User:Zarchne/Philosophy of P.R.O.I.

Hey, look, I finally thought of something expository that I think belongs in the User: namespace. This is an attempt to describe what I think as I create Possibly relevant outside information entries.

The fundamental idea of P.R.O.I. is (as I think is obvious, but that could be a frequent mistake of mine ) that these are things, mainly popular literature, to which the Foglios may be referring. Few would dispute that Mary Shelley's Frankenstein surely must have some relevance to the notion of constructs, for instance.

One thing I frequently think is that I am about the same age as Kaja and less than ten years younger than Phil, so so-called "Gen X" cultural references are most likely relevant.

Another motivator is the idea of "who you are is where you were when", which I need to explain here.

In particular, when I see for instance, as recently happened, "continental philosophy" grew in ascendence during the 1970s, I think about how Phil was college age in the late 1970s and likely had to deal with it.

At this point I am reminded how on the one hand musicians often have a much wider range of interests and tastes than many of their fans, and on the other hand how (as John Lennon, I believe, noted) that the author of a (nonsense) song may have no particular meaning in mind but the critic will nevertheless find one. This would be along the same lines as the "face in mars", etc.

I do use the word possibly.

Something that I think is true but frequently underappreciated is the extent to which early exposure to an aesthetic will cement this as an ideal. Of course, this is the (or one, anyway) rationale for prohibiting the sale of certain products to minors. What I think is underappreciated, perhaps, is the extent to which general cultural trends are absorbed as norms. Probably the tendency for fashions to recur on a twenty year cycle is related to this. To some extent an adult will grow past early influences, but one's starting point always is what it is.

So while historically popular works of literature are probably important, and one could ask an author if they had read a given book, for a comic artist I expect that the visual media which were popular in their youth have a formative influence, whether or not this would be admitted.

This sort of thinking would also be involved in Freud's seduction hypothesis, which although he himself eventually rejected it with the idea that there are maturity levels at which a person can get stuck, is probably more likely a good explanation of most subjects' psychosocial difficulties.