultural, multireligious society, its constitution does not recognise any religion being true over another. Therefore, a kind of weak secular hegemony dominate the social-political discourse. Without a common religious core, there is no moral foundation on which consensus could be found. South Africa is becoming a weak state, precisely because it has no internal coherence, values, worldview or vision for the future. Christian values is the difference between the American revolution that immediately became an ordered, prosperous state, and the French revolution, which turned into a blood bath of extremism, followed by a century of instability.
Always interesting. Compromises are possible. Permit civil unions. Call them "marriages" if you want. Give all married couples the same legal (and tax) advantages and responsibilities. Don't force churches, mosques, synagogues or temples to perform religious ceremonies for gay couples. Everyone will be slightly unhappy, as is the case with all compromises.
Marriage tax incentives should be done away with. The whole point is to make it easier for couples to have children but unmarried people have children, too, and not all married people have children. Why should someone get a tax break just cause they really like someone else?
In 9:55 he talks about Homs (Syria), that's my city. It was one of the most mobilized cities against the Syrian grey-cement Soviet-style regime. So much so that it was called "The Capital of the Revolution". In particular, he is referring to a so-called renovation program established by the government (aka: a great channel for corruption) to bring down the Old City (which is completely made of black stone and is super romantic, cozy and nostalgic place), to build on top of it "modern" cement houses. The Old City was predominantly Sunni and Christian, and the government was predominantly Alawite, so the Sunnis in particular felt that their nice heritage is about to be wiped out be cement Alawites. This fueled stuff indeed between the two communities.
In some ways, my beliefs/philosophy is very “conservative”. I’m still (after half a century of considering the evidence) a fiat creationist, for example. At the same time, I see a link between the “certainty” to which Sir Roger Vernon Scruton referred and “dogmatism” - the tendency to lay down principles as incontrovertibly true, without consideration of evidence or the opinions of others. It seems to me that what many people are rejecting in the twenty-first century is not really theism or traditionalism so much as dogmatism and the spiritual pride which accompanies it. I may be saddened that so many people are rejecting some of the things our parents taught my siblings and me but, as Rich Hannon once said, “Most people who think they are rejecting God are really only rejecting a caricature (misrepresentation) of him.”
“Most people who think they are rejecting God are really only rejecting a caricature (misrepresentation) of him.” Excellent and profoundly astute observation. That's in impactful consideration.
@@PhoenixLibertas I read your reply early this morning but it wasn’t until just now (11:15 am) that I thought to ask you: Of the people with whom you have spoken about their reasons for rejecting “God”, have you found that they had rejected one or more aspects of the traditions that are widely considered “Christian”? If so, do you remember which one or which ones they mentioned?
'i want this frozen moment to be a moment of seriousness' is not what they were thinking. There simply was no reason to smile on a photo for them. People smile when something funny happens or when your there is a special moment of happiness or a moment where you want to show someone you mean no harm or aggression. None of it is really happening when someone takes your photo....
When it first appeared, "Modern" architecture was for the most part tasteful and attractive. However, in decades since things have run completely out of control. I have witnessed examples firsthand that would turn the unprepared to stone.
@@wmfife1 I found post on YT which was somewhat overly long and not engaging enough to watch in its entirety. Aesthetically it seems a bit too much. I do not have any aesthetic or architectural vocabulary to make a meaningful comment so I'll just say it doesn't seem homey. I was though, quite pleased to see Michael has taken up the delightful habit of cigar smoking. It has always seemed very odd to me that the income and similar financial information about celebrities is made public.
If you consider Art Deco to be modern, and I suppose it is insofar as it is a product of the Modern Era, then I tend to agree; it's not my favorite style, but it certainly has its virtues and some of it can be quite attractive. But any post-war architecture is pretty universally awful.
One of the things that has regressed is that of the childhood experience. The lack of opportunities for kids to explore. They are indoors playing on PlayStation all day.
That's a fine point regarding the paucity of smiles in early photography. It is rather false that photos taken today are almost exclusively filled with rictus grins. If we cannot be honest with a camera, what hope is there?
They had those solemn faces in old photographs because the chemical process and film didn't allow them to do fast shutters. The exposures had to be for several seconds. It's easier to hold a serious neutral face than it is to smile for that long.
I think hip hop culture has gone from the genius and purity of Erik B and Rakim or Naz to the salacious, trivial and wholly unmusical songs of Nikki minaj and cardi B-junk food. That’s one example, and in art the introduction of NFT’s is one step below the wholesale fish market at Basel Miami.
People didn't smile in old photos because one had to be perfectly still for a long period of time and it was difficult to keep a smile for that long. That is due to the fact that all photography was long exposure.
Stodgy old men afraid of change and progress. I wonder where these two would have stood on the slavery issue if this conversation had taken place in the 1860s, or on the issue of serfdom during the middle ages.
Every generation tends to say this about younger generation. Although...social media is distracting and has accelerated the perceived or actual degeneration.
The biggest problem with social media is to do with the way that disinformation tends to spread. Sensation always travels faster than the truth due to people's willingness to pass on the sensational (due to the 'feel good' hit). Historically, this could only spread so fast before hitting the wall of the actual considered situation. Now, you can saturate the world in a day. By the time consideration and care has time to come round and the actual situation is evaluated, it's facing a huge demographic emotionally invested in the falsehood (sometimes extremely aggressively).
But what precisely is the cost to you? Hurt feelings only? We must all, at all times and in all places, work to counter our intolerance, arrogance, and ignorance.
One might care and yet remain on peaceful terms with others. It is difficult not to remark atrocities - acts of extreme cruelty. Surely you're not characterising gay marriage as an atrocity, are you?
3:48 "none of them are smiling". They didn't smile because when they took those older photos they had to stand one spot without moving for a bit or the picture would be blurred. Also being sculpted sometimes they had to stand in the same spot for hours
Sir Roger’s interlocutor appears to have some interesting insights, and expresses himself with clarity. It’s such a pity that he has been largely cut from this posting.
