Comment by bballant | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bballant | Hacker News Reader

Zed will never understand _why and his simplistic depiction (not understanding) of Buddhism is a testament to this. Moreover he doesn't recognize _why as an artist. He does this in numerous ways but the most obvious and most gauche is the refusal to call _why by his name, which is _why, not Jonathan. In doing so, Zed pulls why out of his world and into his own, which is not an artist's world, and then judges _why. This is unfair to _why in the extreme.

It reminds me of an essay by Henry Miller called "Creative Death" which may help explain _why to those of us who can't understand the state of mind and the motivation of an artist like _why. Here are some excerpts, which run to the end of this post:

For the artist in man is the undying symbol of the union between his warring selves. Live has to be given meaning because of the obvious fact that it has no meaning. Something has to be created, as a healing and goading intervention, between life and death…

The process is a long and devious one. It is all a conquest of fear…

His war with reality is a reflection of the war within himself…

The ideas which germinate in the artist are unique and must be lived out. He is the sign of Fate itself, the very symbol of destiny. For when, by living out his dream logic, he fulfills himself through the destruction of his own ego, he is incarnating for humanity the drama of individual life which, to be tasted and experienced, must embrace dissolution…

It is what Nietzche described as the fusion in one being of two divergent streams–the Apollonian dreamer type and the ecstatic Dionysian…

> Zed will never understand _why and his simplistic depiction (not understanding) of Buddhism is a testament to this. Moreover he doesn't recognize _why as an artist. He does this in numerous ways but the most obvious and most gauche is the refusal to call _why by his name, which is _why, not Jonathan. In doing so, Zed pulls why out of his world and into his own, which is not an artist's world, and then judges _why. This is unfair to _why in the extreme.

On the other hand, _why is just an online persona created and portrayed by an actual person. When he says "I truly hope that Jonathan is ok," he's referring to the actual person, not to the online persona... The persona is fictional. A farce. A farce in the name of art, but a farce nonetheless.

It would be like Zed trying to talk about the guy behind 'Fake Steve Jobs' by constantly referring to him as 'Fake Steve Jobs' rather than by his real name, Daniel Lyons. If I said, "I hope that Fake Steve Jobs is in a good frame of mind," most people will not take that to mean, "I hope that Daniel Lyons is in a good state of mind." In the same way, saying, "Fake Steve Jobs is acting like a dick," is not the same as saying, "Daniel Lyons is acting like a dick."

I seriously think that people are taking this "Zed and _why are two polar opposites" idea way too far. Zed is basically saying that _why can do whatever he wants, but to create a bunch of projects that people rely on (even if these projects are your art) and then abruptly, without notice pull the rug out from under these people is an asshole move.

Let's bring all this into a small example. Say there's this artist whose art strikes such a chord with me that I invest every penny I own into putting on a spectacular art show to showcase this artist's art to the world. Let's say that the artist and I spend months and months planning the show and collaborating on it. Then comes the big day of the show, and I go to the location to find out that the artist has up and disappeared, taking all of his art with him. Leaving me with nothing.

If the artist and I have no formal argreement that he has to show his art there he has every right to walk out like this. But it is a very asshole move to leave me hanging after I've invested all of my time in money into it, no? Or do I just scratch my head, say "I just don't understand his art" and call it a day?

This is the same case here. There are things like his twitter account/tweets/blogs/blog entries/etc which pulling from the web isn't that big of a deal. On the other hand, all of his software projects/code are things that people have come to rely on and invest time into contributing to. He basically giving all of those people the finger when he just cuts out everything like this. Without taking the time to organize for these projects to be taken over by someone else (or at least leaving the hosting up for them), he's saying that all of those people, all the effort and time they've spent mean shit all to him.

Being 'artsy' and 'artistic' doesn't excuse you from being an asshole. I mean, Caravaggio (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caravaggio) was a 'ruffian' and a murderer. While his art still stands on its own, he was a dick of a person. Just because a dick of a person produces great art doesn't mean that we hand-wave away all their misdeeds with nebulous phrases like, "You just don't understand his art."

What if Caravaggio decided to pull a _why? Let's say that he broke into all of the places that his paintings resided (cathedrals,churches,mansions,etc) and destroyed every last piece of art that he had created. Should we excuse this behavior as "Well, it's his art and this action is just an extention of his art. You just don't understand his art?"

This has become a bit long-winded, so I'll just cut it here with this. Zed isn't tearing down _why's art. But some parts of _why's art have crossed over from just being 'just art' to being 'art plus' if you will. In this case, it's 'art + software project.' The fact that part of it is art doesn't mean one can ignore that the other part is a software project.

I completely disagree that _why was simply an on-line persona, "a farce". The Fake Steve Jobs was satirical, first of all. _why was often funny, but it wasn't satire. I think his work alone, often times personal, was a testament to his authenticity as an artist. You may have only known him as an on-line persona, but that doesn't mean that's all he was. There's at least one video on the interweb of _why giving a talk, in the flesh and blood, and he calls himself _why... Perhaps his friends all call him _why too.

I also think Zed saying he hopes Jonathan is ok is a bit of a platitude. I'm sure Zed DOES hope _why is fine, but it rings hollow in the context of the whole essay. Plus, who doesn't hope _why is ok. His biggest detractors aren't monsters wishing him ill.

