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I have looked at milan and seen that it has a shopping street or so. never did i see anything more decadent. ugly people with faces that looked like fish smeared by makeup, in the believe they were cultured, consuming slop that pollutes the earth. Completely on the mercy of anyone who works a real hard job. "effeminate(in an ugly way)" men whose lower yaw was so smeared backwards they had a fish face. its like looking at a population of slop vacuum cleaners who inhale it all. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hVtBpPUPCU If lain looks up: manchester night life they will find similar. Why is this, i rarely saw such revolting and especially ugly things.

Everything around us has become uglier, that is a fact. And I believe it primarily has to do with two things. The first is that the number of consumers of culture has increased dramatically during the last century or so. The old consumers of culture were primarily part of the elite and had a classical education and mostly had good taste, often not their own, but a taste that has been passed down and cultivated through generations. "Regular" people couldn't afford much back in those days and therefore art and fashion (among others) was more beautiful. More beautiful? Why? Because "regular" people did not have the time or wealth required to properly educate and immerse themselves in the the aesthetics that have been transformed and renewed, building upon prior achievements stretching back to antiquity. This leads into the second problem, the lack of classical education. Try to read a book from the 19th century and you will most likely find endless references to greek mythology and roman history. Such literature is completely incomprehensible without a classical education. And these references are not exclusive to scholarly literature, they are everywhere in the popular literature from that time. The elite of course could afford more home schooling but public schools used to teach the classics, at least where I'm from. Something changed after two world wars, there was a reaction towards the "old world" (culturally). Which is not strange, of course you would want to distance yourself from the civilisation that caused immense destruction, twice. So we gradually abandoned the classical education and with it went our cultural heritage and the wealth of accumulated experiences through the ages. It is a truly deplorable state of affairs, education has never been more accesible and most people have the time for a classical education. They just don't know any better. It was already bad before the internet, but now, with the state of most people's attention, I am very pessimistic about the future. Well that's what this forum is all about, right? Venting about this terrible world of ours. But there is great beauty out there and we still need to seek it out and try to keep the ugly, ignorant plebs from ruining our precious few sanctuaries. I'm sorry, this wasn't a very specific answer to your question, but I really believe that these are the root causes, or at least two of them.

>>96004 That's a tourist heavy city. Lots of cities in Europe are like that ... Big corporations take them over and reshape the environment, culture and social conditioning for profit. There are places that aren't consumed by big corporate slop, but they are rare and hard to find... And of course nobody there wants more people because then big corporations would come in and ruin everything.

>>96005 a gem you found. wonder how italians feel about it, if there is any on lainchan.

