The Dangerous Worship of Dark Academia

[Music] internet aesthetics have been around for as long as i can remember [Music] and with the rise of more and more advanced social media platforms the ideals of these digital movements have only become more widespread it used to be that one could only stumble across fashion board posts or pictures of bedrooms with far too many fairy lights on tumblr back in the day but with the release of pinterest in 2010 and tiktok in 2016 the popularity of particular subcultures have grown almost as fast as the platforms themselves to the point where one can now be exposed to these aesthetics without even browsing the feeds of these apps to put it simply these aesthetics have evolved past visually pleasing images and have become actual lifestyles with large followings but with the rise of one aesthetic amongst my youtube peers referred to as dark academia i've since become concerned is devotion to the principles of these movements really in our best interest or are these aesthetics nothing more than a set of facades meant to hide superficiality and meaningless conformity before we begin to investigate the matter we need to ask what an aesthetic is aesthetics as a noun has been used to refer to the branch of philosophy concerned with the study and nature of beauty however the way aesthetic is used is instant adjective making it possess a similar though ultimately different meaning what both of these words have in common however is their interest in beauty things that are aesthetic of course denote some degree of beauty but this raises some questions why not just call things that are aesthetic beautiful pretty or good looking it is important to note that aside from the fact the word aesthetic has fallen prey to the overuse that most slang words do now often used as really nothing more than an advanced way of calling something beautiful aesthetic things share with us a very particular kind of beauty one that is admittedly synthetic classically aesthetic images suspended reality through the use of filters changing the colors of things in the original photo or a bizarre or actually just unreal subject matter these images host for us a sort of nonsense that we find satisfaction in but it's suggested that the internet cannot produce real beauty even outside of these pre-existing limitations if you've ever tried to take a picture of a sunset or a mountain ridge on the horizon you'll know and may have even told a friend that it doesn't compare to the real thing or in other words that the experience of being present before that scene leaves a different and stronger impression on you than merely looking at a photograph of it besides the fact that these images are not exactly of things that exist in the physical world even if they were would it make a difference since the internet cannot supply us with the pleasure of being there it can only offer us what aesthetic images do so perhaps we enjoy these images because they are an escape from reality and from real beauty something we can find both awesome and awful and maybe that escapism is what it can partly mean for something to be aesthetic if so the nietzsche's statement that we have art so that we may not perish from the truth might apply with aesthetics standing in as the medium between incomprehensible nonsense and actual art and beauty regardless when something that is imaginary successfully brought into being it is done deliberately and when this is the case it's implied that there's a particular sort of intent behind it i believe that understanding this is the key to understanding internet aesthetics generally these images intend for us to feel a particular way while looking at them while not just anything can be art anything can be the catalyst for an artistic experience frederick schiller the german poet whose owed to joy would later inspire beethoven's famous composition of the same name suggested in a series of letters to a friend that the purpose of art was to teach us how to feel though aesthetic things might not exactly be art when done correctly they do inspire emotions within us the most common of these being relief or a placid calm aesthetic things are often meant to calm us soothe us and make life more pleasant or exciting even if just for a brief moment but not everyone will share the same aesthetic taste or in other words not everyone will agree on whether a thing is or is not aesthetic it is impossible that anything would affect the whole of humanity the same way emotionally often causing people to claim what they do find aesthetic as a part of their identity comparable to a matter of style this might be why some find liminal spaces to be aesthetic rather than existentially unsettling i was surprised that so many commented on my last video that these images actually calmed them and i was even more surprised to find images of liminal spaces populating the aesthetic subreddit however when exploring these spaces in person or online the one thing that everyone agrees on is that these images feel different often being labeled as manifestations of an altered reality i have a hunch that that feeling and the emotion instills within us are the two things that fulfill the criteria of an aesthetic experience for that particular camp of people and why i find that so many aesthetic images personally make me feel the same way that liminal spaces do though not as strongly the phenomenon simply reaffirms the idea that context matters even with things that are considered aesthetic the prior experiences we have had with things