In this episode of Walt Right Perspectives I talk to Alexandru Constantin, who writes under The Deceneus Journal. Alexandru is a Romanian-American writer and aesthete who came to California as a young kid and now lives in the Southeast.
We first met after I published an essay defending AI art that Alex found strongly objectionable, prompting me to challenge him to a public debate.
Topics include:
Does the AI art debate stem from an intractable personality difference between different “types of people”, i.e. artists, propagandists, and STEMcels?
You change someone’s view by advancing from a new and interesting direction
Economic arguments against AI as fundamentally left wing
Is AI art ugly?
The lack of perspective / conscious focus in AI visual art
The democratizing power of AI art as tool enabling amateur creativity
AI art as conflict between competing status hierarchies (hipsters vs upscalers)
Can you kick the “cheap” culture around AI content?
Art vs. marketing and propaganda
Has Walt’s content been “caught in the crossfire” in debates over AI art?
Alex’s idea of art as spiritual idealization of the sacred
Hipsters vs. STEMcels as “elves vs. dwarves”
How conversation / podcasts build a discourse space between very different personalities and temperaments
The importance of productive conflict and “iron owning iron” as a cultural norm
Walt’s provocative essays as a form of performance art
How Substack restrains the extremes of engagement farming
How LLMs resemble Jungian’s collective unconscious and might be useful as a vector for better understanding unconscious cognition
Alex’s comfort with AI art as tool for high concept artists in more complex multimedia pieces
How artists place more importance on sensory experiences
Disembodied nature of STEM guys and how that creates extreme wealth
Lots of Zoomer guys will often prepare jerking off to sex because it is legitimately more enjoyable
Medical workers as having “high IQ blue collar” sensibilities
Walt wants to get STEMcels and artsy hipsters talking because he’s too artsy for the STEMcels and too autistic/reductive for the hipsters
How Alexandru approaches the world from a religious perspective that we are already fallen and any solution can only be temporary
Walt’s project to create a way of talking that facilitates a more transactional / coalitional approach to politics
Intense ethnic conflict between different European ethnicities
Importance of honoring “both sides of the story” in identitarian conflicts
The subtextual nature of female communication and how it frustrates men
The primordial knowledge conveyed by women’s embodied resentment of formalist masculine ideologies
How you need to personally engage people of a very different background to treat them as human
What does it mean to be genuine? To be extremely raw/unfiltered or to be very cultivated and deliberate?
Why Walt doesn’t like Center Right “colorblindedness” because of the inevitability of low resolution filters.
How podcasting scratches the same itch as promiscuity.
The need for conservatives to get better at thinking flexibly and adapting to an unstable and unpredictable ecology
We’ve never demanded that an artist be responsible for all aspects of their art
Coalitions shouldn’t be based on subcultural status signaling or aesthetics but hard material interests
We underestimate how quickly order and prosperity turn into chaos and poverty
Our instinctive paleolithic attitude towards violence hasn’t kept pace with innovations in armaments production
Why it feels so weird to see a dead body
How people used to be more connected to death and would understand it better
How much does Alex remember Romanian communism?
How many parts of the country’s interior retain a premodern level of social trust
Walt and Alex discuss different cities / parts of the country—Nebraska, California, Arizona, Texas, New Mexico, Florida, Tennessee
Why California was developed so much earlier than other Western states and how Florida became the “final frontier” after air conditioning
Mormons never bully you beyond a certain point
Walt’s desire to be a “connecter” between subcultures / scenes on the right
The importance of intellectual brawling in right wing communities
The difference between being “conservative” vs. “right wing”
Why Walt and Alex will talk to everyone no matter their beliefs
Episode 23 : AI Art and Hipsters vs. STEMcels with Alexandru Constantin