Inspired by the "Pleasure Principles" from Pleasure Activism by adrienne maree brown.
- Cursed is subjective. There is no final definition of what qualifies as "cursed" and what qualifies as "blessed". In fact, the word blessed is derived from the Germanic word blōtan which means "to sacrifice," as in, making a sacrifice to a deity in order to get something one is asking for (a blessing) or to punish one's enemies and thus curse them.¹ One's blessing is another's curse.
- Cursed is a study in phenomenology. "Phenomenology is the study of structures of consciousness as experienced from the first-person point of view."² If something is cursed to you, but not someone else, that is valid.
- Cursed is unsettling. Some definitions of cursed that I like are "a cursed image is one that incites the five W's in a person (who, what, where, why, when, how)" or "an image that violates somebody's sense of world order, usually in a trivial way".
- Cursed can be good or bad. You might say, it can be a blessing or a curse. It can be an expansive experience (joy) or a narrowing experience (fear). It can make you believe in something you never thought was possible, or put you face to face with a truth about the world that is hard to hold.
- Cursed can be an act of pleasure. It is fun to talk about the utter absurdity of Cats (2019). Pleasure is a fundamental human need. "Desire and pleasure are two ways that we assert that there's something worth living for."³
- Cursed can give us information about how to protect and care for ourselves. All feelings exist to give us information about how to protect our bodies, including discomfort. By pointing out technologies that separate us, or that make us believe in the illusion of scarcity, for example, we can reorient ourselves in the right direction.
- Cursed shows us what our needs are, as a community. Often the things that I find cursed bring to light the forces that oppose making sure everyone has their basic needs met. The fact that Jeff Bezos could easily bring clean drinking water to Flint, Michigan...
- https://blog.oup.com/2016/10/etymology-gleanings-october-2016/
- https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/phenomenology/
- Brown, Adrienne Maree. Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good. Later Printing, AK Press, 2019. 51