Re:Adam Curtis on the dangers of self-expression (2017)
by card_zero on Saturday May 11, 2024 @10:33PM
(#40331963)
I don't know about that, I think cave painting was highly meme driven.
Chauvet Cave and Lascaux are similar (lots of overlapping paintings of large animals), but some 16,000 years separate them. Is that individual self-expression? It looks to me like entrenched tradition.
Stencil paintings of hands are a common theme, but bizarrely are found all over the world: Argentina, France, North Africa, Australia. This too can only be a meme, I think. Possibly the method, spitting out paint, was the meme, and the idea of making stencils of hands arose naturally by accident in all these places, but even then there is no sign of real individual self-expression going on. It's also intriguing to me that three of the places I mentioned (on three different continents!) include stencils of animal hands (large birds or lizards).
Chauvet Cave and Lascaux are similar (lots of overlapping paintings of large animals), but some 16,000 years separate them. Is that individual self-expression? It looks to me like entrenched tradition.
Stencil paintings of hands are a common theme, but bizarrely are found all over the world: Argentina, France, North Africa, Australia. This too can only be a meme, I think. Possibly the method, spitting out paint, was the meme, and the idea of making stencils of hands arose naturally by accident in all these places, but even then there is no sign of real individual self-expression going on. It's also intriguing to me that three of the places I mentioned (on three different continents!) include stencils of animal hands (large birds or lizards).