Read infect your friends and loved ones. Attached. It's very political and written for a trans audience so you might like it or you might not. Torrey Peters as a writer loves controversy, her views are not really inline with any particularly loud political camp. There is nuance. The book however contains the exact explanation for why this happens, framed in an apocalyptic setting that while unlikely to occur, highlights aspects of our society that currently exist. Specifically, it talks about how our presentation - our sex - is determined by what resources we have access to. You refer to men who are unmasculine and androgynous, this is exactly what I am referring to as the kind of lifestyle that leads to strong men (and beautiful women) being produced off limits to the working class, which primarily consists of caterers such as in restaurants, dangerous and disgusting work and tech. The middle category will produce men most similar to what you are describing, as well as women who are "masculine" in these ways. However they will not be flattering in other respects - such as disfiguring scars, or smelling like their workplace. Our bodies are distorted in highly specialized ways depending on our jobs. This is not quite eugenics because of how quickly it happens and how, in less than one generation, capitalism will change to value something else. I would also argue this has always been the case: people cannot acquire the bodies they want without free time to work on that, society will not make them into what they want, they need the autonomy to become what they want. This is just as true for cis men and women as it is for transsexuals. >>96004 >Cultural consumption was primarily for the elites until the late 20c Disagree. It was the Renaissance, with the rise of vernacular culture, that the shift occured. It was however gradual at first, it would take several hundreds more years for it to primarily cater to capitalists (who were not yet a ruling class). >Classical education, good taste It is my opinion that these things are theseus' ships but it is particularly relevant, if you want to talk about history, to understand what styles were popular and when. I do not pretend to be a historian but I can tell you that what was considered fashionable among the nobility of the 1500s, for instance, would not be the same and might actually disgust that of the next century. There can be many reasons why this is true, I would say that there doesn't need to a consistency of attitude for one thing to follow the next - for instance one might consider the fashion of old to be worse because it is cheap and simple, yet one could also find the fashion of the new to be excessively loud or unsophisticated. You can find a "middle way" between these two things, but that is in itself yet another cultural value with a very specific locus. The movement of history ultimately, does not care for the highly contemporary rationalizations we make about it. With that said, I will state my own preference which is the I genuinely believe our ability to examine history is improving at a rate faster than it was previously diminished. This was not always the case and it will probably not always be the case. Furthermore we are not infallible in it and there is always room for well argued historiographic critique. I will also argue, however, that if there is anything that would make a society or civilization great, it would be this ability to examine the past, even in a negative light. Censorship is uglier than the most blemished decadence and leads to a fall from grace. >The lack of classical education It is a damn shame with what it was ultimately replaced. There is plenty of decent Christian art, but the idea that education in old gods and myths is blasphemy that must be revised or extinguished is a decrepit mistake. >Education used to be better where I'm from >Something changed after two world wars Interesting point as you seem to be using personal rhetoric but you are certainly not old enough to remember the 1920s and it is probably difficult to get an accurate portrayal of that period as well. But I am nevertheless somewhat in agreement, although I would argue the reaction against the old world is a small part of the larger story. It's true that this happened in experimental art movements of the time like dada, and that this art came to be informative to philosophy more broadly speaking - especially the continentals, but you can see a trace in all of it. I would however also argue that their rebellion against the old world was never complete, not to make a point that it should be or shouldn't. The reason for this is that there were other important things that led to the changes that now occur as well. One of which was the industrial revolution, which lasted hundreds of years and will probably last for at least 100 more. Since it moves so slowly, it might be silly to call it a revolution but I would argue it is one. This is because it is a time period in which specific technological innovations, like the printing press, and the movement of those innovations can be tracked to social shifts. This is not always true , there are and will be many technologies that claim to revolutionize which in fact don't, even if they possess society as a globalized trend (like GPTs). All that indicates is that the industrial revolution's values have been cemented into society. Due to the fact that these technologies typically have a lot to do with information, this can also be called the information age, which began much earlier than it is talked about. The reason for this being relevant is that the abandonment of the classics has a very specific political reason. Under the neoliberal political period, which began in the 1970s approximately, public educated was massively gutted and defunded. This caused a serious political movement to emerge at the time, the new left, because students saw what was happening (the conversion of academia to proletariat) and did not wish it happened to them. As a movement, the new left was very confused and is still very confused as it continues to exist. The reason being that it aligns itself with the proletariat, yet ultimately still fears for becoming a part of it. But that is a tangent. Academia was gutted because, after capitalism had "won" the second world war and during the cold war been consolidated, liberal society which was established as a kind of compromise between the nobility and the old capitalist class began to turn itself fully over to the capitalists. This has already begun much earlier, but the wars seemingly defined the score. The capitalists were also given this authority over civilization because the new and old world alike found itself a new threat: communism. There is much more to say as I have not even gotten to the thesis I wanted to make. But it can be more-or-less derived from these principles. The information revolution led to neoliberalism, a new theory of statecraft, which was basically in line with the ideology of the industrial era. The right and left have been thoroughly penetrated by this theory, it is the reason why the kind of Christianity that's taken over the West is cultureless and absorbed with garish architecture and slop. This is not protestantism but rather capitalism and the belief that human laborers are literally interchangeable with machines (hence the threat of AI replacement). This is known as cybernetics. Neoliberalism has new tools to combat its new threats: censorship, surveillance, robot police, in general things that rhyme with "high tech". Overarching all is a theory of statecraft: the cybernetic hypothesis. What we are experiencing now, politically, is academia's realisation as to what the industrial revolution, which is in many ways its own child, as well as its own parent, has in store for it. It is my belief that free thought and free expression will win in the end, but the costs will be great - many, many people will die due to neoliberalism's decadence and inability to handle crisis. It is also my belief that the future will be communist, but that we will not celebrate this fact.

