“They saw their injured country's woe;
The flaming town, the wasted field;
Then rushed to meet the insulting foe;
They took the spear, - but left the shield.”
―Philip Freneau
.
And by a prudent flight and cunning save A life which valour could not, from the grave. A better buckler I can soon regain, But who can get another life again?
Archilochus
Isn't that exactly what Pop Culture, ubiquitously disseminated by Technology via mass media, loudspeakers in every public space, and the increasingly domineering presence of the internet is doing to the Human Spirit?
It (GASP!) sure (GASP!) feels (GASP!) that (GASP!) way. (THE LAST GASP!)
And doesn't EVERYTHING boil down to economics sooner or later?
"In general the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give to the other."
~ Voltaire (1694-1778)
Very sadly no one could properly say the great mass f people have EVER been governed -- or even much influenced -- by thoughts, products and accomplishments of great INTRINSIC MERIT, could they?
If anything mankind -- as a whole -- seems to have a distinct aversion -- even HOSTLITY to Beauty-Truth, Virtue and Excellence.
Immanuel Kant developed the notion of the “antinomies of pure reason”: all reason inevitably falls into self contradiction when it attempts to go beyond our concrete sensible experience to address such questions as: "Does the Universe have a beginning in time, a limit in space, an initial cause, or is it infinite?" The antimony arises because it is possible to construct valid arguments to argue both sides of the question: we can conclusively demonstrate that the universe is finite and that it is infinite… Kant argues that if this conflict of reason is not resolved that humanity would lapse into hopeless skepticism which he called the "euthanasia of pure reason."
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This is why the attitude of “understanding-each-other” has to be supplemented by the attitude of “getting-out-of-each-other’s-way,” by maintaining an appropriate distance, by a new “code of discretion.” European civilization finds it easier to tolerate different ways of life precise on account of what its critics usually denounce as its weakness and failure, namely the “alienation” of social life.” Alienation means (also) that distance is included into the very social texture: even if I live side by side with others, the normal state is to ignore them. I am allowed not to get too close to others; I move in a social space where I interact with others obeying certain external “mechanical” rules, without sharing their “inner world” – and, perhaps, the lesson to be learned is that, sometimes, a dose of alienation is indispensable for the peaceful coexistence of ways of life. Sometimes, alienation is not a problem but a solution: globalization will turn explosive not if we remain isolated of each other, but, on the opposite, if we get too close to each other.
If you wish to remain "alienated" FT, fine. But as much as I hate to say this, your ability to do so is diminishing daily. And unless you and I can convince the "Ducky's" of this nation to see our way "back" to a policy of national "alienation", you will lose it entirely. For "Their" multi-cultural tolerance side is blind to the danger, yet is also "winning" the culture war.
I'll take my antimony with bismuth, thank you very much. ;-)
In truth -- and for many many years -- despite persistent efforts to be sociable, -- I live entirely inside my own skull.
Though it sound conceited to the point of asininity to those devoted to the accumulation of as much specific 'data" as they may cram into their conscious mind, I find exercising my own peculiar powers of perception to be endlessly fascinating.
I think, therefore I am.
Learning, as such, has no value without the ability to perceive the significance of what one learns while developing an awareness of how best it might it relate to the Cosmos.
If we were able to explore deeply enough, I believe we would discover that ALL of it is good.
It is our cherished misperceptions of Truth -- and our unfortunate human capacity for being too easily seduced by sophists and cynics -- that hold us back from experiencing Existence as Ecstasy.
Feeding the ravening inner beast of Egocentrism doesn't help either. The more we consider Others and the less we think of Self the better off we are bound to be.
This is what the Scripture means that says, "If you would have your life, first you must lose it."
Unfortunately, it is our very "subjectivity" that gives rise to these misperceptions. For our "truth" lies in the "meanings" which flow from experiencing our subjectivity. Considering the "Other" certainly helps, as it does transmute our "freedom" into a "duty" ("If you would have your life, first you must lose it"), yet even this is dependent upon our original "misperceptions" inherent in the external symbolic network which sustains it in "word" and "language". The Yin never free's itself from Yang. Ours is a "mixed" existence.
Reality is entirely subjective. It is what we choose to make of whatever opportunities, challenges, insults, injuries and temptations may come our way.
Rx: Accept EVERYTHING you have no power to change.
"Kicking against the pricks" NEVER produces anything but sore and bloody feet.
Sure reality is always interpreted subjectively by humans, but rationalizations and lies cant change reality... no matter what lawyers and politicians may believe.
Our arrogant self-centered conceit is the nature of our existence as animals with unusually heightened self-awareness.
