How To Become Cultured (Renaissance Man/Polymath)

[BuddhistLover]

@Leo Gura Because all real evil characters actually seem nice on the surface, why would they be that dumb to show their evilness. The only reason they would show it is because their partners gets a rise out of them being evil. 

some people in LA read my me sheet and I feel insecure about it. lol, who cares

And yes, it's harder to see if someone is evil because they put up fronts to hide their character. The only to truly tell is to see who they are behind closed, when no one else is around, which makes it super hard. And also when you're at your lowest you'll see who they are. 

Edited August 16, 2022 by BuddhistLover

[Optimized Life]

On 11/08/2022 at 1:58 AM, Yarco said:

Skip Step 1 and 2 entirely and stop consoooming. You'll waste thousands of hours of your life. Being a video game buff or knowing everything about the Marvel movies or having 1,000 Funko Pops or having the music knowledge of Anthony Fantano doesn't make you a renaissance man, it makes you a bugman.

Instead of being a polymath and accumulating tons of useless knowledge to impress people, I suggest instead jumping straight to becoming a Jack-of-all-trades. Actually do stuff and put knowledge into practice.

Who's the more interesting person to talk to at a party?

• The person who knows the top 500 songs of all time, or the person who makes their own music?
• The person who's played all of the top 100 video games, or the person who makes their own video game?
• The person who's read 1,000 books, or the person who's written one book?

I find the creative process and those who engage in it exponentially more interesting than passive consooomers.

What is a respectable and interesting man? The one who can fix his own car, maintain his own home, iron his own shirts, cook like a chef, grow his own vegetables, build his own furniture, sail a boat, sing and play an instrument, bench press 250 lbs, roast his own coffee, scuba dive, take great photos, fly a plane, speak a foreign language, and fish.

Don't fall into the trap of passively consuming and thinking it will make you interesting. Most people will never make it to Step 3. Go out and actually DO STUFF. Then tell people stories about it. You'll naturally become more knowledgeable and cultured through your adventures.

Most people who obsessively consume movies, books, etc have terrible social and communication skills. You can't build up social skills and EQ through media, only by actually being around people.

Amen on this one, wish I realized this sooner. 

Quote

Go out and actually DO STUFF. Then tell people stories about it. You'll naturally become more knowledgeable and cultured through your adventures.

^^^

[BuddhistLover]

@Optimized Life  A respectable man from what you're saying is pretty much someone who can take care of himself. I mean, that's really the main objective of life, take care of yourself, then do what you want to do. It's not as easy as it seems though. 

[Asayake]

I think the risk of this approach is that consuming art ends up being a task you're checking off from a task list.

But I would say, I think most great artists are also great consumers of art. Atleast that's certainly the case in music. You'll struggle to find a good jazz musician for example, who hasn't listened to 1000s of jazz songs, and they've likely heard and played most of the classics. I know many good jazz musicians irl and it's hard to find something in the jazz category that they haven't heard, or even played before. In the same way I think you'll struggle to find a pop artist who hasn't listened to their fair share of pop music. In the same sense it's going to be very difficult to succeed in pop music if all you've listened to is jazz music and vice versa.

Art is a language and consuming is one of the best ways to learn the language, just make sure not to mindlessly consume or make it into a task. Quality over quantity for sure. But you can't tell what's quality or not if you haven't consumed a lot of art. Because what's quality is based on your taste as a listener and a lot of music and art is referencing other art which you need to have consumed before to really get what the art your consuming is doing. The only way to develop a fine tuned taste seems to me to be to have consumed a lot of art. So I think your approach is not completely misguided. It's just that when you structure it in that way, making a list of all the essential stuff you have to check off to become cultured it seems more like a task. I think it should be more of a spontaneous exploration so you don't fall into mindlessly consuming tons of art for the sake of it. That could be a waste of time. 

For example, you could start going by the top 250 imdb list for movies. But when you find a movie you especially liked you could depart from the top 250 list and dive deeper into that director. Or dive deeper into that cinematographer/actor/whatever. Then maybe you'll discover some similar movies to that which you also like and suddenly you discover a subgenre of film you weren't aware of that is vastly underrated. There is truth to the fact that the top 250 movies on imdb is not going to be the top 250 best movies. Many of the very best pieces of art will have something that some people hate but others love. For example the first Pusher movie by Nicolas Winding Refn is only rated slightly above 7 on imdb. When you look at the reviews you'll quickly discover people who don't like brutal violence in movies are giving the movie 1/10, which lovers its rating when in my opinion the movie is a 9/10. Many of the movies in the top 250 are just not bold enough to give the audience something they can hate. Just look at David Lynch's movies, most are highly underrated because they're too abstract for the mainstream who will go in and vote 1/10 because they don't get it. In reality David Lynch's movies are fking amazing pieces of art, in my opinion.

For music it's even worse, if you only listen  to the toplists in music you'll only get to hear the most commercial least deep music there is. And you'll miss out on 99% of genres available. But I do think you're on the right track in the sense that consuming a lot of culture can actually make you more cultured.

[The Mystical Man]

On 8/17/2022 at 5:13 PM, Asayake said:

I think the risk of this approach is that consuming art ends up being a task you're checking off from a task list.

I can understand why some people might not enjoy treating this like a task, but I like that approach. It depends on your intention. 