Shaykh Hamza mentions that schools in the Islamic world were traditionally very beautiful. A good example is Madrasah Ben Yousef in Marakesh; one of the most beautiful buildings I've ever been in.
@@soslothful Fact is, Christianity's holy book has been found out, as more and more people are realizing; this can only continue, thanks to the Internet, principally. As for its billions, Islam claims a similar number of adherents; does that make it divinely instituted? I have no problem with Christianity stripped of its ludicrous supernaturalism: Adam and Eve, our "first parents," the incarnation of "the second person of the Trinity," the virgin birth, Jesus' vicarious atonement (or, if you prefer the Protestant take on his death, penal substitution), his resurrection, the "imminent" Parousia (what a joke), everlasting torment for the majority of human beings, etc. I washed my hands of all of that some 20 years ago and have never for a moment regretted doing so.
@@williamlarochelle6833 No, the numbers of Christians has nothing to do with the truth of their beliefs. But these numbers would suggest Christianity is not going away anytime too soon. The supernatural beliefs you mention are core beliefs. Were they jettisoned Christianity would not be Christianity.
The increasing presence of sharia compliant Islam in the west is a large contributory factor in the decline of the west. I like Scruton but as someone largely conservative in my politics I see most variants of Islam as a threat to conserving all that is good about western civilisation.
Andrew Devine that is why you need to counter that with ... what the west was built on ... Christendom. You ought to check Soco Films out on TH-cam, they do debates with Islamic apologists and call them out. They are Christians obviously, but they have interesting stuff
@Wesley I was rereading C.S. Lewis and he was talking about natural theology basically. He used the Tao to refer to the knowledge of God or fundamental values that we can have through our everyday lives. But even he admitted that from within that tradition, changes can be made. He didn't mention slavery, but that was the one that came to mind. Rejecting slavery still allows respect for God, human life, loving our neighbor, telling the truth, honesty and the like.
I’m sure you’re right about a certain form of Islam contributing to the decline of western values in Europe, but it really doesn’t have such an impact in America (at least not yet). Here we mostly grapple with white guilt over slavery, native genocide, and other forms of racial oppression in the past. And we are sort of starving ourselves of any tradition, meaning, and pride in our great progress over the last centuries as a self-punishment for that guilt. It’s interesting what the West shares in tradition and how the attack on the West is in different forms at the various Western nations (Europe having a big immigration crisis from Muslim nations, but then North America, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa facing totally different problems).
I want to agree, i don’t like it either, but didn’t older people complain about our youths, and the even older ones when the old people were young? I’m afraid i will just be an old man complaining about the good old days, but times just change or am i saying something crazy here? I mean we had medieval times, they weren’t the best so i heard 😅
“The young people of today think of nothing but themselves. They have no reverence for parents or old age. They are impatient of all restraint. They talk as if they alone know everything and what passes for wisdom with us is foolishness with them. As for girls, they are forward, immodest and unwomanly in speech, behavior and dress.” -Socrates, according to Plato (~400 B.C.E.) No, this isn’t a modern-times thing, this is a how-old-people-have-always-viewed-young-people” thing. Every successive generation is less conservative than the generation before it, no matter what time period or geographic location on planet earth, and it always pisses off the older generation. This is simply a part of the human condition as our species progresses
For the most part, we no longer have tyrants to command slaves, peasants, and high taxes to build beautiful wasteful monuments to themselves that we used to. That's a good thing, though the high taxes have returned.
I can’t take this conversation seriously when these two learned men don’t even know that the reason 19th century photographic portraits were unsmiling was because the technology of the time needed exposures long enough (often 1-10 seconds) to make smiling without moving infeasible.
Czech writer being refered to is Milan Kundera who wrote about the "uglification" of the world wrt architecture in both communist and capitalist societies, in his book The Unbearable Lightness of Being.
Maybe none of the people in early photographs were smiling because photographs took a long time to take. Keeping a smile on your face for 20 seconds without moving a muscle is hard, if not impossible. Maybe they tried it, but it always ended up blurry.
3:46 There is actually a very simple explanation of that: in those days the photographic exposure times were in _minutes._ And it's simply very hard to maintain a smile for that length of time without moving or blurring the picture.
Such an erudite and well-spoken gentleman. We are diminished by his loss.
My god how we are.
Orania, South Africa is prosperous and civil, very low crime. I can’t quite put my finger on it though... 😉
How we need his voice in these days. May he rest in peace.
Ooo big words look at you go
@@adrianaadnan9958 He is the on TH-cam not? Likely he will pass into oblivion because he hasn’t got much to say. It’s intellectually very flawed, I have to say more palatable than JP who really is a hack, but still flawed and with at its core a lack of perception of morality.
“Art for art's sake is an empty phrase. Art for the sake of truth, art for the sake of the good and the beautiful, that is the faith I am searching for.”
― George Sand
Only artists understand art for arts sake. Art for the sake of the good and the beautiful is just as "empty". Whose concept of beauty are we using? Is a view of ants eating a dead body beautiful? THAT is the point of art for art's sake. Do you like Dali's art?
Art for the sake of truth reflects life -- as it is -- not necessarily good or beautiful , but as it really is . Any good artist knows that .
Francis Bacon's Screaming Pope
@@unstrung65 what is life as is?
@@unstrung65 Regarding around 4 minutes into the video : See here on TH-cam the Faces of Sapmi Somby Color your past. But it was a hard life with some oppression from the governments in the 4 countries they lived in
Such keen insight and wise spirit. It is rare to see a person be an excellent academic and a deep soul simultaneously.
You said what I was thinking much better than I did...Thank you.
