Tag: aesthetics

Missing Pieces of the Anti-Enlightenment Project

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5–8 minutes

I’ve just added a new entry to my Anti-Enlightenment corpus, bringing the total to seven – not counting my latest book, The Illusion of Light, that summarises the first six essays and places them in context. This got me thinking about what aspects of critique I might be missing. Given this, what else might I be missing?

Audio: NotebookLM podcast discussion of this topic.

So far, I’ve touched on the areas in the top green table and am considering topics in the bottom red/pink table:

Summary Schema – The Anti-Enlightenment Project – Published Essays

AxisCore QuestionRepresentative Essay(s)
EpistemicWhat counts as “truth”?Objectivity Is Illusion: An Operating Model of Social and Moral Reasoning
PoliticalWhat holds power together?Rational Ghosts: Why Enlightenment Democracy Was Built to Fail; Temporal Ghosts: Tyranny of the Present
PsychologicalWhy do subjects crave rule?Against Agency: The Fiction of the Autonomous Self; The Will to Be Ruled: Totalitarianism and the Fantasy of Freedom
AnthropologicalWhat makes a “normal” human?The Myth of Homo Normalis: Archaeology of the Legible Human
EthicalHow to live after disillusionment?The Discipline of Dis-Integration: Philosophy Without Redemption

Summary Schema – The Anti-Enlightenment Project – Unpublished Essays

AxisCore QuestionRepresentative Essay
Theological (Metaphysical)What remains sacred once transcendence is dismantled?The Absent God: Metaphysics After Meaning
Aesthetic (Affective)How did beauty become moral instruction?The Aesthetic Contract: Beauty as Compliance
Ecological (Post-Human)What happens when the world refuses to remain in the background?The Uncounted World: Ecology and the Non-Human
Linguistic (Semiotic)How does language betray the clarity it promises?The Fractured Tongue: Language Against Itself
Communal (Social Ontology)Can there be community without conformity?The Vanished Commons: Between Isolation and Herd

Below is a summary of the essays already published. These are drawn verbatim from the Anti-Enlightenment Project page.

1. Objectivity Is Illusion: An Operating Model of Social and Moral Reasoning

Published September 2025

Objectivity, in the social and moral sense, is a performance – a consensus mechanism mistaken for truth. This essay maps how “objectivity” operates as a scaffold for Enlightenment rationality, masking moral preference as neutral judgment. It introduces a five-premise model showing that what we call objectivity is merely sustained agreement under shared illusions of coherence. The argument reframes moral reasoning as provisional and participatory rather than universal or fixed.

→ Read on Zenodo

2. Rational Ghosts: Why Enlightenment Democracy Was Built to Fail

Published October 2025
The Enlightenment built democracy for rational ghosts – imagined citizens who never existed. This essay dissects six contradictions at the foundation of “rational” governance and shows why democracy’s collapse was prewritten in its metaphysics. From mathematical impossibility to sociological blindness, it charts the crisis of coherence that modern politics still calls freedom.
→ Read on Zenodo

3. Temporal Ghosts: Tyranny of the Present

Published October 2025
Modern democracies worship the now. This essay examines presentism – the systemic bias toward immediacy – as a structural flaw of Enlightenment thinking. By enthroning rational individuals in perpetual “decision time,” modernity erased the unborn from politics. What remains is a political theology of the short term, collapsing both memory and imagination.
→ Read on Zenodo

4. Against Agency: The Fiction of the Autonomous Self

Published October 2025
“Agency” is not a metaphysical faculty – it’s an alibi. This essay dismantles the myth of the autonomous self and reframes freedom as differential responsiveness: a gradient of conditions rather than a binary of will. Drawing on philosophy, neuroscience, and decolonial thought, it argues for ethics as maintenance, not judgment, and politics as condition-stewardship.
→ Read on Zenodo

5. The Discipline of Dis-Integration: Philosophy Without Redemption

Published October 2025

This essay formalises Dis-Integrationism – a philosophical method that refuses synthesis, closure, and the compulsive need to “make whole.” It traces how Enlightenment reason, deconstruction, and therapy culture all share a faith in reintegration: the promise that what’s fractured can be restored. Against this, Dis-Integrationism proposes care without cure, attention without resolution – a discipline of maintaining the broken as broken. It closes the Anti-Enlightenment loop by turning critique into a sustained practice rather than a path to redemption.

