On the secular sexual economy, it’s not clear at what rate inflation has taken hold

A not entirely outdated take:

In an economic system where unfair dismissal is prohibited, every person more or less manages to find their place. In a sexual system where adultery is prohibited, every person more or less manages to find a bed mate. In a totally liberal economic system certain people accumulate considerable fortunes; others stagnate in unemployment and misery. In a totally liberal sexual system certain people have a varied and exciting erotic life; others are reduced to masturbation and solitude

On the question of art and mistrust:

We should mistrust
picturesque people
we should mistrust
old master painting
we should even mistrust painting
painted without mistrust

Remember when 33,371 college sophomores wrote an essay on problematizing desire. Which isn’t, in itself, problematizing the problem with problematizing the desire, but emblematizing it:

When Richard Rorty wrote, in one of his many familiar pragmatist pronouncements, that the only way you can tell if something is true is if it helps you get the life you want, it sounded either like a provocative assertion or another advertisement, masquerading as epistemology, for consumer capitalism.

But in all delusive self-important seriousness, does pedagogy still encourage the formation of drawing groups in college art studios and do they or do they not continue to pass around a woven collection basket which may or may not be wood to pay nude models to do classical or classicist takes on the human form? Is it now Venmo? Or still cash? Or is the nude gone the way of the naked? Do the cool kids still use charcoal brushes?