This is about the collective narcissism in Modern society brought upon by Social Media. People are measuring their worth through this hollow exercise in deifying oneself. The effects of these choices are terrible instead of it leading to a more meaningful life what has happened is people are more miserable than ever before even though we have more luxuries than previous generations in human history.
The narcissism of the modern world is due to the many inventions, especially the camera and the microphone; we are able to watch and to listen to ourselves through recordings.
you only have this degeneration because of the invention of the birth control pill. there are no more traditional values when it comes to dating and marriage. which makes men more competitive for their status giving them alone time to dedicate to their careers. its also one of the few moments in history where people almost freely can escalate in their socioeconomic classes. when it comes to survival, men will always go after money.
To pick up on your point which is rarely made (but should be) Gordon Ratray Taylor [sociologist) made point over 50 years ago that we (lets assume he meant the West) have lifestyles that only kings in the past could imagine yet we are more unhappy. He was arguing a "system break" was due, like end of Middle ages for example. Yet it hasn't happened and in my humble opinion we have more and more of the same processes locked in by influence of the world's wealth being owned by an ever smaller proportion of the populations. I agree the social media is now a major factor creating this awful narcissism and conflict in society that perversely enables control through fear and stops the changes we need to stablise and live more meaningfully and hopefully sustainably.
the post WW2 gen had all the luxuries for cheap. What we have is credit and credit cards.
in the end times, man will become worshippers of himself
"Never in the history of the world has there been so many methods whereby one can communicate with others , but never in the history of the world has there been so little of worth to communicate".
Kathleen Raine , Poet.
Yeah there is nothing of value to communicate nowadays only in the past. Biggest load of horseshit I've ever heard and it's insulting to anybody that produces content- painters, designers, photographers, musicians, filmmakers, actors, and many others. You'll quote this and then immediately go consume media. Damn if we only lived in the 16th century where access to information and ways to communicate was limited so we could talk about farming or the bible. Now those were the days.
@@SynthwavelLover you give credence and clout to the quote 👍 we don't need to talk about farming and the bible. Two things I have absolutely no interest in whatsover. We could talk about Gurdjieff and Ouspensky and the attainment of higher states of consciousness and the law of the heptaparaparshinokh and the triamazikamno , should you so wish
@@hermesnoelthefourthway For a guy who quotes this you sure have a lot of useless vlog videos that don't contribute much. I don't care if you do it, hell the more info the better (we've all got opinions go ahead and throw em out there), but if anything YOU prove the quote right. Even if you commenting and me commenting is kinda useless. And you've proven me right- I over-simplified the past on purpose to show you what you're doing to our present: making assumptions, using anecdotes, look dude I doubt you care about the facts of the world you just wanna feel smart so go ahead and post the quote and feel smart if you want.
@@hermesnoelthefourthway I suppose it’d be better to say that there is little worth in much of what’s communicated rather than there’s little worth communicating.
@@hermesnoelthefourthway How dare that person raise topics you’re not interested in.
They didn't smile in old photos because of the long exposure time.
Exactly what I was thinking.
No, the original tradition was to view a photo as though it were a portrait. Grinning without reason was viewed as the act of an imbecile.
Go ask a Russian how they feel about smiling and then try to inflict your cultural bias on us again....lol
That’s been debunked. The reason was that a smile indicated vanity or foolishness. Or as they said here, it was a virtue to be a serious person.
@@margiethessin8975holy shit are you stoopid. exposure time was literally minutes.
I'm studying architecture and i truly hate our current era of architecture. Wish beauty returned.
you will have to pay more for a house and people dont want that
@@ghostxl8525 Why did they pay for it back when beautiful architecture was more common?
@@varaconn6708 dont know the exact answer,because materials were expensive, land was cheaper, no safety regulations from government and inflation,but just look at all the beautiful buildings from that era, all of them either belong to the rich families, kings or governments, the normal people had to leave in squares designed to sleep and eat, the luxuries that we have now among the middle clase is an exception looking back at the history
Let us take this word ' hate' out of dictionary. Yes I wish beauty returned.
Would you fly a plane into a building to make your point though? Because apparently Roger was very "impressed" by that.
In a nutshell, Scruton is describing the loss of community, the loss of the sense of belonging and interdependence that characterized Western Civilization prior to the 20th century. When decisions began to be made solely on the basis of cost-benefit analysis and efficiency, we sacrificed the human factor to economics, spurred on by increasingly complex technologies that are both liberating and isolating. In another video, Scruton discusses "The True, the Good, and the Beautiful," all qualities that defy cost-benefit analysis. When was the last time you heard a politician or businessman or journalist give those concept more than lip service? When all values are reduced to money's worth, a civlization has lost its soul.
Which is why the two USA political parties offer no choice. They promote tech change fueled by capitalized.
Agree 100%. The media likes to paint us a picture of a fascade of common good but in reality there is very little anymore.
Money's worth or wealth and power have always been the main objective of humanity. Only a few achieve it. There were Emperors, Kings, Lords and serfs. Now there are CEOs and workers. The common good has never been common. Which civilisation ever had a soul?
@@TTTzzzz There's some pretty considerable differences between attitudes towards money and wealth in pre-modern and non-capitalist societies and ours. Yes, economics is always important, but afaik the capitalist way of treating *everything* as something to be reduced to a salable commodity that a market can be built around and whose entire worth centers on nothing else but an arbitrary monetary value, is pretty unique to itself. OUtside of it, wealth has been an objective b/c it costs to have a vital functioning society; we, OTOH, make its acquisition an end in itself. Plenty of other civilizations had souls, a civilization doesn't have rulers who actively foster and encourage the arts, for example, if it doesn't have a soul. Who are our rulers who do that? Instead, they actively and aggressively attack the arts as often as not, at very least they don't understand and don't respect them. The differences are quite vast in fact.
