Can you say that you do not enjoy your doses of “metaphorical crushings”?
Well, speaking purely for myself, my skullcrushing activities never get more non-metaphorical than, say, a game of chess. I’ve no particular objection to fictional violence, but tend to find it among the least interesting things in the fiction containing it. I will concede that I enjoy winning at chess, but I beg leave to doubt how much evidence that is for the stability of joy-in-actual-skull-crushing.
I’m afraid it seems to me that your comment is long on rhetoric and short on actual reasoning, which makes it difficult to respond to in a way I find adequate. So I’ll just repeat in slightly different words what I already said: yes, plenty of skullcrushing in our ancestral past, but I am unconvinced that this fact tells us much about what our future either will or should be like.
I am unconvinced that this fact tells us much about what our future either will or should be like.
My digression above could have caused a misunderstanding of my point. I do not mean to say that we are/should return to violence in the Western world, but rather that the desire is still present within us and large-scale violence happens much more often than in our semi-homogeneous middle class bubbles.
I don’t imagine the conversation is headed to any conclusion/meeting point, but I wanted to clarify what I was saying to highlight the misunderstanding.
Well, speaking purely for myself, my skullcrushing activities never get more non-metaphorical than, say, a game of chess. I’ve no particular objection to fictional violence, but tend to find it among the least interesting things in the fiction containing it. I will concede that I enjoy winning at chess, but I beg leave to doubt how much evidence that is for the stability of joy-in-actual-skull-crushing.
I’m afraid it seems to me that your comment is long on rhetoric and short on actual reasoning, which makes it difficult to respond to in a way I find adequate. So I’ll just repeat in slightly different words what I already said: yes, plenty of skullcrushing in our ancestral past, but I am unconvinced that this fact tells us much about what our future either will or should be like.
My digression above could have caused a misunderstanding of my point. I do not mean to say that we are/should return to violence in the Western world, but rather that the desire is still present within us and large-scale violence happens much more often than in our semi-homogeneous middle class bubbles.
I don’t imagine the conversation is headed to any conclusion/meeting point, but I wanted to clarify what I was saying to highlight the misunderstanding.