→ Read on Zenodo

6. The Myth of Homo Normalis: Archaeology of the Legible Human

Published October 2025

Modernity’s most persistent myth is the “normal” human. This essay excavates how legibility – the drive to measure, categorise, and care – became a form of control. From Quetelet’s statistical man to Foucault’s biopower and today’s quantified emotion, Homo Normalis reveals the moral machinery behind normalisation. It ends with an ethics of variance: lucidity without repair, refusal without despair.

→ Read on Zenodo

7. The Will to Be Ruled: Totalitarianism and the Fantasy of Freedom

Published October 2025

This essay examines how the Enlightenment’s ideal of autonomy contains the seed of its undoing. The rational, self-governing subject – celebrated as the triumph of modernity – proves unable to bear the solitude it creates. As freedom collapses into exhaustion, the desire for direction re-emerges as devotion. Drawing on Fromm, Arendt, Adorno, Reich, Han, and Desmet, The Will to Be Ruled traces the psychological gradient from fear to obedience, showing how submission is moralised as virtue and even experienced as pleasure. It concludes that totalitarianism is not a deviation from reason but its consummation, and that only through Dis-Integrationism – an ethic of maintenance rather than mastery – can thought remain responsive as the light fades.

→ Read on Zenodo

Below are possible future topics for this series*

8. The Absent God: Metaphysics After Meaning

Axis: Theological / Metaphysical
Core Question: What remains sacred once transcendence is dismantled?

Concept:
This essay would trace how Enlightenment humanism replaced God with reason, only to inherit theology’s structure without its grace. It might read Spinoza, Kant’s moral law, and modern technocracy as secularised metaphysics – systems that still crave universal order.
Goal: To show that disenchantment never erased faith; it simply redirected worship toward cognition and control.
Possible subtitle: The Enlightenment’s Unconfessed Religion.

9. The Aesthetic Contract: Beauty as Compliance

Axis: Aesthetic / Affective
Core Question: How did beauty become moral instruction?

Concept:
From Kant’s Critique of Judgment to algorithmic taste cultures, aesthetic judgment serves social order by rewarding harmony and punishing dissonance. This essay would expose the politics of form – how beauty trains attention and regulates emotion.
Goal: To reclaim aesthetics as resistance, not refinement.
Possible subtitle: Why Modernity Needed the Beautiful to Behave.

10. The Uncounted World: Ecology and the Non-Human

Axis: Ecological / Post-Human
Core Question: What happens when the world refuses to remain background?

Concept:
Here you dismantle the Enlightenment split between subject and nature. From Cartesian mechanism to industrial rationalism, the natural world was cast as resource. This essay would align Dis-Integrationism with ecological thinking – care without mastery extended beyond the human.
Goal: To reframe ethics as co-maintenance within an unstable biosphere.
Possible subtitle: Beyond Stewardship: Ethics Without Anthropos.

11. The Fractured Tongue: Language Against Itself

Axis: Linguistic / Semiotic
Core Question: How does language betray the clarity it promises?

Concept:
Every Anti-Enlightenment text already hints at this: language as both the instrument and failure of reason. Drawing on Nietzsche, Derrida, Wittgenstein, and modern semiotics, this essay could chart the entropy of meaning – the collapse of reference that makes ideology possible.
Goal: To formalise the linguistic fragility underlying every rational system.
Possible subtitle: The Grammar of Collapse.

12. The Vanished Commons: Between Isolation and Herd

Axis: Communal / Social Ontology
Core Question: Can there be community without conformity?

Concept:
This would return to the psychological and political threads of The Will to Be Ruled, seeking a space between atomised autonomy and synchronized obedience. It might turn to Arendt’s notion of the world between us or to indigenous and feminist relational models.
Goal: To imagine a non-totalitarian togetherness – a responsive collective rather than a collective response.
Possible subtitle: The Ethics of the Incomplete We.

* These essays may never be published, but I share this here as a template to further advance the Anti-Enlightenment project and fill out the corpus.

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Written by Bry Willis

microglyphics

Ugly Women

Posted in identity, nature, perception, philosophy, podcast, psychology, sexuality, societyTagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

This Isn’t Clickbait. I Asked MidJourney for “Ugly Women”. Here’s What It Gave Me.

Let’s clear the air: I did it for science. Or satire. Or possibly just to see if artificial intelligence would have the audacity to mirror the cruelty of its makers.