and the way we now approach them all help to define what something will signify for us individually so if the description i've just finished providing is what defines something as aesthetic and what is anesthetic this is actually a very simple concept comparatively an aesthetic is simply the name for the values and contextual meaning which unite a collection of aesthetic things be they the principles of fashion a particular color palette or the values of the lifestyle represented by the nature of aesthetic objects ultimately it is the context of an aesthetic which forms its values and the values which set the contextual significance of said aesthetic for some aesthetics its current form was sourced from actual cultures and subcultures throughout history years later increasingly romanticized in the same way that wine ages now the ideals and values of said culture including conceptions of beauty style and to some degree even morality have been passed on and fulfilled by those who find such ways of being admirable dark academia is one such aesthetic and has proved itself to be somewhat of an enigma dark academia has been around for a long time while going by other names yet it's now found a new voice and name through tiktok videos populated with the autumn shades of tweed and cable knit wool and references to classical music art literature and philosophy are the usual the kova 19 pandemic saw an almost total closure of school buildings and universities in the united states in march of 2020 according to education week the closures affected at least 55.1 million students and 124 000 u.s public and private schools freed from the burden of essays exams and other mundane school work 55.1 million american students were now free to spend their time however they wanted and many chose to devote their time to a more authentic type of studying one unprompted by any social institution and field alone by a sincere desire to learn and to create i've seen some articles all but suggest that this happened because young female students were dying for the slave work of university but with suicide being the second leading cause of death amongst u.s university students with 24 000 recorded taking their own life annually and with thousands upon thousands of posts on the internet describing how school makes the poster stressed anxious and oppressed i find this absolutely absurd i believe it to be much more plausible to consider the possibility that unshackled from the demands of educational institutions young poets composers authors philosophers and playwrights were able to finally sit down and happily engage themselves in colorful realms of thought otherwise unavailable through art through the power of art the way we approached our day-to-day business slowed down as many minds began to speed up as they finally operated on their own terms under these conditions it's easy to see how one could develop a passion for learning and the production of art if it was not one previously held during the first few months of the pandemic the hashtag dark academia exploded on tiktok taking an already relatively popular trend and growing it to its status as an aesthetic today while the minute details of its growth remain unclear the bare bones of the equation is that this becomes something for independent scholars to take refuge in perhaps this is why the aesthetic is among the most notable when it comes to an internet culture being transcribed off of the internet into real life so as to become a lifestyle movement with core beliefs and an ethos many of my peers on youtube have taken a liking to this aesthetic youtubers such as ruby granger jack edwards and my friend rc walden gaining fast popularity from addressing it rc walden has gone so far as to call the aesthetic the beginnings of the next renaissance and in many ways this is a phenomenon to be celebrated but if that were all i could stop the video here unfortunately dark academia is in many ways an enigma and a problem journalists with a political agenda have called it eurocentric elitist and sexist others furthermore pointing out how to glorify suicide drug and alcohol abuse and depression but i don't mean to add to the heap of articles and posts that claim this instead i want to investigate dark academia from the vantage point of a philosopher this is deconstructing dark academia aesthetics in general are hard to define it's easy to point out that one thing visually looks akin to another but when one asks what dark academia is i like many others was originally at a loss in order to best understand the aesthetic i turn to what has been the bible of dark academia ever since it came out in 1992 don the tarts the secret history although like the actual bible it's rarely read and when it is often finds itself misunderstood the secret history fulfilled its purpose for me as the orthodox lexicon of dark academia the novel tells the story of five students studying the greek language at elite college in new england and their attempts to cover up the murder of the former sixth member in their coalition page one describes the murder of this boy bunny and the rest of the novel explains the events prior to and after this event as in any group of friends there is bound to be tension at times however bunnies seemed to have a hole inside of him that could only be filled with the suffering of others and after learning that the group had performed bacchanal without him one that led to the unexpected death of a farmer on private property he blackmails the group into getting whatever he wants from them