@@almishti About souls and art: All works of art are 'manifestations' of the culture they were created in. Indeed, all cultures and civilizations have have a soul and even a heart. But nearly all of them (if not all) required obedience / serfdom. Go against the established state moral and you could be jailed. put to death or at least banished.
In many countries this was and still is the case.
For me, art is an expression of the human mind. That mind must be free to express itself and not be coerced by the state,
If the mind is not free, art degenerates into propaganda which has been by far the foremost expression of cultures and civilizations for at least the past 12.000 years.
Freedom of thought and expression is a very young concept.
All very interesting, but the reason why people didn't smile on photos in the nineteenth century is because the photographic plate required a long exposure time and when you smile you can't keep your face still for that long. Every smiling face photo would have been destroyed because it was blurred. Photographers soon learned to tell their sitters not to smile. Also, having your photo taken was expensive and so it was a regarded as a portrait, not the capture of a spontaneous moment. Nineteenth century people were just like us, but with different technology. I think if you read classical Greek literature, you will find that they were moaning about how their culture was degenerating. It's the human thing to do.
Still, I can't imagine Leonardo da Vinci telling his sitters to "Say cheese!" though maybe Mona Lisa was saying "mozzarella."
really good comment
Valid comment. Doesn’t change the fact that the culture is denigrating.
Came here to say this. Thank you
@@nigerianprince5389 Mate, if the sign of a decadent culture is that nobody owns a dictionary any more, you seem to be an examplar. 'Denigrate' is a transitive verb and ... well, I'll let you look it up.
I miss this man so much. I only wish I could have met him. Without a doubt one of the most brilliant philosophers of the last 100 years. And from all appearances, a very genuine and kind man. We miss you Sir Roger. RIP
Me too😢
So nice to listen to two wise, learned and serious men.
The One who promotes Islam is definetely Not Wise !
Many people missed something amazing in this. They are both speaking of a society turning nhilistic. The selfie example was a testament to the nhilist thinking taking place today. We live in a society where people do not care anymore.
Maybe that is true. But these men have selected great things of the past but ignore the horrors. People have abandoned religion because it's often a malevolent fairytale filled with bad dogma and deed and scapegoat many. People lose their sense of belongingness because it was based on falsehoods because we just know more today. Ever hear the expression happy-idiot? Well people were more idiotic back then and clung to biases and traditions.
People used to have to wait a long time for their photos to be shot and so the serious faces.
Young and old are disillusioned and have less hope. One can find a lot wrong with culture today but take a look back at older times. It's a double-edge sword. We have welfare for the poor and sick; what did these people do? They took in their sick and old which makes them better in that way for sure. See tricked you on that one.
Nietzsche wrote about decaying culture and civilization. Elite Leftist Intellectuals think they know everything with their phony ideologies but they are in some ways destroying us. Same for the Right. People dont want to know the truth then or now; we hide from reality and the more you do the better off you can be. Take it away now, imaginary god.
Oh they care...about getting what they want, when they want it.
@@oppothumbs1
Your hypothesis is society’s downfall. We are in an anti-Christian, anti-biblical culture now an there had never been a more lost and nihilistic world than the one we are in now. Repent and receive Christ. No other road.
@@oppothumbs1 people also overlook the huge positives religions have given. The creation of hospitals. The largest provider of Humanitarian work around the world. It’s input on law and the written word. The creation off AA. Etc etc.
Nihilism brings nothing positive to the world.
There are too many people, yet we are atomized. we are social and tribal animals, which is totally absent on our societies, because there are too many people. when there is too much of anything, its value goes down.
I get sick of models looking miserable....and young women looking like porn stars.......holding their cameras...
I believe the long exposure time of older cameras made holding a smile difficult and increased the risk of the photograph coming out blurry.
Plus photos were much rarer and thus more formal and people often followed the example of paintings where subjects had not traditionally smiled much.
also, people had very bad teeth
Yep. Don't know why these guys are trying to use that to suggest that people were somehow 'better' back then.
@@Mike-me3sp No. It is a lot more than that. People are much more narcissistic now.
@@Mike-me3sp Yes, it was a rather weak analogy.
He should have known this.
"The ugliness of modern society". Well, that is what you get when things have to be made as cheaply as possible. The end result will be cheap.
Things don't HAVE to be made cheaply. We choose that.
@@CornerTalker think about modern apartments and condos. Because of zoning laws and endless restrictions and regulations building anything in most modern cities is extremely expensive. But we stil need to increase the stock of housing. And since we don’t value beautiful architecture anymore the result is giant ugly towers ruining the landscape that allow more people to cram into the city. If they made these buildings beautiful in the current content a condo in Vancouver would be 1.5 million instead of 1 million.
S’problem
Our whole culture is cheap
Ideology is the main factor driving the ugliness of modern society, wanting everything to be cheap follows.
Nah I wouldn't say so. Inexpensive material goods are one thing, but the cheapening of aesthetic and spiritual values are much deeper.
This stuff about the 19th century photos having 'solemnity' and some sort of dignity is BS. The reason the people aren't smiling is because it took time to actually capture the image so they had to maintain a pose for that amount of time. They weren't going to sit there with a stupid grin for ten minutes.
Correct.
Rest In Peace Sir Roger Scruton! Great man
Miss this man , and his wonderful insight . Live in peace with your neighbours . RIP
Roger Scruton's attitude to religion is that of a typical Conservative. He doesn't personally believe in a God but supports the idea as a means to help glue society together.
The reason that people in older photographs didn't smile was because it took around a minute or longer to capture the image as the lens were slow and you couldn't move. It's difficult to smile when you have to hold it for a long time, your cheeks start to hurt.
I only discovered Sir Roger two years ago.
He's a sad loss. Thank goodness for YTs back catalogue of talks.
More concerned with the aesthetics of a building than the thousands who died within it; more concerned with gay marriage than the degradation caused each and every day by the scourge of capitalism which is the true root of all civilization's woes. What a fool.