Audio: NotebookLM podcast on this topic.

I queried MidJourney with the phrase ugly female. What did it return? An aesthetic pageant. A digital Vogue spread. If any of these faces belongs to someone conventionally labelled “ugly”, then I’m a rutabaga in a Dior suit.

Yes, there’s one stylised rendering of Greta Thunberg in full Norse Valkyrie scowl mode – but even then, she looks fierce, not foul. The rest? AI-generated portraits so telegenic I half-expected to see #spon in the corner.

Let’s be clinical for a moment. As an American male (with all the culturally indoctrinated shallowness that entails), I admit some of these aren’t textbook 10s. Maybe a few clock in at a 6 or 7 on the patriarchy’s dubious sliding scale. But if this is ugly, the AI has either broken the aesthetic curve or been force-fed too many episodes of The Bachelor.

Here’s the thing: AI is trained to over-represent symmetrical faces, wide eyes, clear skin – the usual genetic lottery wins. And yet, when asked for ugly, it can’t help but deliver catalogue models with slightly unconventional haircuts. It doesn’t know how to be truly ugly – because we don’t know how to describe ugliness without revealing ourselves as sociopaths.

Once upon a time, I dated a model agent in Los Angeles. Japanese by birth, stationed in LA, scouting for a French agency – the kind of cosmopolitan trifecta only fashion could breed. Her job? Finding “parts models.” That’s right – someone with flawless teeth but forgettable everything else. Hands like sculpture. Eyelashes like Instagram filters.

We’d play a game: spot the 10s. She’d nudge me, whisper “her?” I’d say, “Pretty close.” She’d shake her head. “Look at that eye tooth.” And we’d dissolve into laughter.

We were mocking perfection. Because perfection is a con. A trick of lighting, contour, and post-production.

So, no. I don’t think any of the women in the AI’s response are ugly. Quite the contrary – they’re too beautiful. AI can’t show us “ugly” because it’s been trained to optimise desire, not reflect reality. And our collective understanding of beauty is so skewed that anything less than runway-ready gets sorted into the rejection bin.

If these women are ugly, what exactly is beautiful?

But maybe that’s the point. We’ve abstracted beauty so far from the human that even our ugliness is now synthetically pleasing.

What do you think? Are any of these faces truly ugly? All of them? Let me know in the comments – and try not to rate them like a casting director with a god complex.

The Narcissist’s Playbook

Posted in identity, language, perception, philosophy, psychology, societyTagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

I’ve lived in Los Angeles a couple of times for a sum total of perhaps 15 years. The first time, I loved it. The next time, I was running on fumes. The first time, I was in my twenties – the second time in my forties. What a difference perspective and ageing makes. In my twenties, I was a pretty-boy punk-ass who owned the club scene on the Strip. In my forties, I was a wage slave.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/6EnRMI8zqJRnC4gd9refkc?si=IANOUj9_RoK30OlyxfL25w
Audio: NotebookLM podcast on this topic.

This morning, I heard a country song on Insta with a line claiming ‘there are nines and dimes in all 50’, and it reminded me of a phrase we used when I lived in Los Angeles – ‘LA 7’. This is constructed on the egoist, sexist notion that if you were a 10, you’d have already moved to LA. If you still lived in, say, Iowa and were considered a 10, the exchange rate to LA would be a 7.

Then, I thought about the LA-NYC rivalry and wrote this article with some help from ChatGPT.

How L.A. and NYC Became the Centres of the Universe (According to Them)

It is a truth universally acknowledged that Los Angeles and New York City—those bickering siblings of American exceptionalism—believe themselves to be the sun around which the rest of us drearily orbit. Each is utterly convinced of its centrality to the human experience, and neither can fathom that people outside their borders might actually exist without yearning to be them. This is the essence of the ‘Centre of the Universe Complex,’ a condition in which self-importance metastasises into a full-blown cultural identity.

Let us begin with Los Angeles, the influencer of cities. L.A. doesn’t merely think it’s the centre of the universe; it believes it’s the universe, replete with its own atmosphere of smog-filtered sunlight and an economy powered entirely by dreams, green juice, and Botox. For L.A., beauty isn’t just a priority—it’s a moral imperative. Hence the concept of the ‘L.A. 10,’ a stunningly arrogant bit of mathematics whereby physical attractiveness is recalculated based on proximity to the Pacific Coast Highway.

