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The Culturist

@the_culturist_

Oct 24

Few people know what happens *after* the events of The Lord of the Rings.

But it's one of the most poetic and thought-provoking endings in literature... 🧵

After Sauron's defeat at the end of the Third Age, the kingdoms of men are restored.

Aragorn rules the Reunited Kingdom for 120 years, followed by his son for another century.

The Elves depart for Valinor (the last ship leaves at some point during the Fourth Age).

Any who linger on in Middle-earth fade away, both in body and spirit.

Read 16 tweets

The Culturist

@the_culturist_

Oct 22

Knowledge is not the same thing as wisdom.

Dostoevsky knew just how dangerous it is to mistake intellect for understanding.

Here is his warning about wisdom, and his secret to becoming truly wise… 🧵

In his 20s, Dostoevsky was drawn into the idealism of his age. He joined a group of political idealists who met to debate utopian socialism.

But when the group was arrested in 1849, his idealism quickly came crashing down.

Dostoevsky was sentenced to four years of hard labor in a Siberian prison, where he came face-to-face with the depths of the human soul.

He came to understand that the revolution he wanted would begin not in the streets, but in the soul…

Read 20 tweets

The Culturist

@the_culturist_

Oct 20

Tom Bombadil is the most mysterious character in The Lord of the Rings.

He's the oldest being in Middle-earth and completely immune to the Ring's power — but why?

Bombadil is the key to the underlying ethics of the entire story, and to resisting evil yourself… 🧵

Tom Bombadil is an enigmatic, merry hermit of the countryside, known as "oldest and fatherless" by the Elves. He is truly ancient, and claims he was "here before the river and the trees."

He's so confounding that Peter Jackson left him out of the films entirely...

This is understandable, since he's unimportant to the development of the plot.

Tolkien, however, saw fit to include him anyway, because Tom reveals a lot about the underlying ethics of Middle-earth, and how to shield yourself from evil.

Read 18 tweets

The Culturist

@the_culturist_

Sep 5

The story of Saint George isn't just about a brave knight slaying a dragon and saving a damsel.

St. George matters because he holds the answer to the most important of all questions:

What actually is evil, and how do you destroy it? 🧵

To understand the nature of evil, first note that the dragon is a perversion of the natural world.

Its origin is in nature, like the snake or lizard, and that makes it compelling. It's close enough to something natural (something good) that we tolerate it.

And notice the place from which it emerges. In Caxton's 1483 translation of the Golden Legend, it emerges from a stagnant pond: water without natural currents, which breeds decay.

It's also outside the city walls, and thus overlooked.

Read 18 tweets

The Culturist

@the_culturist_

Jul 29

Why would someone who could paint the picture on the left choose to paint the picture on the right?

A thread... 🧵

Picasso died in 1973 at the age of 91.

His self portraits had changed quite a lot by that age...

But why did he want, as he put it, to "paint like a child"?

The answer has a lot to do with Picasso himself, but also with the changing world in general...

Read 17 tweets

The Culturist

@the_culturist_

Jul 11

The French Revolution was way more sinister than you think.

In a frenzy to purge all aspects of Christian life, they even changed the calendar and UNITS OF TIME.

10-hour days, 100-minute hours, 100-second minutes.

Then they made a new religion — the Cult of Reason… 🧵

From 1793 to 1795, France mandated "metric time": 10 hours in a day, 100 minutes in an hour, etc.

In their zeal to remake society, revolutionaries deemed this an essential step to becoming truly "rational".

Authorities created new clocks to make people adjust to the new units, and went about checking that the new times/dates went on all public documents.

Read 16 tweets

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