A quiet retreat: aesthetic comfort or ethical withdrawal?

By Simon Olling Rebsdorf

I sometimes wonder whether this project – Eudaimon.dk – is just another curated way of looking away. Away from spectacle. Away from noise. Away from the burning. Maybe that’s all it is: a soft landing in a collapsing world?

We speak of nature’s beauty, inner stillness, the dignity of slowness. But are we just lighting candles in the ruins? Rearranging pinecones while the algorithm devours attention, trust, democracy? Maybe this is nothing more than a well-designed sigh.

Aesthetic complicity

And perhaps this very platform – a calm, unhurried space – is complicit in a kind of aesthetic complicity.

Narratocracy thrives in the spectacle of late capitalism, where patriarchal power wears masks of authenticity. Here, it is not knowledge that counts, but narrative; not action, but performance. We live in a simulacrum, where the copy reigns and loyalty is rewarded over judgment. The emperors of capital seek to possess everything – until they discover that you can’t eat money.

The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth—it is the truth which conceals that there is none. The simulacrum is true (Jean Baudrillard)

So, is that really the whole world – the whole picture?

No. But it is a growing part of it. It is embodied most blatantly in the United States, echoed in other autocracies, and it is feared by many. And yet, most continue as if nothing is happening – still choosing the soothing rhythm of Aristotelian arcs, still preferring to be entertained rather than disturbed.

We know how to see through the spectacle. That’s not the problem. The problem is that we often choose to see through it and keep watching anyway. We understand manipulation. We teach media literacy and to some extent critical thinking. We talk of echo chambers and attention economies. And then we click next.

A call for disruption

Bertil Brecht, faced with the rise of fascism in the 30’ies, developed the Verfremdungseffekt – an aesthetic strategy to break the trance, to interrupt the emotional flow, to force awareness. He knew that theatre could not afford to seduce. It had to wake people up. Perhaps we need something like that again, instead of watching the next “Aristotelian” action curve unfold in the next tragedy or comedy on Netflix. Not just new content, but new forms. Not just critical essays, but disruptive structures. Not just analysis – but aesthetic resistance.

The wound at the heart

When I talk about the smallness of being, the nearness of the real, the ache of beauty – I mean it whole-heartedly. But I also know that beauty, too, can be a drug. I know that quietness can become a form of evasion. I know that authenticity is now a style. Authenticity has been replaced by copies.

This is the wound at the heart of Eudaimon.dk: that we long for the real while being shaped by what isn’t. That we speak against the spectacle in a tone the spectacle finds very pleasant. That we risk becoming something like curated conscience.

Bur still, I believe there is a crack. Perhaps there is value in saying these things out loud. In not pretending that purity is possible..

I don’t wish for Eudaimon.dk to be a haven for the sensitive few. I wish for it to be an opening. A bruise. A place where truth is allowed to tremble, but not completely retreat. So let’s not look away. Let’s look slowly. Let’s look truly. Let’s not forget that form is not everything. But let’s not forget that it still shapes what we see.

Echoes of 1933

In the early 1930s, as Hitler rose to power, many artists, scientists and intellectuals did not immediately resist. Some left, some were silenced, some adapted. Others turned inward – choosing form, beauty, nature, the spiritual, as a retreat from the creeping shadow of Mordor. And yes, some forms of that retreat were ethically necessary. They preserved what could not yet be spoken. But many were also late to realize what they were living through. What we now see clearly in retrospect was then wrapped in ambiguity, daily life, reasonable doubts.

Today, something similar stirs. Not identical, not symmetrical, but resonant. There is once again a drift toward authoritarianism – over 70% of the world population is submitted to authoritarianism. 74% if we count in the narratocracy of the USA. There are once again spectacles substituting for reality, propaganda disguised as opinion, performative cruelty elevated to governance. And we, again, must ask: what is art doing? What is philosophy doing? What are we doing?

To retreat into the aesthetics of depth is tempting. But if it is not also a listening, a questioning, a refusal – then it risks being little more than the perfect soundproof room.

History doesn’t repeat, but it hums. We should be listening.