I'm so glad I'm not the only one to feel this way about this video. What total nonsense they are spouting here.
make your own video and talk about what interests you. Don't call someone a fool for discussing aspects of these events and culture which THEY are interested in.
Apparently none of them thought of the fact that when your photograph was taken in the 19th century, you had to be exactly still for a while, which meant you couldn't be smiling.
If that was true, why do painting and statues display the same solemnity. Mona Lisa barely cracks a grin.
@7:10 "...that Czech writer who talks about the uglification of the world." Sir Roger was referring to Milan Kundera, in The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Although Western cities were more developed, shiny, and clean than those behind the Iron Curtain, he marveled at how soulless and sterile modern buildings were. He called modernism in art and architecture "the ongoing uglification of our world."
At least they weren't shitholes
They're not smiling in the early photographs predominantly because the exposure time was too long then. Though apparently smiling was also seen as lower-class, too.
Rip Roger Scruton.
Eternal rest grant unto Roger, oh Lord,
and may perpetual light shine upon him.
May his soul, through the mercy of God,
Rest In Peace.
Amen
What is modern culture? It takes centuries to create a culture. Decades at the very least. Nothing in modern society has achieved anything of value. People have devolved into their technology staring at tiny little screens. I think because they are frightened. Thank the push towards diversity which is not a strength but a detriment to society, all societies.
In fact, I wouldn't consider "modern culture" a separate culture. Just like you said, modern society hasn't achieved much, and therefore it can't be considered a culture, doing otherwise would eulogize a very precarious lifestyle, look at Tik Tok for instance, do you consider that to be something that belongs to a culture? That's not culture, its the reflection of our idleness as a society.
“Thank the push toward diversity…”
And where exactly did this non sequitur come from?
@@loganleatherman7647 It came from his large intestine, I believe.
yet here you are, making use of modern technology. Do you have electronics in your home? Efficient means of travel? Comfortable home cooling and heating? Modern medical and dental care? Reliable food sources?
Why is diversity a detriment?
soslothful had his/her comment cancelled by the Right. A pity. Jordan Peterson foolishly thinks it's only the Left that does this.
"Our whole culture is based on the proliferation of images, meaningless images" to rephrase it - our whole culture is bases on the proliferation of self-centered, egoic, self-aggrandizing images which only leads to suffering and division.
Your hatred of your mind is noted.
The photography commentary is nonsense. In the early days of photography, the photosensitive emulsions were not as responsive as modern films and thus required long exposure times. It required subjects to remain still for many seconds while the shutter was open and it's much easier to hold a resting bitch face stock still than some smiley gawk. This is the reason for the serious facial expressions, not this conservative fantasy how about how the good old days were so much better and people were more dignified, blah blah blah. This is conservative cow dung wrapped in false erudition.
I do agree with a lot of what they say but I must point one thing out that they get horribly wrong: People didn't smile way back in the day because photography was not as advanced as it is now. Today it takes less than a second to snap a picture, but back then it could take around a minute to capture the picture and the subject had to be as still as possible or it would be blurred.
And don't forget the expense of photography in those days. People might be photographed a handful of times in their entire lives. Not an occasion for frivolity.
There’s also the question of bad teeth. It wasn’t the thing to show them..
Totally agree; I think this footage reveals a certain overintellectualisation that in one moment (will get the timestamp later) actually shows Scruton near-lauding the hijacker of one of the planes that crashed into the Twin Towers on account of his distaste for ugly architecture. Yep, overintellectualisation on a superlatively inhuman scale.
Such a valid point ! ⬆️
Smiling is also a cultural gesture; people did not smile as much in the past in general. In fact, they do not smile much in some cultures now.
The thing that strikes me about old photos is how black and white people were in the 19th century. It's like their entire skin tones and clothing consisted only of black, white and grey, or occasionally sepia.
I think it must be something to do with how serious people were back then. People probably only started getting pink or brown skin and coloured clothing in the late 20th century, when people started becoming frivolous and silly.
I think we should go back to being black and white. I think the amish still do it. and they are all nice people.
Ha ha ha!
It seems everybody left a comment about why people didn't smile as much in older photos without reading the other comments, most of which said the exact same thing. I have seen older photos of smiling people, most of whom were outlaws.
Well, the reason they weren't smiling in early photographs was because the exposure took quite a long time due to the light sensitivity of the medium at the time, and they had to hold completely still.
Not smiling in old photographs. A reason I have encountered, don't recall the source, is the slow shutter speed of early cameras made holding a smile tedious. The same would be true of painted portraits. Still, there is something to be said against the risible insistence of constant smiling in American culture.
That's what happens if you attack the belief in Christ and people become atheistic
I agree with the solemnity of photos in the 19th century. But a lot of that has to do with the long exposure of photos back then. The photo would be exposed to light for more than a few seconds, so it was difficult to hold a smile for a long time. Photographers asked their subjects to stay still without smiling.
These guys need to get out of the ivory tower, stop glorifying terrorists, they lost me at that point.
Interesting conversation
"One common explanation for the lack of smiles in old photos is that long exposure times - the time a camera needs to take a picture - made it important for the subject of a picture to stay as still as possible" - it's technical, not philosophical.
Glad someone else didnt catch the BS lol the guy just made that up that people took themselves seriously
I am not a photograph expert but as far as I know, there were techniques from the 1870's that allowed photographers to take pictures in a few seconds at most.
This guy is a relatively famous wet plate photographer taking pictures with a 150 year old camera in just about 2-3 seconds.
Check him out. th-cam.com/video/AE1bMc8tGWs/w-d-xo.html
@@schrodingershat599 It's interesting, but there were several processes of making photos and this one was prevalent for about 25 years(from 1855 to about 1881).
www.khanacademy.org/partner-content/getty-museum/getty-photographs-films/photographic-processes/a/understanding-the-wet-collodion-process
@@rutessian Nice.