>>96005 >>96006 as somebody who currently lives in a tourist attraction city, i really do dislike tourists. if nothing else, they take up a bunch of space. they can also be more dangerous than the locals since they mostly come here to get drunk op also mentioned shopping streets which definitely attract a certain type of person, typical rich people whose idea of fun is buying clothes and buying kfc mcdonalds or slop like that on the way out. the night life on the other hand attracts degens, stupid kids looking to pop molly and commit statuatory rape. both types ugly inside and out

>>96007 i read the book you attached (coincidentally i happen to be a detransitioner so i have some insight into this gender stuff). now interpreting both op's post and the book, i wonder what the people op complains about would do in the book's scenario. if they were forced to choose their gender, which is probably the biggest part of one's presentation, do you think they'd choose to go on as ugly feminine men and fish-looking fat women? is that really the way that they want to be seen? or are they just too apathetic to try to look like a certain male/female archetype which they'd rather be seen as? now i'm not claiming that i'm the man i want to be but for example when i look inside a mcdonald's and see an obese person i just can't imagine that somebody would want to be seen as an obese person in a mcdonalds and if i were obese i'd avoid fast food places like the plague because hey, i may not be fit, but i'm not that far gone. if that makes sense.

It is called selection bias. You will wherever you go see different types of people gather. You will rarely ever see an attractive girl going anywhere alone because she will be wanting to avoid being approached. You will rarely see an attractive guy rushing to a sale because a more attractive guy likely has more money to spend on his appearance and health so sales are less appealing. >"effeminate(in an ugly way)" This makes me wonder what makes an "effeminate" trait ugly or attractive? Is it specific traits alone where some are attractive and some are ugly or is it certain combinations and no trait is inherently attractive or ugly?

>>96013 so uhm as you can see

>>96013 this image is posted to show attractive femininity, as its not included in the above post. it also makes one wounder where attractive people are. As i happen to be more and more disgusted by what meets the eye. Another important matter is the fact of who gets to procreate, modern society filters out attractive people and dwells on disgusting, unhealthy and dumb ones for cattle keeping reason.

>>96020 Likely you spend too much time looking at selected curated photos not people in real life. Even someone attractive can look unattractive in person or a bad photo or video, or unattractive look attractive in a very specific angle, pose and expression in a photo.

>>96010 thank you for reading.. i think the book has a convenient explanation for everything which is that it is a post-apocalyptic setting where all superfluous work has been abruptly terminated. so in the story, perhaps they would be forced to do backbreaking labor to buy testosterone with and become rougher for it. but there is an interesting type of person in the story, "auntie boys" who were previously young men and for some reason or another didn't take testosterone or estrogen and became frail and androgynous. but i like your question. because it says something poignant, how can someone who neglects theirself like this be happy with what they are? I think that many people find identities for theirselves that basically function as a cope for working on themselves. i never feel like i can fit in among normal men because there's a lot of self-aggrandizing and cope to pretend they don't have deep personal failings and general lack of conscientiousness. it could also be that they have children at some point and don't have the time and energy to work on themselves. >>96019 the word filter is doing its job. its true there are ~two kinds of androgyny, attractive, model-type androgyny and unattractive fat person androgyny. there is a very clear distinction between them but the former tends to also be associated with hairlessness, smooth skin, well-maintained hair (it doesn't have to be long), fashionability, youth. though i find myself drawn to more mature types, lately. >>96022 this, to be honest

>>96020 >it also makes one wounder where attractive people are. As i happen to be more and more disgusted by what meets the eye. Every time i board the bus i see at least 3 attractive girls, on some lines during some time intervals, there are 15-20 attractive girls on each bus. You either live in a horrible country where people are actually mostly unattractive (like the UK)., or your terminally online personality just doesn't find real natural human traits attractive and you need some kind of anime robot slut or whatever

>>96026 I live where there are not many young people, no public transport and every attractive girl is always with a boyfriend that i've seen and I was using hyperbole to make the point of example how different people gather different.

>>96002 >https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hVtBpPUPCU >If lain looks up: manchester night life >they will find similar. Honestly? Manchester looked way, Way worse. If we think of these two cities as falling on a line depicting "bad culture" with either end representing one extreme, I'd say Manchester was an aggressively grotesque travesty (ugly, messy, trashy, obnoxious, and stupid) whereas Milan were more of a hollow, bland kitsch-y city when all the neon lights, modern sleek-but-fugly design objects and meaningless shops are coupled with the old marble ornamented historical buildings at the background. Even the people in Milan seemed "ordinary" in comparison to Manchesters' all-singing, all-dancing affront to human dignity and decency. Yuck.

