With the prison sentences for activists who threw soup on "sunflowers", our society has affirmed that an illustration of nature is something we value.

yesman@lemmy.world to Showerthoughts@lemmy.world – 103 points –
31

Our society has affirmed that antisocial shit is antithetic to the concept of society.

Now if we could only get the sociopathic politicians/finance bros to understand that we'd be in pretty good shape.

The sociopathic politicians and finance bros mostly outsource and monetise antisocial behaviour.

It called traditional and social media. /edgy

I mean you can't really go throwing soup around and expect everyone to be ok with it. Anyway protesters get arrested all the time, it's kinda the point.

If protesters get arrested for protesting, then what will we do if the government goes against the people?

Punishing protesting is a form of domination, something that only has its place in dictatorships.

I do get being punished for destroying someone else's property, but not for protesting.

Protesters don't necessarily get arrested for protesting, usually its for creating a disturbance, like blocking roads and bridges, and doing weird shit like throwing tomato soup on paintings and gluing yourself to a museum wall. Protesting in this way is meant to be provocative, they know they'll get arrested, but it gets on the news and gets people talking.

Personally I'm not sure why they targeted painting in an art museum specifically, they were protesting the extraction of oil. Maybe because they were oil paintings?

You're wrong about people knowing that they're going to be arrested for many protest activities. The point of marching is that it doesn't damage anything and it doesn't hurt any people. That's why people go out and they walk in public places and on roads and on bridges, because it doesn't harm anyone so there's no reason to arrest anyone, but it does make their presence felt so people can't pretend the problem doesn't exist.

If your solution is that anytime a protester does anything disruptive, they should be arrested, that will encourage all protesters to immediately move towards property damage. If they're going to get locked up anyway, why not break the windows of the companies that they think are doing such a bad job? Why not burn a few police cars? Then they'll be making the presence felt and taking funding away from people who don't deserve it.

Sure I guess that there are likely some protesters that blindly protest without thinking about the consequences of their actions, but break laws get arrested, you don't get a free pass just because you're protesting.

It's because it's one of the most effective ways to get a news story about your protest without actually hurting anyone. I say all the more power to them. It's not like we don't have hi res scans of all these works of art. At this point the people that will have to pay for it are the rich people who own the artwork.

They view the world at extremely low resolution.

They think all of this is not only connected, but so connected as to be the same thing:

  • oil industry
  • capitalism
  • western civilization
  • great european art

Basically there’s a particular type of philosophical disorder where a person has no “weighting dropoff” in the connections between their things. Every relationship has 100% weight, so if A, B, C, and D are connected in some way then A is D and you can fight A by fighting D.

I don’t know if there’s a term for this, but it’s basically like the zero-signal-degradation manner of reasoning about causality.

I can see modern art and stuff being connected to capitalism, but how do you see Stonehenge factor in?

Humans value art. Specially irreplaceable art with significant historical importance.

They threw soup on Sunflowers?? But it had glass over it right?

edit: just looked it up. the painting had glass over it and wasn’t damaged. The frame got damaged a little. The frame was added in 1999, but was made in the 17th century.

I do agree something needs done about climate change. But as someone who deeply appreciates art and understands how important it is to preserve it, I think protesters have a lot more avenue's to gain attention AND actually target something related to climate change.

Why not go throw soup on a representative or maybe throw soup on the door of a famous municipal building. Target government, they ultimately make the decisions.

The issue is that does not get as much attention and publicity.

The problem with their approach however is that it makes everyone hate them.

I don't think is a matter of publicity.

Every single human being on the planet knows what climate change is. Some people may not believe in it but they surely know what it is.

IMHO the solution comes from (real) education on the matter. We are past publicity, we need schooling on both causes, consequences and solutions to climate change.

It is a matter of publicity for just stop oil. They main goal afaik is to bring attention to the issues the oil industry makes. The fastest way to do that is to get as much publicity as possible. They are doing it in a stupid way though.

I believe that particular "activist" group has been found to be related to oil companies (taking money from them). And there was assumptions that they were just trying to throw bad reputation into the movement.

Take it with a grain of salt because this is just something I remember reading some time ago and I don't have any sources on it.

I think protesters have a lot more avenue’s to gain attention AND actually target something related to climate change.

You mean... apart from targeting the stuff capitalists put a lot of monetary value on? You know... the same capitalist parasites that caused climate change?

But as someone who deeply appreciates art

Fuck art.

I think you need a hug.

A piece of canvas with some pigment on it isn't valuable just because a bunch of rich people and their scummy "art dealers" says it is.

Now if only we valued nature itself, or our continued ability to appreciate either.

That is what happens when you ruin things that aren't yours.

Honestly, I agree with you and with them. They chose said painting because it is incredibly expensive, so it represents how much people are willing to pay for a painting, while not doing an effort to care for the world we live in.

According to my sources, another reason was that the painting was encased in glass, so they saw it as a great target for the stunt, to get attention, while not causing any damage to the actual work of art.

So, the message being "Look at how much you people's care about us "destroying" a work of art, but nobody gives a shit about the people who are destroying the world".

And lo and behold, we’re also willing to spend money as a society to keep these scum locked up.

Happy to pay my part of that bill.

The scum trying to save our world at great personal cost, not the scum destroying it for profit?