henry winters stoic impervious to human emotion and in my opinion the real focus of this story can't tolerate this used to being in control disobedience is the unpardonable sin and thus bunny leads himself forward to his own demise this is a novel interestingly enough predicated upon the idea of divine madness in many ways henry casts the same peculiar shadow as that of light yagami a byronic anti-hero in his own regard but how said charles who was close to tears how could you possibly justify cold-blooded murder henry lit a cigarette i prefer to think of it he had said as redistribution of matter henry's dominant authority tare of being found out and monstrous view of human life all befit him for such a comparison in fact after reading the seeker history i began to wonder if death note had secretly been a part of dark academia all along and maybe it is for some in the same way that others claim the harry potter books to be the secret history clarified for me the mysterious inclusion of the word dark and the title of what often appears to be nothing more than an ode to the life of a prestigious academic it referenced the shades and hues that one would commonly find the devotees of this aesthetic dressed in or that it referenced a more harrowing set of psychological phenomena the secret history showed me that it was actually both just as a goth girl might dress in all black we only consider this edgy because we understand the intentional meaning that that person is simply put having none of it when asked straight on an individual in this category might answer that it's a reflection of how they feel some statements online explain that for the goth community the color black symbolizes many things such as death the night and the unknown which are common themes in goth music art and literature similarly the colors of dark academian fashion are reminiscent of autumn the season before winter which is often a symbol for death itself there's something chilly about the images posted on instagram by dark academia accounts often featuring gothic architecture and overcast skies if this sounds even relatively angsty it's because it's intended to be to love someone who for whatever reason cannot return your feelings is painful but if you listen to the poet perhaps there's a kind of beauty to that love dark academia academias ripe with broody philosophies concerning death longing passion and the mystery of life itself this explains why the community has taken such a liking to gothic and by ironic literature alongside all this then comes the academic stylistic motifs those that devote themselves to the fashionable style of dark academia wish to be perceived in a particular way that is they want to be perceived as something akin to an angsty scholar intelligent but disturbed they want to be perceived this way because that is what they want to be if it does not impart what they already are this is the beginning of my concern jean-paul sot in his great philosophical work being and nothingness discusses the idea of bad faith the radical and absolute freedom of humankind was very important for sat we are absolutely free to choose to do whatever we want to be whatever we want the only thing stopping us from one day deciding to kill ourselves for no reason at all is that we currently do not want to whether or not we are successful in following through with that decision is irrelevant but the fact that we are free to decide to do whatever we want to do was terrifying for salt one of saath's most famous ideas on how humankind deals with this dilemma was the concept of bad faith for him bad faith is a form of self-deception inauthenticity in a denial of the reality of human freedom when we attempt to limit ourselves in order to escape from the endless possibilities of our freedom then we are living in bad faith sauce did not believe that we as individuals possess an essence he is famous first quote existence precedes essence which means to say that our being is not the same as an object be it that of a table or a chair that kind of being that sot calls being in itself because who we are and what we are in short our condition is constantly changing we lack an essence in this way sought to cause this being which is human being being for itself or consciousness for the sake of its own byproducts bad faith then is the endeavor to give oneself an essence in malpractice so as to escape the freedom of our condition those living in bad faith play at being a thing like a table as a table or a chair is a chair a grocer who dreams is offensive to the buyer because such a grocer is not wholly a grocer one of the biggest problems with any aesthetic is gatekeeping what is and what is not suitable to be considered a part of that aesthetic this is why the eurocentric argument arises for dark academia every label is inherently limiting we can't go around calling cottage core things dark academia things or else we would be confused on what those terms truly mean and on the differences between them this is a somewhat extreme example but it clarifies the intent behind the gatekeeper of a given aesthetic as relative to this discussion ultimately gatekeeping acts as a double-edged sword since gatekeeping in this instance is an extreme and active way of determining what a thing is it helps to maintain the philosophy of dark academia and its aesthetics but at the cost of potential innovation to dark academia's style and values of course not any innovation or tweak will do and it can be hard to differentiate between valid creative and artistic