On 8/17/2022 at 5:13 PM, Asayake said:

Quality over quantity for sure. But you can't tell what's quality or not if you haven't consumed a lot of art.

There is value in consuming bad art, because that's how you learn: through contrast. When you find a piece of art that isn't that good, instead of saying "This sucks!", you can ask yourself, "Why does it suck?"

On 8/17/2022 at 5:13 PM, Asayake said:

But when you find a movie you especially liked you could depart from the top 250 list and dive deeper into that director.

Yes, that's the idea. Those lists can serve as a starting point.

On 8/17/2022 at 5:13 PM, Asayake said:

There is truth to the fact that the top 250 movies on imdb is not going to be the top 250 best movies.

Unfortunately, works of art get overrated and underrated for various reasons that don't have anything to do with quality. That's why it can take a long time to find your favorite works of art and develop your unique taste. It's also the reason why it takes courage to follow your authentic interests, because what you like might not be the most popular thing.

Edited September 23, 2022 by The Mystical Man

[The Mystical Man]

Pressfield on the importance of consumption:

Study the Canon

"There are books and movies and plays and songs that you simply have to know if you call yourself a writer or artist or aspire to one day become one."

Edited October 19, 2022 by The Mystical Man

[The Mystical Man]

"The thirteen programmes in the series outline the history of Western art, architecture and philosophy since the Dark Ages."

Civilisation (TV series)

Get it here.

Edited October 23, 2022 by The Mystical Man

[The Mystical Man]

 

[The Mystical Man]

TV Shows:

• You, Midnight Mass, Ozark, Dark, Love Death + Robots, Chernobyl, Sex Education, Arcane, Mr. Robot.

Docuseries:

• Abstract, Chef's Table, How to Change Your Mind, Wild Wild Country, Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey, Tales by Light.

Documentaries:

• Into the Inferno, Fantastic Fungi, Home2Home, My Octopus Teacher, Blackfish, Free Solo, When We Were Kings, Paris is Burning, I Am Not Your Negro, Women of the Resistance, Icarus.

Films:

• Midsommar, Mother!, 10 Cloverfield Lane, Everything Everywhere All at Once, Dancer in the Dark, Antichrist, Apostle, tick, tick... BOOM!, The Mitchells vs. the Machines, Don’t Look Up, Melancholia, Kubo, Hunger, Call Me by Your Name, Das Weiße Band, Schindler's List, Corpse Bride, Angela's Ashes, Place Beyond the Pines, Catch Me If You Can, Ponyo, Sea Beast, The Last Duel, The Power of the Dog, Roma, The Lost Daughter, I Lost My Body, Spiderman into the Spiderverse, His House, Fishbowl, I’m Thinking of Ending Things, Marriage Story, Get Out, Burning, Another Earth, Chinatown, A Clockwork orange, Requiem for a Dream, Fight club, Ex Machina, Blau ist eine warme Farbe, Whiplash, The Imitation Game, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

[The Mystical Man]

 

[The Mystical Man]

"Watch as many films as you possibly can and take tons of notes on them. Read as many plays as you can. Read as many novels as you can. You gotta take in information and learn about structure and choice and withholding and subtext and inverting expectations through other people's work." - Robert Eggers

Edited November 17, 2022 by The Mystical Man

[The Mystical Man]

 

[Matt23]

 

Go to around 1:11:20.  He cites a paper he read called "A historical study of the statistical precursors for super geniuses" with the basic point being that in modern times we aren't seeing as many super-genius-polymath types as we used to, and that the one thing in common with pretty much all super-geniuses was that they had an "aristocratic tutoring".  Meaning, they were homeschooled by the very best tutors rather than public education, and that that process is somehow significantly more beneficial to creating a curiosity-driven mind than a mind that just remembers stuff etc..  

I'm sure it's not 100% accurate what I wrote, but basically tried to pull from what Daniel said as much as I could.

[The Mystical Man]

Another WGA list:

101 Greatest Screenplays of the 21st Century (*so far)

[Asayake]

Did you make a thread on Dancer in the Dark? I'm gonna watch that one next as I love Björk, curious to hear your thoughts on it.

And also, when are you gonna get real and watch Cinema Paradiso 

[The Mystical Man]

9 hours ago, Asayake said:

Did you make a thread on Dancer in the Dark? I'm gonna watch that one next as I love Björk, curious to hear your thoughts on it.

And also, when are you gonna get real and watch Cinema Paradiso 

I did watch Cinema Paradiso because it's on IMDb's 250 list, but, frankly, I didn't enjoy it. I rarely enjoy foreign language movies.

I did enjoy, however, Lars von Trier's films. I'll put Dancer in the Dark on my list.

[Asayake]

8 hours ago, The Mystical Man said:

I did watch Cinema Paradiso because it's on IMDb's 250 list, but, frankly, I didn't enjoy it. I rarely enjoy foreign language movies.

I did enjoy, however, Lars von Trier's films. I'll put Dancer in the Dark on my list.

I see, too bad. I loved Cinema Paradiso but:

 

I have not seen any of Lars von Trier's works as of yet. But I have been interested in watching Dancer in the Dark for over a year so I'm going to start with that one. I'm aware he mostly makes dark movies, which I'm a fan of in general. I'm a big fan of David Lynch for example.

 

[The Mystical Man]

 

[The Mystical Man]

 

[The Mystical Man]

• AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies
• AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition)

Edited November 21, 2022 by The Mystical Man