There is our artificial reality and then there is the world of matter, action/reaction, physics and concepts that we cannot grasp.
Humans have the ability to be the Gods we once created in our imaginations, but that sure as hell wont be in our lifetimes...
My main concern is the growth of Populist ideologies that promise utopias which are not possible in our current stage of evolution.
They hold successful Representative Democracies to the standards of societies that have reached the technological level of interstellar space travel.
On the other hand, barbaric and failed political/economic systems are held to unbelievably low standards.
They have found a means to abuse and corrupt Representative Democracies, but our society is too superficial to separate substance from Populist propaganda...
For all your acknowledgment of 'subjectivity', you make not the slightest attempt to rise above it. A more banal RINO ideologue is hard to find. Americanism, flag-waving, left-baiting, it's all there in all its boring banality.
Your main point in your top post is Obama's refusal to call 'them' Muslims but it is no more than attempting to turn a mole heap into a mountain. Reflexive, ideological Obama bashing with a pseudo-intellectual sauce poured over it. Considering some of the brain deads you used to hang out with, it probably makes you a literary genius in those parts.
Your invocation of Walter Lacquer is also risible: this is an ideologue in very careful disguise, who coined the term 'the New Anti-Semitism' for purposes we all (should) understand.
An original thought entering yur mind is about as frequent as a neutrino interacting with a particular chlorine isotope.
"On the other hand, barbaric and failed political/economic systems are held to unbelievably low standards."
Complete and utter tosh. You've got it backwards. Third world failures are touted by the likes of you as proof of the superiority of the West. Constantly.
'Black moochers should get of their backsides, like decent White Folk' is in that same category.
Democratic development, BTW, araises from affluency (at least in part). It's a 'luxury' that even neoliberalism affords us. Without affluency, partly due to having robbed the RoW blind, European democracy would have taken much longer to arise.
He's not here but I'll address him [FN] some more and that'll be it as far as I'm concerned.
I made a comment that since he dealt with educated people he probably didn’t have to worry that much about religious prejudice. His reply stunned me. He said that educated people in the Middle East were more indoctrinated than the uneducated.
You're easily stunned. Did you know that various European Leftwing revolutionaries were middle class bourgeois? Very well eductated, BTW?
How is it relevant to anything?
We can still help Muslim countries build their economies, BUT WE WILL ALSO NEED A PLAN TO COMBAT TERRORISM!!!
(Love the CAPS!) How do 'we' 'help' Muslim countries 'build their economies', pray tell?
In order to stay relevant to his people Karzai had to use Anti-Americanism to distance himself from his ally.
Do you know what anti-Americanism actually is? Quite an 'analysis' you've got going there!
Schools in the Middle East teach that America kills the Indians, oppresses minorities, props up Israel and colonizes the planet. Populist Democrats preach the same thing. Islamist and Populist propaganda converge in Anti-Americanism.
European settlers in N. America killed and dispossed Native American Indians by the thousands. This is a simple fact. Previously they did much the same in Latin America..
The US 'props up' Israel. Fact. I don't see the current American administration complaining about that or doing anything about it. The Israel/US alliance is an almost 100 % non-partisan Amercian meme. Are you saying facts should not be taught in ME schools?
Most Middle East states are fine with that. The Arab street less so, but US support for ME tin foil dictators (Mubarak/Sisi/House of Saud) remains strong, so don't worry too much about the 'Arabs'.
The US doesn't 'colonise' the planet but like all superpowers before it (and after it) is imperialist in nature. That suits you, even at the 'personal' level, so you shouldn't complain when others point that out.
'Populist' propaganda? You referring to Fox News, perhaps? There you have kowtowing to the lowest common denominater, 'Muslim no-go zones' included.
To a Lacanian, its extremely relevant. It's "believing" without "believing"... as the social-symbolic foundations are "laid" and the mind, in its' "thinking" will stick to these "myelinated" neural pathways of non-thought created by the social-symbolic. Like when Zizek tell the story of Neil's Bohr and the "horsehoe".
How do 'we' 'help' Muslim countries 'build their economies', pray tell? trade via direct 'barter' v. 'capital'. Eliminate the Ex-Im Bank.
22 comments:
Systemic Asphyxiation?
Isn't that exactly what Pop Culture, ubiquitously disseminated by Technology via mass media, loudspeakers in every public space, and the increasingly domineering presence of the internet is doing to the Human Spirit?
It (GASP!) sure (GASP!) feels (GASP!) that (GASP!) way. (THE LAST GASP!)
I think that this is more a commentary on the economic variety... ;)
And doesn't EVERYTHING boil down to economics sooner or later?