Here’s how it works: a ’10’ in some picturesque-but-hopelessly-provincial state, say Nebraska, is automatically downgraded to a ‘7’ upon arrival in Los Angeles. Why? Because, according to L.A.’s warped ‘arithmetic, if she were a real 10, she’d already be there, lounging by an infinity pool in Malibu and ignoring your DMs. This isn’t just vanity—it’s top-tier delusion. L.A. sees itself as a black hole of good looks, sucking the beautiful people from every corner of the earth while leaving the ‘merely pretty’ to languish in flyover country. The Midwest, then, isn’t so much a place as it is an agricultural waiting room for future Angelenos.

But don’t be fooled—New York City is no better. Where L.A. is obsessed with beauty, NYC worships hustle. The city doesn’t just believe it’s important; it believes it’s the only place on earth where anything important happens. While L.A. is out perfecting its tan, NYC is busy perfecting its reputation as the cultural and intellectual capital of the world—or, at least, its part of the world, which conveniently ends somewhere in Connecticut.

This mindset is best summed up by that sanctimonious mantra, If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere. Translation: if you survive the daily humiliation of paying $4,000 a month for a shoebox apartment while dodging both rats and an existential crisis, you’ve unlocked the secret to life itself. New York isn’t about looking good; it’s about enduring bad conditions and then boasting about it as if suffering were an Olympic sport. In this worldview, the rest of the world is simply an unworthy understudy in NYC’s perpetual Broadway production.

And here’s the thing: neither city can resist taking cheap shots at the other. L.A. dismisses NYC as a grim, grey treadmill where fun goes to die, while NYC scoffs at L.A. as a vapid bubble of avocado toast and Instagram filters. It’s brains versus beauty, grit versus glamour, black turtlenecks versus Lululemon. And yet, in their relentless need to outshine one another, they reveal a shared truth: both are equally narcissistic.

This mutual self-obsession is as exhausting as it is entertaining. While L.A. and NYC bicker over who wears the crown, the rest of the world is quietly rolling its eyes and enjoying a life unencumbered by astronomical rent or the constant pressure to appear important. The people of Iowa, for example, couldn’t care less if they’re an ‘LA 7’ or if they’ve “made it” in New York. They’re too busy living comfortably, surrounded by affordable housing and neighbours who might actually help them move a sofa.

But let’s give credit where it’s due. For all their flaws, these two cities do keep the rest of us entertained. Their constant self-aggrandisement fuels the cultural zeitgeist: without L.A., we’d have no Kardashians; without NYC, no Broadway. Their rivalry is the stuff of legend, a never-ending soap opera in which both cities play the lead role.

So, let them have their delusions of grandeur. After all, the world needs a little drama—and nobody does it better than the cities that think they’re the centre of it.

Sex Sells

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Sexism is indeed a two-way street. On one side of this street, a Computer Science graduate and programmer is eager to share her expertise in her field—Neural Networks, in this instance. This subject popped up in my feed, reflecting my interests.

Video: What is a Neural Network?

Despite some production issues, such as the audio being quieter than ideal, my focus today is on the sexism surrounding the video. The presenter, whom many would consider attractive, is using social media to disseminate her knowledge. However, even when comments address the topic she presents, many also remark on her appearance. It’s evident she had other options for attire and presentation that might have mitigated such comments. I won’t speculate on her intentions, but it seems likely her aesthetic choices were deliberate to draw viewers. I refrain from slut-shaming; her attire is her choice, and she cannot control the reactions. However, I doubt a thumbnail featuring a burqa would garner as much attention or provoke similar comments.

This situation intrigues me because some women—possibly including this presenter—lament being objectified yet assert their right to wear what they find comfortable or appealing. While attraction has cultural elements, it also operates on a largely subconscious level, a phenomenon not confined to humans but seen in the animal kingdom and across genders.

Ultimately, there’s no need to disparage this woman. She is likely aware of the dynamics at play. Should she achieve her goals, she might well challenge the very viewers who objectified her, a tactic observed among actresses as they approach their forties. They capitalise on sexual appeal while possible, only to critique such approaches when they can no longer utilise them. Humans are, indeed, curious creatures.

