June 2012
15 posts
The philosophy of information in Lyotard and Gadamer: postmodernism and hermeneutics →
wetwiring.wordpress.com
I have noted previously (“Defending Modernism and visions of the future”) that there is nothing necessarily wrong with ideals or narratives in and of themselves. The problem comes with the struggle to define coherent ideals and narratives, and accordingly just ceasing to make any effort at when the going gets intellectually tough. How much, then, was the vulgar notion of Lyotard’s thesis an excuse for laziness? I do not put Lyotard in the dock for this, as he was in the centre of the chasm, diagnosing the problems with our traditional modes of intellectual endeavour, with unironic post-modernists (to borrow from Agnes Heller) on one side, and the grim old-school anti-pomo reactionaries on the other. Lyotard was like Indiana Jones on the rope bridge in The Temple of Doom, only as a man of thought rather than a man of action. We glance away, and look back to see countless figures falling, and have to ask, was the rope cut, or did it break?
“How did we get here? My own suspicion is that we are looking at the final effects of the militarization of American capitalism itself. In fact, it could well be said that the last thirty years have seen the construction of a vast bureaucratic apparatus for the creation and maintenance of hopelessness, a giant machine designed, first and foremost, to destroy any sense of possible alternative futures.”
—David Graeber, Debt: The First 5000 Years, p. 382
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If you are a woman. If you are a Person of Colour. If you are gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, if you’re a person of size, if you’re a person of intelligence, if you’re a person of integrity, then you are considered a minority in this world. And it’s gonna be really hard to find messages of self-love, and support anywhere, especially women’s and gay men’s culture. It’s all about how you have to look a certain way or else you’re worthless. You know when you look in the mirror, and you think, ‘Ugh, I’m so fat, I’m so old, I’m so ugly’, don’t you know that’s not your authentic self, but that is billions upon billions of dollars of advertising, magazines, movies, billboards, all geared to make you feel shitty about yourself so that you will take your hard-earned money and spend it on some turnaround cream that doesn’t turnaround shit.
When you don’t have self-esteem, you will hesitate before you do anything in your life. You will hesitate to go for the job you really wanna go for. You will hesitate to ask for a raise. You will hesitate to report a rape. You will hesitate to defend yourself when you are discriminated against because of your race, your sexuality, your size, your gender. You will hesitate to vote. You will hesitate to dream.
For us to have self-esteem is truly an act of revolution. And our revolution is long-overdue.
” —Margaret Cho (via embracewithme)
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As a footnote, I need to say that it has been pointed out that cataloging racism is a sight below the standards of this blog. I sort of agree. But over the course of the Obama presidency I have become convinced that no single force exerts a greater pull on his presidency than white racism. Not white resentment. Not white populism. White racism. I don’t know how else to explain a health care denounced as reparations, the rather continuous disrespect, the sense that he is a Kenyan illegitimate or all of the attendant theories. I do not know how else to explain a state like West Virginia, arguably the most racist in the country, where delegates are now refusing to endorse the president.
There will be more on this in the coming months. I don’t want to scoop myself. But my point is I can only stop talking about racism, when it ceases to be a significant force in our politics. When the mere act of being white gives Obama’s opponent “a home-state advantage nationally,” I can’t stop. It would be deeply wrong to stop.
Please let this put a stop to at least some of the Rand-ian douchebaggery out there... →
guardian.co.uk
“…her writing skills aren’t just mediocre; if anything, her penchant for 200-page monologues and wooden characters suggests that they’re non-existent. And she has this thing for rapey scenes; and her approach to BDSM goes for a Mad Men-esque chauvinist chic – not healthy sex positivism.
Of course, all that doesn’t actually say anything about her “philosophy”; it just makes the case that she’s a jerk and a hack. That said, her theory – and summarily, its corollaries – are belied by the abject sketchiness of their most basic premise: rational egoism. Far smarter, more articulate people than me have pointed this out, but what needs to be emphasized is that Rand conflates descriptive psychological egoism (people act in their self-interest) with normative ethical egoism (acting in self-interest is the right thing to do).”
Read the whole article. Totally worth it.
“Contrary to popular myth, you don’thave to be a nerd to be a hacker.Itdoes help, however,and many hackers are in fact nerds. Being a social outcast helps you stay concentrated on the really important things, like thinking and hacking.”
—Eric S. Raymond, The Cathedral and the Bazaar, “How to become a Hacker”,p. 206
“The Ptolemaic system was a fruitful source of error for one thousand years; astrology has been a fruitful source of income to astrologers for two thousand five hundred years; Marxism is today a fruitful source of power for the rulers of one third of mankind. When we say Copernicanism was fruitful, we mean that it was a fruitful source of truth, and we cannot distinguish its kind of fruitfulness from that of the Ptolemaic system, or astrology, or Marxism, except by such a qualification.”
—Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge, 1958, p. 147.
Dalí's watercolour illustrations of Dante's Commedia →
lockportstreetgallery.com
Visible here at various resolutions. It was a project the Italian government commissioned him for, to be completed by 1965… but then some open-minded types got into a tizzy about them getting a Spaniard involved. Still, he went on and just did them. Beautiful. The image below is Charon’s ferry, different to the Doré and Lego versions, to be sure…