decisions and taking aesthetic liberty with no regard for the values and context of dark academia or for any aesthetic for that matter if one truly wants to be considered a part of this aesthetic then they must attach themselves to the most widely regarded ideal of dark academia doing anything else would only be dark academia but slightly different or getting there but just not close enough in the minds of most observers but it isn't real sauce himself writes that there are indeed many ways to imprison a man in what he is as if we lived in perpetual fear that he might escape from it that he might break away and suddenly elude his condition gatekeeping is one such precaution while adhering so strictly to the tenants of dark academia and the way we want to come off to others on social media may be the most aesthetically pleasing option again it's the least authentic one may point out that nothing on social media is authentic as it is all too easy to fix recorded moments to be whatever we want them to be they might as well go on to point out the usual attitude on the subject as well that because of this the platform's grant is nothing but lies and half truths false bodies false appearances false attitudes and false realities with their false meaning what seems to be true online just isn't true one might say we merely make believe a child plays with its body to explore it we play with our condition and our feeds to realize it to try our hardest to make it actual when it can never be i find it hard to see how anyone could disagree with this train of thought but i find aesthetic conformity inauthentic in the same way that bad faith is said by sought to be authentic a fixed mode of being with its fixed modes of presentation is dead it cannot carry the ever-changing attitudes and bursts of creativity and innovation that every individual experiences some sources have stated that dark academia is nostalgia for a life yet lived put on academic errors but i cannot say that this is a life any of the members of this movement are guaranteed to live and i cannot say it will be as glorious as it's made out to be if it is to ever be experienced to the standards presented by dark academia's followers remember a grocer who dreams is not wholly a grocer and a dark academic that innovates the aesthetic is not fully subscribed to dark academia they live as somewhat altered form at times to the point of being irreconcilable with the original but if we may have one hope let it be our dreams may they carry us onward to new frontiers there's one thing i've learned researching this video it's that people are starved for beauty we crave it and we need it psychologically impersonal atmospheres when perceived as such lead to a decrease in emotional well-being turning away from such things people seek to incorporate beauty into everything though that takes conscious deliberate effort this extends itself into the realm of internet aesthetics as well as donna tartt writes in the secret history there is nothing wrong with the love of beauty but beauty unless she has led to something more meaningful is always superficial if we are to believe that dark academia as a lifestyle movement is founded on something more than absolute superficiality then we must investigate our claims further education has always been prized as the holy grail of western society it's been used as a way to ensure the elite remained in positions of power such as in the case of the early catholic church and the lack of education has been used as a way to bind some groups in metaphorical chains such as southern slaveholders in the united states keeping blacks illiterate when this is a narrative we are taught in the west it becomes all too common to view education as one of the most valuable things a person can have and it is dark academia knows this when you want to find the thing a person thinks of as the meaning of life however look at how they lead theirs with such a lofty expectation of what an education can offer it's easy for those that are already relatively intelligent to be learning more and more as their calling in life to prize the intellect as the highest faculty in man and to think of intelligence as the highest virtue being intelligent becomes more than just an attribute it becomes everything but intelligence alone is not the highest virtue nor is a pursuit of knowledge the meaning of life there's more to this life than the embodiment of enlightenment ideals this is a concept that's been represented in the stories of many characters throughout time but most notably in guts is faust the story of an alchemist who after learning most there is to know still finds his life void and empty he turns to the devil mephistopheles with a deal during this life the devil will be fou slave granting him unlimited knowledge and all of his desires but if for even one moment faust discovers meaning or happiness in what mephistopheles grants him faust will die instantly and sell his soul to the devil for all eternity true to his function in the story mephistopheles stands as a symbol for the allure and dangers of knowledge unknowable faust demands from him genius and expects beauty not anticipating the dangers of either the search for knowledge implies a base state of ignorance a darkness covering the unknown one that is meant to be dispelled by the light of understanding but the shining of light in a void runs the horrible risk of revealing something terrible in fact the shining of light itself can be terrible the more light we allow ourselves the more we see that only