AI is Science Fiction

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In the heart of the digital age, a Chinese professor’s AI-authored Science Fiction novel snags a national award, stirring a pot that’s been simmering on the back burner of the tech world. This ain’t your run-of-the-mill Sci-Fi plot—it’s reality, and it’s got tongues wagging and keyboards clacking. Here’s the lowdown on what’s shaking up the scene.

AI Lacks Originality? Think Again

The rap on AI is it’s a copycat, lacking the spark of human creativity. But let’s not kid ourselves—originality is as elusive as a clear day in London. Originality is another weasel word. Everything’s a remix, a mashup of what’s been before. We’ve all been drinking from the same cultural well, so to speak. Humans might be grand at self-deception, thinking they’re the cat’s pyjamas in the creativity department. But throw them in a blind test with AI, and watch them scratch their heads, unable to tell man from machine. It’s like AI’s mixing up a cocktail of words, structures, themes—you name it—and serving up a concoction that’s surprisingly palatable. And this isn’t the first time, not long ago, an AI-created artwork won as best submission at a state fair. In some cases, they are seeking AI-generated submissions; other times, not so much.

AI and the Art Debate

So, AI can’t whip up human-level art? That’s the chatter, but it’s about as meaningful as arguing over your favourite colour. Art’s a slippery fish—try defining it, and you’ll end up with more questions than answers. It’s one of those terms that’s become so bloated, it’s lost its punch. To some, it’s a sunset; to others, it’s a can of soup. So when AI throws its hat in the ring, it’s not just competing—it’s redefining the game.

The Peer Review Question Mark

Here’s where it gets spicy. The book bagging a national award isn’t just a pat on the back for the AI—it’s a side-eye at the whole peer review shindig. It’s like when your mate says they know a great place to eat, and it turns out to be just okay. The peer review process, much like reviewing a book for a prestigious award, is supposed to be the gold standard, right? But this AI-authored book slipping through the cracks and coming out tops? It’s got folks wondering if the process is more smoke and mirrors than we thought.

What’s Next?

So, where does this leave us? Grappling with the idea that maybe, just maybe, AI’s not playing second fiddle in the creativity orchestra. It’s a wake-up call, a reminder that what we thought was exclusively ours—creativity, art, originality—might just be a shared space. AI’s not just imitating life; it’s becoming an intrinsic part of the narrative. Science fiction? More like science fact.

The next chapter’s unwritten, and who knows? Maybe it’ll be penned by an AI, with a human sitting back, marvelling at the twist in the tale.

Ambiguous Aesthetics

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That language is arbitrary is tautological, an analytic claim. It’s true by definition. Structuralists, i.e. Saussure, had known this even before the postmoderns, e.g. Derrida, came into the picture.

Trigger Warning
If sexist perspectives offend your sensibilities, continue at your own risk. This is not meant to offend, rather just to illustrate, but you’ve been forewarned.

Where it might be most apparent is in aesthetics. So, when describing the appearance of a woman in a positive light—I’m a guy, so indulge me, please—, one might describe her by one or more of these descriptors:

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
  • Adorable
  • Beautiful
  • Cute (or Kawaii, if you’re into the Anime culture)
  • Gorgeous
  • Handsome
  • Hot
  • Lovely
  • Pretty
  • Sexy
  • A 10 (or something along an otherwise arbitrary if not capricious scale)

Each of these is a term to indicate some aesthetic quality. Each capturing a connotative notion, and of course, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Givenchy – Ugly Beauty

Beauty in things exists merely in the mind which contemplates them.

David Hume

I am not going to attempt to illustrate the nuances between these terms. As with any preference-oriented terms, the relationship between and within a given term. What I think is beautiful may not be to you.

What I think is beautiful today, I may not feel is beautiful tomorrow. Speaking in terms of music, there are plenty of songs I thought were ‘good’ when I was growing up, but I don’t like them anymore. Take a look at fashion in the past and how silly it might look now. If you are older, take a look at some pictures of how you dressed in your teens or twenties. You may have felt like quite the chick magnet in the day, and now you cringe and no longer wonder why you spent as many nights alone as you might have.

As a test, gather 100 images of different, say, women—I’m staying with the trend—and rank them from 1 to 100; rate them cute, sexy, whatever. Record your choices. Do this each day for a month and see how steady your choices are. It will be extremely unlikely that there will be no variation no matter how carefully you try to define your classification to remain consistent—and this is just communicating with yourself. Now imagine if you have to consistently convey this to other people.

Cover image courtesy of this article.