>>96004 What would you include on a classical education curriculum? I feel like there will be one point where i'm free enough to deep dive into this and want to have a clear plan before doing so

>>96006 Milan has much bigger problems than Christmas markets, which are entirely made up of immigrants, tourists and southerners. Being the only Italian city not resembling a decaying corpse, it acts like a tumor on the surrounding areas, engulfing everything in its path and spitting it out as a shapeless mass of gray and “progress.” The symbols of its former glory stand out against the gigantic modern european design experiments scattered all over it, never inhabited or finished. When you HAVE to go there (only decent universities and job opportunities), you pray to return home without being stabbed or raped. Voglio morire.

it seems as if the people in this thread live in their own fantasy version of reality and have no idea what a real and regular human being looks like

>>96418 This. Some people gather at a marketplace to eat a burger and buy random soykaf, and you criticize them for not dressing up as a runway model? What's wrong with buying clothes and getting kfc? There is nothing wrong with consumption. You do know that you actually have to consume food and wear clothes, right? Unless you like starving and freezing to death - which you don't, because you'd be too dead to post this retarded thread on this stupid website. If we have to dress and eat, we might as well make meals and shopping for clothes convenient by putting them on the same street. Saves time; more efficient that way than driving all the way back home to get lunch - and then back to the shopping centre again, right? I mean, seriously. What do you want, cathedrals on every fuarrrking corner? Where do you all buy clothes anyway? I don't understand you people. You'll find anything to complain about, the most mundane fuarrrking soykaf. All while your politicians set up surveillance tyranny, start wars, and rape kids on private islands. It's insanity. What the fuarrrk?

>>96004 I completely get where this mindset is coming from. But honestly, I can't imagine how things could get any more bleak. Today’s world demands rapid execution, low cost, and effortless consumption. There's no room left for anything that requires depth, refinement, or a connection to older traditions. Even those who are supposedly at the top of the social hierarchy aren’t safe from this trend. The powerful often twist anything that’s traditional into something shallow, tacky, or just plain bizarre. In the field of learning, these subjects don’t generate revenue, push forward technological progress, or foster breakthroughs. You can’t reference ancient poets in a financial summary, make subtle nods to philosophers in a general article, or mention historical thinkers in a normal chat. It either a) doesn’t resonate with the people listening, which is a waste of your time, b) takes a lot of time to create, which you can’t afford without financial support, c) requires a lot of mental effort from the audience, which often puts them off, hurting the overall engagement, or d) ends up being ignored or forgotten in a world that only wants quicker, newer, and more content, meaning it gets buried under a flood of mediocre material. Over the last few weeks, I’ve gone through 10 to 30 of the most active discussions on topics like technology, artificial intelligence, mobile devices, and broader cultural shifts on *lainch*n, and the pattern seems to be that while tools like AI *could* be used for mundane, unexciting tasks, most people don’t, can’t, or won’t. The people involved are already feeling a mix of frustration, anger, sadness, indifference, disappointment, anxiety, weariness, and dissatisfaction with where technology is heading. But these are mostly individuals who are deeply involved with tech, and I don’t think this yet reflects how the general public perceives it. And until the average person starts feeling the same strain, there’s no real hope of shifting the overall direction of today’s cultural climate. This applies to any attempt to bring back or transform culture and learning, too. Because, in our current system, culture and education are shaped by what the market and science demand. Anything that doesn’t support these areas is considered unimportant and will eventually be discarded in pursuit of a state of balance where everything runs smoothly, without resistance, and without distinction. spam filters can eat a dick this was a semi-serious-effort post I had posted to day or two ago, but lainchan's internal spam filter wouldn't allow me to post it, so I just ended up replacing all words which included the letter "a" with an "*", but apparently that wasn't enough. So, here's an AI-slop filtered rendition of my original post, despite it not being "spam", as the site's algorithm claimed...

>>96439 Hi I read your post and appreciated your perspective. Its comforting there are other users like yourself who feel alike and value humanistic ideas. I was wondering what the hell was going on with the letter "a" bring changed to "*" which made your post unreadable. I have no idea what its like moderating lainchan but sooner or later they usually get rid of obvious spam.

>>96441 Yeah, sorry, my lainon! I really couldn't decipher what lainchan's word filter was being butt-hurt over, so I just f*cking /vim replaced all "a" letters in order to by-pass the filter, but some time later the post was deleted regadless, which pissed me off.... but, okay, whatever, y'know, right? Anyway, I appreciate your sincere post, lainon, and hope to see more such instances in the future! Long Live Lain Iwakura, long may she reign!