wsj: the opposite flaws of trump and mueller
splicetoday: art and capitalism in bentonville
times literary supplement: an authoritative but anti-authoritarian account of 'the dawn of civilization' (review of the great james c. scott's against the grain) [drive]
times higher eduction: teaching beauty and existentialism to the students of now {drive}
larb philosophical salon: western philosophy as white supremacism
wsj: hatred enhances your self-esteem
Rolling pretty good these days!
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I went to see the doctor of philosophy
With a poster of Rasputin and a beard down to his knee
He never did marry or see a B-grade movie
He graded my performance, he said he could see through me
I spent four years prostrate to the higher mind, got my paper
And I was free. -- Ray and Saliers
When I turn to philosophy and pick up a new work, the technical stuff makes me think that perhaps the idea to burn the Great Library of Alexandria was not such a bad one after all. Langugae that serves only to drive the potential reader away deserves to be forgotten. Of course, doctoral disseratations don't succeed so much by provoking new thought as by providing variations on an accepted theme of bullshit. The great thinkers succeed in reaching us by doing other things that producing tomes suitable more for tombs that thought, realization and excited discussion.
Daniel Dennett is an interesting and provocative thinker; while I like his simile about human beings as "moist robots", he seems here to be edging away from that. The robot part takes us so far, and then there's an entirely different set of functions,problems and issues. Two things I liked here is the issue of intentionality -- free will requires philosophical intention, that is, conscienious direction and awareness and it requires the ability to recognize and prevent manipulation. The moral actor has to go into situations with eyes wide open and a poker face. The other, which I think is implied, is that the initial reaction to radically new perspectives seems to be to regard it as either naive or cynical, until you think about it.
My other thought is simple. I find Dennett's technical philosophy, the neuroscientist-philosopher stuff incomprehensible, but when he writes or speaks to communicate with actual living people, he's very good indeed. Is that a trend? Crispin's thought is much the same way, although since he doesn't babble about neurons and synapses and blood volume and all the rest, he's more approachable. Sartre was the same way -- you can read "Being and Nothingness", or you can read "The Words" or "No Exit and three Plays" and the first will drive you to distraction, solitary despair and isolated absinthe sucking through a sugar cube; the others will engage, provoke conversastion and maybe...cause thought.
Maybe even in Salon...it's a thought.
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also thank god for glenn greenwald. this is a test of basic decency or where you decided whether or not to support slavery. anyone who spends any time considering whether it might be alright to keep these programs secret, for example by focusing outrage on ed snowden, is a mere lover of tyranny. don't let anyone obscure even the trivial question of legality; read the 4th amendment.
i myself went at first with 'oh we figured that.' but it's one thing to vaguely understand that you might be under surveillance, and another to show in detail that and how this is possible. one thing is that a world in which some of the things they are describing are happening, they might get to the point of info control at which edward snowdens become impossible. but right now, they are still possible. practical measures of all sorts, legal and illegal, to keep them possible, are essential.
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my i love the college admissions process thing is up at creators. meanwhile here is a "bonus column." it started to occur to me that it's been a long time since i stomped on the democratic party, and that that might be why i keep getting email that says: 'you goddamn bush-bashing democratic leftist idiots love terrorists and saddam."
Evil or Emptiness?
By Crispin Sartwell
Few spectacles are as existentially profound as American politics. Our public discourse is a contest between people who are, in their mediocre way, satanic, and people who really aren't there at all.
First, a quick bracing dip in utter evil: the administration edited and distorted intelligence and exploited September 11 to manipulate the country into war. Then it asserted its right to imprison anyone it pleased, American citizen or not, secretly, without trial, representation, or charge. Then it opened up a worldwide system of secret internment facilities, while frying the citizens of Fallujah with phosphorus incendiaries. Then the Vice President of the United States declared his frank enthusiasm for torture.
Indeed, one might wonder whether the Bush administration is torturing people in order to fight terrorism, or fighting terrorism in order to torture people.
Democrats would never declare their enthusiasm for torture. Why? Because torture doesn't poll well, and thus to endorse it would violate their sacred honor.
Under the inspiring leadership the Clintons, John Kerry, and John Edwards, the Democrats have achieved sudden decisiveness in opposing this wretched war. Of course, all of those people (I use the term loosely) were enthusiastic proponents of the war when the thing was put to a vote in the Senate.
The President and Vice President seem a bit irritated by this reversal, but they and we surely should have expected it.
Our idealistic Democratic statespersons say they were deceived into supporting the war by the administration. But the yellow cake/aluminum tubes/once there was an al-Qaeda guy in Baghdad argument was as pitiful then as it is now. They wanted to be persuaded, for the same reason they all loved the Patriot Act: because their moral compass always points to the true north of their own aggrandizement.
I seem to remember "Kerry-Edwards: For a Stronger America." I vaguely recall a 2004 Democratic convention that was a festival of idiot militarism, at which John Kerry "reported for duty." Would that I could forget.
The position on the war of Kerry and Edwards and Billary has been an exquisite barometer of the polling, from clearly pro, to sheer confusion, to bold opposition. It is worth pointing out that as these folks gaze mesmerized at the polls, people have been dying.
If you put your position on war at the mercy of polling numbers, there is nothing, nothing, nothing that you actually believe. Their advocacy of the war was meaningless; their hemming and hawing through the election was meaningless; their opposition now is meaningless.
If murder polled well, these people would tax you to have you hit. When the murder numbers went south, they'd mutate into beatific Gandhian pacifists. That is not a hypothetical assertion.
By comparison, the Republican position is clear, consistent, principled, honest. It would be altogether admirable if it weren't absolutely abominable.
Thus, American politics presents us with an interesting dilemma, a kind of pointed cosmic test. Satanism or nihilism? Hell or the void? Eternal damnation or perfect extinction? Evil or nothingness?
Before I cast my vote, I have one question: how are Satan's job approval numbers?
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i'm sort of checking out available academic positions at the moment. here's a discipline that we should all commit ourselves to with all the joy of our hearts and all the resources of our mighty intellects: Rhetoric & Philosophy of Integrated Marketing Communication. duquesne would be getting my application, only i specialize in the philosophy of disintegrated marketing communication.
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