more darkness is revealed life offers us no answers truly and therefore our useless grasps for certain knowledge do not grant us lasting satisfaction or meaning which is why faust ultimately ends up winning over the devil and so mephistopheles offers faust the magic beyond what is intelligible and the supposed power that is accompanied by it the striving beyond the limits of the human has always been a part of the faust tale encapsulated within the pursuit of knowledge the desire to explore such magic and all of its mystery lies at the heart of dark academia as well aside from the already discussed intellectual facets of this concept beauty is another sort of magic that lies far beyond the limits of human being one that we try to grab at constantly at the beginning of this video i explain that internet aesthetics are meant to inspire some sort of emotional response in those that appreciate them dark academia is dedicated to inspiring two emotions in particular an attitude that is in and of itself mysterious wonder and awe when i began researching this video i was skeptical that there was anything in dark academia that i personally could find admirable but i cannot help but recall moments where i browsed my local library's shelves with a sort of reverence overcome with their majesty or the feelings of awe and determination i felt while slowly walking around the stained glass exhibit at my university campus these were special moments for me and they inspired me to do the things that led me to make this video today these moments even now feel sacred so i can sympathize with dark academia's attempt to capture and preserve that feeling through a kind of beauty plato's socrates states in the theaters dialogue that philosophy begins in wonder but the wonder that plato speaks of here is a wonder in the sense of puzzlement or perplexity and not awe according to plato being puzzled and wishing to stop being that way is what sparks philosophical thought but they can't help but think that one does not need to be confused in order to understand how little they know and to be inspired to learn as a result of that the comprehension of how small our understanding of the world actually is is what i call awe and together with wonder it works to inspire us to inventure out into the dark mists of our ignorance but not even these feelings as inspiring as they are were enough to convince me that dark academia's approach was justified does such a thing as the fatal flaw that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life exists outside literature asks tart in the secret history i used to think it didn't now i think it does and i think that mine is this a morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs the actual plot of the secret history is more than anything a story about the power of beauty it is something that is hard to avoid the lure of something that holds such power over us that we starve for the opportunities to implement it into our own lives yet it is the character's obsession with the ideals of learning and beauty that end up being their ultimate demise beauty is tear writes tart perhaps contemplating how the beauty that once captivated her novel's characters with its near divine light later ate at their lives like acid to their flesh corroding away the very structure of their being into ruin and rot just like faust and mephistopheles promise of knowledge unknowable there's a danger to beauty too and it is a danger that runs through the heart of dark academia like a nasty scar a scar that can likewise be found in the lives of those fanatics that worship and attempt to emulate its ideals decadence mutilating and disfiguring whatever organic processes were at work previously man is not yet ripe for perfection and the striving after that aesthetic perfection that lies beyond all human limitation equates to a losing battle it is better that we enjoy life for what it offers with a genuine and open heart for it is the very vulnerabilities and faults of humanity that do make it beautiful anything beyond it is a pleasurable fantasy and the pursuit of the wrong ideal can especially wreak havoc dark academia when it's used as a vehicle to instill in us that wonder and of the world can be of great help to the fostering of young minds the community centered around it can be a help to those wishing to enter the world of philosophy literature and art but when dark academia is used to promote the act of stretching beyond all human limitations with an insatiable appetite for aesthetic or intellectual perfection i'm afraid that i see the danger in it all too clearly is dark academia the modern renaissance it might as well be with how it's leading so many to find passion and the art of educating themselves but it can only serve its highest function if we appreciate but do not worship the aesthetic ideals which when emulated will lead us only to digress [Music] you

Channel: Clark Elieson

Views: 316,260

Rating: 4.826973 out of 5

Keywords: dark academia, dark academia aesthetic, dark academia outfits, The Problem with Dark Academia, Internet Aesthetics, the secret history, how to be dark academia, dark academia lookbook, Faust, aethetic, Donna Tartt, donna tartt the secret history, donna tartt the secret history review, aesthetic, aesthetic videos, aesthetic philosophy, why dark academia is the modern renaissance, Dark academia is problematic, light academia, kill your darlings, dark academia problematic

Id: Q6L1CRP5AKw

Length: 27min 52sec (1672 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 19 2021