Wednesday, August 30, 2017

Caveat Ingestor!

Surely, I said, knowledge is the food of the soul; and we must take care, my friend, that the Sophist does not deceive us when he praises what he sells, like the dealers wholesale or retail who sell the food of the body; for they praise indiscriminately all their goods, without knowing what are really beneficial or hurtful: neither do their customers know, with the exception of any trainer or physician who may happen to buy of them. In like manner those who carry about the wares of knowledge, and make the round of the cities, and sell or retail them to any customer who is in want of them, praise them all alike; though I should not wonder, O my friend, if many of them were really ignorant of their effect upon the soul; and their customers equally ignorant, unless he who buys of them happens to be a physician of the soul. If, therefore, you have understanding of what is good and evil, you may safely buy knowledge of Protagoras or of any one; but if not, then, O my friend, pause, and do not hazard your dearest interests at a game of chance. For there is far greater peril in buying knowledge than in buying meat and drink: the one you purchase of the wholesale or retail dealer, and carry them away in other vessels, and before you receive them into the body as food, you may deposit them at home and call in any experienced friend who knows what is good to be eaten or drunken, and what not, and how much, and when; and then the danger of purchasing them is not so great. But you cannot buy the wares of knowledge and carry them away in another vessel; when you have paid for them you must receive them into the soul and go your way, either greatly harmed or greatly benefited; and therefore we should deliberate and take counsel with our elders; for we are still young—too young to determine such a matter. And now let us go, as we were intending, and hear Protagoras; and when we have heard what he has to say, we may take counsel of others; for not only is Protagoras at the house of Callias, but there is Hippias of Elis, and, if I am not mistaken, Prodicus of Ceos, and several other wise men.
- Plato, "Protagoras"
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"fidelity to a simulacrum, unlike fidelity to an event, regulates its break with the situation not by the universality of the void, but by the closed particularity of an abstract set ... (ie- the 'Germans' or the 'Aryans')"
-Alain Badiou, in speaking with reference to Nazism about Evil

29 comments:

  1. We must go to war with the strawmen at once

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  2. Bush already did it in Afghanistan with a group invented by the CIA called al Qaeda, and the Koreans are already in the gunsights.

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  3. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  4. Why are you so mellow? Did you finally get laid? What did you do with the real beamish?

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  5. Mellow? Everything is going according to plan. ;)

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  6. Then Billy opened the scrolls to Matthew 24/7 and read...

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  7. I guess I was alt-right before it got stinky and weird.

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  8. Could've been worse. You could have donned a black bandana and started punching Nazi's.

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  9. ....not that there's anything wrong with punch real Nazi's! ;)

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  10. I see the alt-right as mostly a Vaudeville act rehashing leftism circa 1920.

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  11. You know those Kekistani's. It's all about the race, gender and OS.

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    1. we're definitely beyond the era of the best Usenet trolls becoming bloggers.

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  12. We are pretty close to the isolators, aren't we?

    Ingest, Replicate and Reject for the Great Fragmentation Celebration!

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  13. Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we call in sick with a hangover.

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  14. Starring Milo Yiannopoulos as.the Beaver

    Oh, Daddy...

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