It seems even before 1870 there were ways to make a picture within seconds or minutes!
So maybe they are actually "full of themselves" but maybe, they just know what they are talking about.
I will just assume the latter for now.
Why couldn't they stand still smiling?
4:30 One major reason why no one smiled in the old photographs of the 1800s was that camera shutter speed was extremely slow, so any movement had to be kept at an absolute minimum regardless of a person's mood at the time.
They didn't smile in pictures for several reasons, none of them had to do with if they were happy or not.
It took extremely long exposures back then to capture pictures, so holding a false pose for 10-20 minutes would have been extremely uncomfortable and created many very blurry exposures
Their whole argument is based on a falsehood, fucking absurd. I thought i was coming here to learn
The old photographs were solemn, yes, but that was because photography was in its infancy, and the exposure legnth was longer than how long most people could hold a smile.
Degeneration and deterioration are aspects of existence, as, in reality, all things are in a state of constant change. It will never be possible for the King Canutes of the world to stop this from occurring..
One of the reasons that people weren't smiling in 19th century photographs is the that they had to sit still for long periods of time because the time to achieve a good recorded image. Try smiling and not moving for several minutes.
Early photography wasn't a 'moment in time' as today.
The exposure took a lot longer, too long to smile.
People didn't smile in 19th Century photos because of long exposure times. Not a mystery.
In which way gay people living together (we are NOT talking about Church marriage) harms other people? If we give up the use of reason in thinking morality we end up endorsing all sorts of atrocities in name of tradition. We need roots, but we need reason. Scruton's philosophy is guided by fear, he hides himself under tradition.
Yes it’s hard to reconcile the existence even of gay people with calling them sinners. If anything it’s gay people reconciling and adapting to religious people condemning them. They started, gays turn their cheeks. it’s basically hate speech against a group of people. If anything is decadent it’s Scruton making gay marriage somehow an issue whilst not even addressing the huge beam in his own eye.
Ironic that you bring up morality considering that without the Church you have absolutely no basis to consider anything moral.
@@gdsupreme5040 It seems that, unfortunately (or not), comments were suppressed. In any case, I would like to add that my deceased husband was a member of a catholic gay association, called 'Dignity'. So there we go with the religion, church and tradition question. He once drove from Saskatchewan (Canada) to Chicago, just to attend a meeting. He did so with joy.
@@contacaodehistoriasdetrist2627 That really doesn't answer my point at all. I'm saying that without an authority such as God or the church, morality is arbitrary and abstract.
@@gdsupreme5040 Kierkegaard (a christian philosopher, by the way) once compared Christendom to apes...
Not degenerating, but self-consuming, like an auto-immune disorder in which the body attacks itself for failing to recognize itself or its crucial component parts and its architectural reliance and need of those imperfect structures and their imperfect socially obligated service.
That is a really strong point and great observation.
it is the age if individualism. That also has its downside sadly.
As a sufferer from psoriasis, I felt this one
His passing was a loss to the civilized world.
Orania, South Africa is prosperous and civil, very low crime. I can’t quite put my finger on it though... 😉
Christian values. You can't have a free and ordered society without shared common values. Without that, you either have ordered tyranny, or chaotic freedom, neither of which is conducive to prosperity.
I don't know when last you've been in Orania, but the town has really been booming lately.
@T J Yes, large swats of South Africa is Christian, but none of it is Christian only, and that's the point. South Africa is a multicultural, multireligious society, its constitution does not recognise any religion being true over another. Therefore, a kind of weak secular hegemony dominate the social-political discourse. Without a common religious core, there is no moral foundation on which consensus could be found. South Africa is becoming a weak state, precisely because it has no internal coherence, values, worldview or vision for the future. Christian values is the difference between the American revolution that immediately became an ordered, prosperous state, and the French revolution, which turned into a blood bath of extremism, followed by a century of instability.
Maybe its the magic dirt?
@T J oh yeah? whereabouts, might I ask?
Same for my town area of Mexico with non-politically-correct ethnic and cultural origins. We live in a small paradise surrounded by crime.
Always interesting. Compromises are possible. Permit civil unions. Call them "marriages" if you want. Give all married couples the same legal (and tax) advantages and responsibilities. Don't force churches, mosques, synagogues or temples to perform religious ceremonies for gay couples. Everyone will be slightly unhappy, as is the case with all compromises.
Marriage tax incentives should be done away with. The whole point is to make it easier for couples to have children but unmarried people have children, too, and not all married people have children.
Why should someone get a tax break just cause they really like someone else?
In 9:55 he talks about Homs (Syria), that's my city. It was one of the most mobilized cities against the Syrian grey-cement Soviet-style regime. So much so that it was called "The Capital of the Revolution".
In particular, he is referring to a so-called renovation program established by the government (aka: a great channel for corruption) to bring down the Old City (which is completely made of black stone and is super romantic, cozy and nostalgic place), to build on top of it "modern" cement houses.
The Old City was predominantly Sunni and Christian, and the government was predominantly Alawite, so the Sunnis in particular felt that their nice heritage is about to be wiped out be cement Alawites. This fueled stuff indeed between the two communities.
Damn I'm sorry to hear that bro, I really hope you guys manage to protect your heritage. Fucking government.
How did it ended?
People stood stiffly and didn't smile in old photographs because of the long exposure time needed for the camera to record the image.
Scruton is top drawer.
Not if you're a reader/well-versed in philosophy...
@@PK-re3lu OK chum
In some ways, my beliefs/philosophy is very “conservative”. I’m still (after half a century of considering the evidence) a fiat creationist, for example.