I have to say that you confuse being an artist with being 'artsy', which is a mistake. I'm artsy, but I'm no artist. Not a single artist I know would describe themselves as simply artsy. Much of my opinion on what it is to be an artist, however, comes from the Henry Miller essay I referenced earlier. I suggest reading it. It's in a volume called "Matters of the Heart".

I believe an artist has the right to destroy his own work unless he's sold it or given it away. I'm not of the opinion that publishing work on-line is the same as giving it away, and I'm certainly not of the opinion that _why taking his stuff down is the same as breaking into a place to steal and destroy things. There's a very big difference between what _why did and your Caravaggio example. _why did nothing illegal, for instance.

In a way, _why reminds me of the French New Wave film-makers. They believed in the "film-maker as auteur" and wanted complete control over their work. From reading these forums, it sounds like most of _why's code was recovered, which is fortunate, and I'm not aware of anything missing that others collaborated on. I don't think he collaborated much with others if at all, but I don't really know. I do acknowledge that, even with works created solely by _why, there's a certain collaboration osmosis that occurs just by having it on the internet with so many users/readers/extenders/whathaveyous, but in my eyes that falls short of giving it away.

To me, _why considered his programs and their source code art equal to (more important than?) his drawings, music, poems, and stories. It was all his art. I'm extremely sad at the loss of so much of his amazing work.

> I'm not of the opinion that publishing work on-line is the same as giving it away, and I'm certainly not of the opinion that _why taking his stuff down is the same as breaking into a place to steal and destroy things

Publishing work on-line IS giving it away. If you don't want that, just don't publish it online. If not, it's like singing a song at a party and getting all upset on your friends for memorizing it. Sorry, but the cat is out of the bag, and you can't tell me that _why (being involved in an open-source community and all) wasn't aware of that.

_why's taking his stuff down is also comparable to stealing/destroying things ... his work still lives on because other people bothered to make copies, but he also took down the mailing lists / homepages of those projects, disrupting the communities behind those projects, leaving nice people that invested time and resources for those projects in the dark (I don't know how much time/resources were external, but that's irrelevant).

Being an artist doesn't excuse you being dick (although it also doesn't negate your achievements). But when you're being a dick, since you're living in a society that would brake if all of us where dicks, then you should pay the price for that.

We could go back and forth on this forever. I think it's a valid, if not tiresome, debate -- if you publish something on-line, is it yours anymore? Was _why's stuff art? Does it matter if we consider it art?

Maybe pulling things down is "comparable" to stealing, but it's not the same. And the extent to which external resources were part of his work is not irrelevant. There's tons of gray area here that's being glossed over.

Zed (and other posters) seem to have a view of the issue that lacks nuance. "He abandon us, he must be a dick." I'm not sure know why "dick" is the only name Zed et al have for _why. Besides the fact that the word is grating and low, it is bad form and, frankly, a little immature to use insults like that, especially when you don't know the whole story. The HN community both eulogized and demonized _why too quickly. Maybe it makes sense that hackers only think in binary terms and pass such stark judgment.

Look, I'm disappointed that _why is gone. There have been good points made on this forum about people who depended on the mailing lists, etc. And we can speculate ad-nauseam the causes for his disappearance. Personally, I thought his work was touching. As I discussed earlier, I also view him as an artist, with motivations that I think are very different from those of a typical hacker or engineer. But because we don't know the whole story, any judgment is based on speculation. And so I must give _why the benefit of the doubt here (and, clearly, defend him a little).

It's wrong to judge _why as Zed and others have, 'nuff said.

Yes, well, to tell you the truth I regret his disappearance. That's why I have a bad opinion about this.

I also believe in coding as an art form (although I'm surely not an artist), and _why was a person to which I could relate to. We need such positive models with the same aspirations as ours because we may start thinking that we are crazy ... ever got a blank stare while you where explaining to someone else that programming in itself is beautiful?

It would mean a lot to me if sooner or later he would reappear and provide an explanation ... I could also relate to him being burnt-out.

When he helped to create and foster a community around his art, even creating forums (mailinglists) dedicated to his 'pieces', he accepted a responsibility to the people that joined/formed that community. To completely destroy that community overnight is reckless and narcissistic.

This is not to state that _why is a 'dick.' He might be in some sort of weird mental turmoil. But his actions, while maybe not meant to be 'asshole moves' can still be described as 'asshole moves.' Reality and intentions don't always line up.

Think of it this way. Some of his art -- namely HackityHack -- was designed to be not only art, but a learning tool. Some people maybe relying on that learning tool. While that learning tool is technically still in _why's possession -- giving him the right to pull the plug on it -- are you really going to say that ripping a learning tool away from people that are using it is a good thing?

Analogies -- even mine -- up to this point have not been the strong suit of this discussion, but I'll boldly use another one any ways. Let's say that _why owns a building. Why goes crazy and makes all sorts of artistic changes/improvements to the building. Now this building also has a meeting hall inside of it. _why uses this meeting hall to form several groups of people all of whom meet there to discuss various pieces of _why's art (and maybe how he should further improve the building or something... who knows). One day the people try to meet there only to find a wrecking crew tearing the building down. The construction workers say that _why sold the building to someone else who is tearing it down for condos.

Now in this analogy, _why has every right to do what he wants with the building. But _why has also formed an implicit promise with the people meeting there that this is their meeting place. He has assumed a responsibility -- albeit on a unspoken social level -- to at least announce to these people that the building will be no more.

If someone acted as a dick, we don't care whether he's an artist or not.

Even if he's our friend, we still recognise when he acts as a dick and point that out.

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