WHITE WALL

Possibilities imagined and explored here.

[santa-ana-winds]

[imrubenfigueroa]

[theleoisallinthemind]

Cho Gi-Seok Bad Dream (2022)

[reallyreallyreallytrying]

you have two posts in a row about placebos. why

one of them actually isn't about a placebo. that's probably the one you're having a reaction to

[cryptotheism]

Father John Yogurt was defrocked from the clergy today for being asexual, following a papal ruling that "vows of chastity don't count without temptation." The Pope later commented "You gotta have that dog in you"

[smsomah]

Bolivia, 1988-1992. Lou Di Giorgio

[homunculus-argument]

Artfully layering an axe bodyspray deodorant and two different perfume oils to create a tasteful mixture of amber, oud, mint, lavender, moss and petrichor, producing a scent that smells exactly like damp, stale, rotting laundry.

[dreamsareliminalspaces-deactiva]

Reminds me of that tumblr user that made powdered milk with sparkling water and created instant spoiled milk

[homunculus-argument]

That was also me.

[adeline-wheat]

Do you know any other ways to speed ruin things?

[homunculus-argument]

I wish I knew any other way to do anything.

[luxe-pauvre]

[luxe-pauvre]

Intrinsic human goods include all the things that make life worth living without need of any further justification. To ask of them: “What’s the point?” would be to miss the point. They are the point. We cannot give arguments for why they are valuable; we can only describe what makes them valuable and hope others recognise their worth. For example, we can say that a day spent in the forest should be appreciated first and foremost because it makes us recognise the wonder of being alive and marvel at the natural world. To play or watch a sport is to participate in or witness the struggle and delight of attempting to bring mind and body together more seamlessly than in the rest of life. Learning a foreign language is a gateway into another culture that allows you to communicate with members of it and access its literature and media. All these things enrich our lives and broaden our experience, which is valuable even if it doesn’t add a second to your lifespan or delay dementia by a day. If you see them as a means to boost your mental, emotional or physical strength for future times, you are taking your focus away from what is valuable here and now. Life isn’t a training for the future. It’s a game that’s already started, and time is running out.

Julian Baggini, Art, sex, nature: why is everything sold to us as a means to an end, rather than an end in itself?

[picsthatmakeyougohmm]

[lonestararchive]

Dakar, Senegal 2024 shot by me 🇸🇳

[slackville]

Allan Grant, Fire Resistant House, 1949

[josefadamu]

[kyotoprotocols]

[luxe-pauvre]

These revealed the precise ways in which our distress was being misread, exploited and depoliticised for clear economic ends. If I were to draw up a list of how this works, it would look something like this: • Conceptualise human suffering in ways that protect the current economy from criticism. That is, reframe suffering as being rooted in individual rather than social causes, leading individuals to think that it is them rather than the economic and social system in which they live that is at fault and in need of reform. • Redefine individual well-being in terms consistent with the goals of the economy. Well-being should be characterised as comprising those feelings, values and behaviours (e.g. personal ambition, competition and industrious endeavour) that serve economic growth and increased productivity, irrespective of whether they are actually good for the individual and the community. • Turn behaviours and emotions that might negatively impact the economy into a call for more medical intervention. Behaviours and feelings that perturb or disrupt the established order (e.g. low worker satisfaction) should be medicalised and treated, as these can frustrate the economic interests of powerful financial institutions and elites. • Turn suffering into a vibrant market opportunity for more consumption. Suffering should become highly lucrative to big business as it begins to manufacture and market its so-called solutions - solutions from which increased tax revenues, profits and higher share value can be extracted. Now, while it is tempting to dismiss the above devices on the grounds that they all sound a little too conspiratorial, it is important to understand that those who exposed them never claimed that they were deliberately concocted in small smoky rooms with calculated intent. Their point was far subtler than that: if any institution is to thrive, it must broadly adapt to what its society wants. And so, in the case of mental health, these strategies arose spontaneously as the sector struggled to endure under a new set of economic arrangements. The embracing of a mental health ideology favourable to the wider economy would not just reconfigure the entire mental health enterprise, but would increasingly help alter the psychological outlook of a whole generation. In this sense, Margaret Thatcher was correct when she said that if you wanted to change the heart and soul of a nation, you must change the whole economic approach, as this is the surest mechanism for influencing in powerful ways the direction in which people and institutions ultimately strive. 

James Davies, Sedated: How Modern Capitalism Created our Mental Health Crisis

[reflections-dujenoir]

Janice Sung

[redlipstickresurrected]

Hiroki Kawanabe aka かわなべひろき aka 川邊大紀 (Japanese, b. 1983, Kagoshima City, Japan, based Ibid) - Liquor Store, 2025, Paintings: Acrylic on Paper