At the same time, I see a link between the “certainty” to which Sir Roger Vernon Scruton
referred and “dogmatism” - the tendency to lay down principles as incontrovertibly true, without consideration of evidence or the opinions of others. It seems to me that what many people are rejecting in the twenty-first century is not really theism or traditionalism so much as dogmatism and the spiritual pride which accompanies it.
I may be saddened that so many people are rejecting some of the things our parents taught my siblings and me but, as Rich Hannon once said, “Most people who think they are rejecting God are really only rejecting a caricature (misrepresentation) of him.”
“Most people who think they are rejecting God are really only rejecting a caricature (misrepresentation) of him.” Excellent and profoundly astute observation. That's in impactful consideration.
@@PhoenixLibertas I read your reply early this morning but it wasn’t until just now (11:15 am) that I thought to ask you: Of the people with whom you have spoken about their reasons for rejecting “God”, have you found that they had rejected one or more aspects of the traditions that are widely considered “Christian”? If so, do you remember which one or which ones they mentioned?
Those head scarfs you see bobbing in the audience tell you all you need to know about cultural degradation.
'i want this frozen moment to be a moment of seriousness' is not what they were thinking. There simply was no reason to smile on a photo for them. People smile when something funny happens or when your there is a special moment of happiness or a moment where you want to show someone you mean no harm or aggression. None of it is really happening when someone takes your photo....
When it first appeared, "Modern" architecture was for the most part tasteful and attractive. However, in decades since things have run completely out of control. I have witnessed examples firsthand that would turn the unprepared to stone.
Examples?
@@soslothful Too many to name. Best starter - the beach house of Michael Jordan near Destin, FL. If you can still find a photo of it.
@@soslothful Unable to load image. Try searching: Michael Jordan, Destin, FL beach house.
@@wmfife1 I found post on YT which was somewhat overly long and not engaging enough to watch in its entirety. Aesthetically it seems a bit too much. I do not have any aesthetic or architectural vocabulary to make a meaningful comment so I'll just say it doesn't seem homey. I was though, quite pleased to see Michael has taken up the delightful habit of cigar smoking.
It has always seemed very odd to me that the income and similar financial information about celebrities is made public.
If you consider Art Deco to be modern, and I suppose it is insofar as it is a product of the Modern Era, then I tend to agree; it's not my favorite style, but it certainly has its virtues and some of it can be quite attractive. But any post-war architecture is pretty universally awful.
One of the things that has regressed is that of the childhood experience. The lack of opportunities for kids to explore.
They are indoors playing on PlayStation all day.
Nothing last forever.We must adapt or die
This issue is strongly concerns me. The problem is that they aren't welcome to critics
That's a fine point regarding the paucity of smiles in early photography. It is rather false that photos taken today are almost exclusively filled with rictus grins. If we cannot be honest with a camera, what hope is there?
They had those solemn faces in old photographs because the chemical process and film didn't allow them to do fast shutters. The exposures had to be for several seconds. It's easier to hold a serious neutral face than it is to smile for that long.
Hmmm. I hear these folks saying, although they don't mean to, that Religious faith is hopelessly obsolete. I tend to agree.
I think hip hop culture has gone from the genius and purity of Erik B and Rakim or Naz to the salacious, trivial and wholly unmusical songs of Nikki minaj and cardi B-junk food. That’s one example, and in art the introduction of NFT’s is one step below the wholesale fish market at Basel Miami.
People didn't smile in old photos because one had to be perfectly still for a long period of time and it was difficult to keep a smile for that long. That is due to the fact that all photography was long exposure.
Stodgy old men afraid of change and progress. I wonder where these two would have stood on the slavery issue if this conversation had taken place in the 1860s, or on the issue of serfdom during the middle ages.
Yes! Change and progress. Like the recent U.S. ruling on abortion. 👍🏻
@@michaelricketson1365 America is moving backwards.
@@nightraven2975 Not for the unborn at least. But in lots of other ways, yes.
So glad to have found this conversation….liked and subscribed ❤
Every generation tends to say this about younger generation. Although...social media is distracting and has accelerated the perceived or actual degeneration.
The biggest problem with social media is to do with the way that disinformation tends to spread. Sensation always travels faster than the truth due to people's willingness to pass on the sensational (due to the 'feel good' hit). Historically, this could only spread so fast before hitting the wall of the actual considered situation. Now, you can saturate the world in a day. By the time consideration and care has time to come round and the actual situation is evaluated, it's facing a huge demographic emotionally invested in the falsehood (sometimes extremely aggressively).
digging that 80s david bowie cosplay
What exactly do you have to give up to live on peaceful terms with someone who marries one of their own sex?
MuH rElIgIoUs FrEeDoMs!!!
If someone violates what you consider to be moral, there is no cost to you? How much are you willing to put up with?
But what precisely is the cost to you? Hurt feelings only? We must all, at all times and in all places, work to counter our intolerance, arrogance, and ignorance.
@@brucehamilton5609 We don’t have to be personally involved in something to care. An atrocity anywhere gets our attention.
One might care and yet remain on peaceful terms with others. It is difficult not to remark atrocities - acts of extreme cruelty. Surely you're not characterising gay marriage as an atrocity, are you?
3:48 "none of them are smiling". They didn't smile because when they took those older photos they had to stand one spot without moving for a bit or the picture would be blurred. Also being sculpted sometimes they had to stand in the same spot for hours
The reason people did not smile on old photographs is because it took so long to take the photo.
So people could not hold a smile for that long.
Sir Roger’s interlocutor appears to have some interesting insights, and expresses himself with clarity. It’s such a pity that he has been largely cut from this posting.
hamza yusuf. they recorded a couple full conversations together
A intensely brilliant man of our times now gone. Rest his soul.
Shaykh Hamza mentions that schools in the Islamic world were traditionally very beautiful. A good example is Madrasah Ben Yousef in Marakesh; one of the most beautiful buildings I've ever been in.
Ancient Islamic schools were beautiful but what was being taught there and happened outside was quite ugly.