"In general the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give to the other."
~ Voltaire (1694-1778)
Very sadly no one could properly say the great mass f people have EVER been governed -- or even much influenced -- by thoughts, products and accomplishments of great INTRINSIC MERIT, could they?
If anything mankind -- as a whole -- seems to have a distinct aversion -- even HOSTLITY to Beauty-Truth, Virtue and Excellence.
And a near-fatal fascination with coarseness, underhandedness and brutality.
Nice uplifting video. I see I've been missing a lot...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=FFrZfluKDrc
This is amazing! Pussy Riot have the same tactics of American protestors, but they are actually oppressed!!!
An American Leftist's dream...
Immanuel Kant developed the notion of the “antinomies of pure reason”: all reason inevitably falls into self contradiction when it attempts to go beyond our concrete sensible experience to address such questions as: "Does the Universe have a beginning in time, a limit in space, an initial cause, or is it infinite?" The antimony arises because it is possible to construct valid arguments to argue both sides of the question: we can conclusively demonstrate that the universe is finite and that it is infinite… Kant argues that if this conflict of reason is not resolved that humanity would lapse into hopeless skepticism which he called the "euthanasia of pure reason."
---
This is why the attitude of “understanding-each-other” has to be supplemented by the attitude of “getting-out-of-each-other’s-way,” by maintaining an appropriate distance, by a new “code of discretion.” European civilization finds it easier to tolerate different ways of life precise on account of what its critics usually denounce as its weakness and failure, namely the “alienation” of social life.” Alienation means (also) that distance is included into the very social texture: even if I live side by side with others, the normal state is to ignore them. I am allowed not to get too close to others; I move in a social space where I interact with others obeying certain external “mechanical” rules, without sharing their “inner world” – and, perhaps, the lesson to be learned is that, sometimes, a dose of alienation is indispensable for the peaceful coexistence of ways of life. Sometimes, alienation is not a problem but a solution: globalization will turn explosive not if we remain isolated of each other, but, on the opposite, if we get too close to each other.
-Slavoj Zizek, "The Antimonies of Tolerant Reason"
If you wish to remain "alienated" FT, fine. But as much as I hate to say this, your ability to do so is diminishing daily. And unless you and I can convince the "Ducky's" of this nation to see our way "back" to a policy of national "alienation", you will lose it entirely. For "Their" multi-cultural tolerance side is blind to the danger, yet is also "winning" the culture war.
I'll take my antimony with bismuth, thank you very much. ;-)
In truth -- and for many many years -- despite persistent efforts to be sociable, -- I live entirely inside my own skull.
Though it sound conceited to the point of asininity to those devoted to the accumulation of as much specific 'data" as they may cram into their conscious mind, I find exercising my own peculiar powers of perception to be endlessly fascinating.
I think, therefore I am.
Learning, as such, has no value without the ability to perceive the significance of what one learns while developing an awareness of how best it might it relate to the Cosmos.
The Cosmos can be as small or as large as you care to explore. Enjoy your part. It is, IMO, the "better" half. ;)
If we were able to explore deeply enough, I believe we would discover that ALL of it is good.
It is our cherished misperceptions of Truth -- and our unfortunate human capacity for being too easily seduced by sophists and cynics -- that hold us back from experiencing Existence as Ecstasy.
Feeding the ravening inner beast of Egocentrism doesn't help either. The more we consider Others and the less we think of Self the better off we are bound to be.
This is what the Scripture means that says, "If you would have your life, first you must lose it."
Unfortunately, it is our very "subjectivity" that gives rise to these misperceptions. For our "truth" lies in the "meanings" which flow from experiencing our subjectivity. Considering the "Other" certainly helps, as it does transmute our "freedom" into a "duty" ("If you would have your life, first you must lose it"), yet even this is dependent upon our original "misperceptions" inherent in the external symbolic network which sustains it in "word" and "language". The Yin never free's itself from Yang. Ours is a "mixed" existence.
There is only one truth, but no human can fully comprehend it. We are slaves to subjectivity.
If more people understood this on a day-to-day basis, it would seriously decrease the many misunderstandings we have.
I write this with complete conviction, but I could be wrong!
That's what I love about conservative/libertarians. They acknowlege the possibility that their position may contain an antimony. ;)
Reality is entirely subjective. It is what we choose to make of whatever opportunities, challenges, insults, injuries and temptations may come our way.
Rx: Accept EVERYTHING you have no power to change.
"Kicking against the pricks" NEVER produces anything but sore and bloody feet.
Sure reality is always interpreted subjectively by humans, but rationalizations and lies cant change reality... no matter what lawyers and politicians may believe.
Our arrogant self-centered conceit is the nature of our existence as animals with unusually heightened self-awareness.
There is our artificial reality and then there is the world of matter, action/reaction, physics and concepts that we cannot grasp.
Humans have the ability to be the Gods we once created in our imaginations, but that sure as hell wont be in our lifetimes...
Largely because our sense of "reality" becomes tainted with ideology... ;(
The "dreams and fantasies" which sustain our existence.
My main concern is the growth of Populist ideologies that promise utopias which are not possible in our current stage of evolution.
They hold successful Representative Democracies to the standards of societies that have reached the technological level of interstellar space travel.
On the other hand, barbaric and failed political/economic systems are held to unbelievably low standards.
They have found a means to abuse and corrupt Representative Democracies, but our society is too superficial to separate substance from Populist propaganda...
FN:
For all your acknowledgment of 'subjectivity', you make not the slightest attempt to rise above it. A more banal RINO ideologue is hard to find. Americanism, flag-waving, left-baiting, it's all there in all its boring banality.
Your main point in your top post is Obama's refusal to call 'them' Muslims but it is no more than attempting to turn a mole heap into a mountain. Reflexive, ideological Obama bashing with a pseudo-intellectual sauce poured over it. Considering some of the brain deads you used to hang out with, it probably makes you a literary genius in those parts.
Your invocation of Walter Lacquer is also risible: this is an ideologue in very careful disguise, who coined the term 'the New Anti-Semitism' for purposes we all (should) understand.
An original thought entering yur mind is about as frequent as a neutrino interacting with a particular chlorine isotope.
"On the other hand, barbaric and failed political/economic systems are held to unbelievably low standards."
Complete and utter tosh. You've got it backwards. Third world failures are touted by the likes of you as proof of the superiority of the West. Constantly.
'Black moochers should get of their backsides, like decent White Folk' is in that same category.
Democratic development, BTW, araises from affluency (at least in part). It's a 'luxury' that even neoliberalism affords us. Without affluency, partly due to having robbed the RoW blind, European democracy would have taken much longer to arise.
He's not here but I'll address him [FN] some more and that'll be it as far as I'm concerned.
I made a comment that since he dealt with educated people he probably didn’t have to worry that much about religious prejudice. His reply stunned me. He said that educated people in the Middle East were more indoctrinated than the uneducated.
You're easily stunned. Did you know that various European Leftwing revolutionaries were middle class bourgeois? Very well eductated, BTW?
How is it relevant to anything?
We can still help Muslim countries build their economies, BUT WE WILL ALSO NEED A PLAN TO COMBAT TERRORISM!!!
(Love the CAPS!) How do 'we' 'help' Muslim countries 'build their economies', pray tell?
In order to stay relevant to his people Karzai had to use Anti-Americanism to distance himself from his ally.
Do you know what anti-Americanism actually is? Quite an 'analysis' you've got going there!
Schools in the Middle East teach that America kills the Indians, oppresses minorities, props up Israel and colonizes the planet. Populist Democrats preach the same thing. Islamist and Populist propaganda converge in Anti-Americanism.
European settlers in N. America killed and dispossed Native American Indians by the thousands. This is a simple fact. Previously they did much the same in Latin America..
The US 'props up' Israel. Fact. I don't see the current American administration complaining about that or doing anything about it. The Israel/US alliance is an almost 100 % non-partisan Amercian meme. Are you saying facts should not be taught in ME schools?
Most Middle East states are fine with that. The Arab street less so, but US support for ME tin foil dictators (Mubarak/Sisi/House of Saud) remains strong, so don't worry too much about the 'Arabs'.
The US doesn't 'colonise' the planet but like all superpowers before it (and after it) is imperialist in nature. That suits you, even at the 'personal' level, so you shouldn't complain when others point that out.
'Populist' propaganda? You referring to Fox News, perhaps? There you have kowtowing to the lowest common denominater, 'Muslim no-go zones' included.
I can address some of the points.
How is it relevant to anything?
To a Lacanian, its extremely relevant. It's "believing" without "believing"... as the social-symbolic foundations are "laid" and the mind, in its' "thinking" will stick to these "myelinated" neural pathways of non-thought created by the social-symbolic. Like when Zizek tell the story of Neil's Bohr and the "horsehoe".
How do 'we' 'help' Muslim countries 'build their economies', pray tell? trade via direct 'barter' v. 'capital'. Eliminate the Ex-Im Bank.
Hi Gert!!! Love you too... XOXOXO
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