Could we have another comment on the long exposure times!
Maybe exposure time is why the statues and paintings he mentioned were not smiling too lol
@@malaakalabri978 haha
😂
All empires collapse mainly due to greed and technology. Ours is no different.
"A tower to reach into heaven"
It's degenerating, true enough, but Christianity isn't the fix. Its days are numbered.
A prophecy?
@@soslothful reading the handwriting on the wall
@@williamlarochelle6833 Ah! A Biblical allusion but not an answer. With over 2 billion Christians in the world your conjecture seems unlikely.
@@soslothful Fact is, Christianity's holy book has been found out, as more and more people are realizing; this can only continue, thanks to the Internet, principally. As for its billions, Islam claims a similar number of adherents; does that make it divinely instituted? I have no problem with Christianity stripped of its ludicrous supernaturalism: Adam and Eve, our "first parents," the incarnation of "the second person of the Trinity," the virgin birth, Jesus' vicarious atonement (or, if you prefer the Protestant take on his death, penal substitution), his resurrection, the "imminent" Parousia (what a joke), everlasting torment for the majority of human beings, etc. I washed my hands of all of that some 20 years ago and have never for a moment regretted doing so.
@@williamlarochelle6833 No, the numbers of Christians has nothing to do with the truth of their beliefs. But these numbers would suggest Christianity is not going away anytime too soon.
The supernatural beliefs you mention are core beliefs. Were they jettisoned Christianity would not be Christianity.
We are not all religious, you know......I don't ask anyone to change in any way, and I don't expect to be directed by others at all.
Were can we hear this kind of dicussion today.? We are on a rocky road for sure.!
People don't smile in photographs in the 19th century because you couldn't keep a smile for the length it took to take a photograph.
The increasing presence of sharia compliant Islam in the west is a large contributory factor in the decline of the west. I like Scruton but as someone largely conservative in my politics I see most variants of Islam as a threat to conserving all that is good about western civilisation.
Andrew Devine that is why you need to counter that with ... what the west was built on ... Christendom. You ought to check Soco Films out on TH-cam, they do debates with Islamic apologists and call them out. They are Christians obviously, but they have interesting stuff
@Wesley I was rereading C.S. Lewis and he was talking about natural theology basically. He used the Tao to refer to the knowledge of God or fundamental values that we can have through our everyday lives. But even he admitted that from within that tradition, changes can be made. He didn't mention slavery, but that was the one that came to mind. Rejecting slavery still allows respect for God, human life, loving our neighbor, telling the truth, honesty and the like.
I’m sure you’re right about a certain form of Islam contributing to the decline of western values in Europe, but it really doesn’t have such an impact in America (at least not yet). Here we mostly grapple with white guilt over slavery, native genocide, and other forms of racial oppression in the past. And we are sort of starving ourselves of any tradition, meaning, and pride in our great progress over the last centuries as a self-punishment for that guilt. It’s interesting what the West shares in tradition and how the attack on the West is in different forms at the various Western nations (Europe having a big immigration crisis from Muslim nations, but then North America, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa facing totally different problems).
@@ic.xc. all abrahamic religions belong in the desert. None in Europe much less in the Americas. Sorry but your Jewish cult has nothing good to offer.
Faith doesn't give you certainty. That doesn't make any sense. It's belief without evidence.
Sir Roger left us far too soon but thank God for his presence and influence on this earth
"brutalism" might be the architectural style he was thinking of
I want to agree, i don’t like it either, but didn’t older people complain about our youths, and the even older ones when the old people were young? I’m afraid i will just be an old man complaining about the good old days, but times just change or am i saying something crazy here? I mean we had medieval times, they weren’t the best so i heard 😅
“The young people of today think of nothing but themselves. They have no reverence for parents or old age. They are impatient of all restraint. They talk as if they alone know everything and what passes for wisdom with us is foolishness with them. As for girls, they are forward, immodest and unwomanly in speech, behavior and dress.”
-Socrates, according to Plato (~400 B.C.E.)
No, this isn’t a modern-times thing, this is a how-old-people-have-always-viewed-young-people” thing. Every successive generation is less conservative than the generation before it, no matter what time period or geographic location on planet earth, and it always pisses off the older generation. This is simply a part of the human condition as our species progresses
Homosexuality will coexist with heterosexuality more easily if one doesn’t expect the other to celebrate the other’s abomination.
And calling it an “abomination” just shows that you have no intention of coexistence at all, so why should anyone listen to your “wisdom”?
For the most part, we no longer have tyrants to command slaves, peasants, and high taxes to build beautiful wasteful monuments to themselves that we used to. That's a good thing, though the high taxes have returned.
They literally hate anyone who tries to be better than what they used to be
I can’t take this conversation seriously when these two learned men don’t even know that the reason 19th century photographic portraits were unsmiling was because the technology of the time needed exposures long enough (often 1-10 seconds) to make smiling without moving infeasible.
Czech writer being refered to is Milan Kundera who wrote about the "uglification" of the world wrt architecture in both communist and capitalist societies, in his book The Unbearable Lightness of Being.
WE MISS YOU. .....
Maybe none of the people in early photographs were smiling because photographs took a long time to take. Keeping a smile on your face for 20 seconds without moving a muscle is hard, if not impossible.
Maybe they tried it, but it always ended up blurry.
This is also true. The daguerreotype camera took an age to expose.
3:46 There is actually a very simple explanation of that: in those days the photographic exposure times were in _minutes._ And it's simply very hard to maintain a smile for that length of time without moving or blurring the picture.
I agree. I have read about that too.
Fast Forward to 2023..........Humanity is Devolving, and many people seem quite happy about it. Clearly, the movie Idiocracy was a documentary.
So, basically, Scruton just wanted the 50's back....
...the 1850's, that is.
No bonehead .....
Haha