Comments

  • What are you listening to right now?
    I have figured it out. I should post this here:

    The Mu of Writhing Waves

    1. "Marianne" by The Jacks
    2. "Dark Eyes" by Takeshi Terauchi & The Bunnys
    3. "Freedom!" by Tokyo Kid Brothers
    4. "Night of the Assassins" by Les Rallizes Dénudés
    5. "Strawberry Fields Forever" by Otomo Yoshihide's New Jazz Quintet
    6. "Listen, the Snow is Falling" by John Lennon and Yoko Ono
    7. "Pink Lady Lemonade, Part 2" by Acid Mothers Temple
    8. "Baby Love Child" by Pizzicato Five
    9. "Mirrorball" by Nisennenmondai
    10. "Indian Summer" by The Kettles
    11. "東京酒吐座" by Tokyo Shoegazer
    12. "Eureka" by Otomo Yoshihide's New Jazz Quintet

    That's a codified history of peace on Earth right there. ☮!
  • UK politics, are big changes on the way?
    Having replaced the idealist Corbyn with the blandest thing on the menu, there's nowhere left to go, only variations on right. I think there's a long way down to go yet before anything like socialism has any hope of finding a way through the populist bull and Mossad disinformation.unenlightened

    I don't think that you have given enough credit to the counter-intelligence campaign that I suspect for Mossad to have created within the United Kingdom, which vaguely alludes to Pete Townshend's Lifehouse Project. It's real sad when you think about it. Being said, their website doesn't even offer you enough words to explain that the Central Intelligence Agency has been the wind beneath of the wings of both the political project of Neo-Fascism and any number of Islamic terrorist cells. It's sort of like how the website for the Directorate-General for External Security in France doesn't let you give them information if you are from the United States, though another form of machination.
  • What are you listening to right now?
    It is with a bit of bitterness and a sigh of relief that I say that I was wrong about this album. It never gets old.

    "Sing Another Song, Boys" by Leonard Cohen
  • Well...now what?

    It depends on the philosopher. Who are you trying to understand?
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank

    I am not sure if you are conceding my point or affirming your own, but am willing to leave this at whatever, as, to my general experience with this political situation, people only ever seem to become more and more convinced of what they already think about it.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank

    The infamous United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine, UN General Assembly Resolution 181 , which an Iranian friend once described to me as having been created because of that "Winston Churchill whipped out his dick" and effectively created the nation of Israel, was what was to follow the Second World War. It set up the West Bank, Gaza Strip, part of Egypt, and more or less formally recognized nation of Israel that would later result in the various political crises of which nearly all of the world has become completely fixated upon today. Though more than understanding of the motivations for the creation of a Jewish state, any number of Western powers ought to, by then, have understood all too well as to just what predicaments "nation-building" posed in territories that did have indigenous populations. Though I do think that Israel's "right to exist", and it is quite plausible that I may be accused of "new antisemitism" for saying so, is debatable, I do acknowledge that it does. There's a certain absurdity within certain left-wing intellectual circles to that the proposed resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is that the Jews should just move to Germany, which, being German, myself, I would almost be willing to endorse, as, personally, I could do without a certain degree of historical guilt, but ought to considered by any person who is serious about brining a resolution to the conflict as completely absurd. Acknowledging that the nation of Israel does exist, it seems that some other measures would need to be brought so as to bring an end to the conflict.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank

    "Economic metrics" doesn't really justify authoritarian rule to me. What I'm saying is that this narrative on the primary part of any number of ruling orders in Western Asia of Israel representing "the West" à la an appeal to some form of "anti-imperialism" is just kind of a way for them to let politics there revolve around it.

    I can't remember what meeting in the general course of the peace process it was, but there's a take from a Sweedish, I think, mediator on them in that, when they drew the borders, the Palestinians had absolutely no say in which borders were drawn. The only borders that mattered were those created by the Israelis. I don't have any illusions of their commitment to human rights. I merely recognize that an effective resolution to the crisis entails that whatever set of Israelis there are that is willing to is willing to speak with whomever it is in Fatah that is willing to establish a Palestinian and Israeli state. I hope that they, particularly the Israelis, will have the foresight to understand that such a resolution can only be temporary, as the nation of Israel is directly in the middle of what is proposed for the state of Palestine, and that an eventual one-state solution, which is to say, as there is much confusion upon this matter generated by both parties, a state with equal rights for Israelis and Palestinians, also including whoever else it is that lives there, of course, is set into motion.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    At issue - and everyone but the most propagandized can recognize this - is the present-day reproduction of violence and opression by the Israeli state that has jack shit to to with its history and everything to do with the exercise of sheer, untrammeled power, visited upon a destitue population, immeserated and left with little other than a hollowed out political vocabulary of violence. This is not about 'history' or 'culture' or 'fledgling democracries'. This is a land grab and slow burn genocide, worked upon the planet's biggest open air concentration camp. The irrelevance of the 'complexities of history' could not be more clear or more stark.StreetlightX

    While I appreciate your evocative and concerted condemnation of the killing of civilians and what is an apartheid regime, though I have certain qualms with the comparison to South Africa which Boycott Divestment Sanctions, who, by the way, does not offer a resolution to the conflict, when it is the one-state solution, though there is a certain paradox in that the way there is the two-state solution, is so very likely to invoke, and speculative and daring foray within Critical Theory, that you tout their dead in emotive support of the Palestinian cause is somewhat arbitrary. It's not really your casket to carry in the streets.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank

    The sad truth to the Palestinian situation is that almost no other government or organization in Western Asia has done anything to help their cause other than attempt to use them as a pawn.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    Palestinians can go to Jordan.frank

    I recall something like that resulting in Black September. Maybe I'm mistaken, though?



    I fail to see how a commitment to a peace process established upon something like what people generally refer to as the "'67 borders" which would eventually facilitate the creation of an Israeli and Palestinian state, including obviously whatever other ethnic minorities there are there, with equal rights for all parties involved is just simply a concession. Though there is inherent pretense to their doing so, this has more or less, at least, a somewhat popular resolution to the crisis within certain circles in Israel, among certain factions of Fatah, and proposed by a sizable portion of the international community in the fight for the recognition of rights for Palestinians and the establishment of their state. Comparing every political situation that they find themselves in to the Six Day War only plays part and parcel to the near complete and total refusal on the part of the ruling order within the Israeli government to do anything other than claim that the Palestine Liberation Organization will shoot rockets into Israel, having been given an elevated ground, if they actually go through with an effective peace process, which is absurd, as it being effective would mean that the PLO had agreed not to do just that, which they will just have to accept on faith that they won't by offering them a set of circumstances that don't seem to justify that they would.



    What can such a war of liberation entail other than the abolition of the state of Israel and the flight of Jews from there to either any number of countries in Europe or somewhere in the United States? I may not agree with that Israel should have been created as such, but I do acknowledge that it has.
  • Is It Possible to Become Actively A-Political?

    There's a certain irony to being relatively a-political, to me, in that I came to be so after being very politically engaged, aside from that what people often say of it seems like a more genuine Politics.
  • The Psychological Function of Talking About Philosophy (And Other Things In The Same Way)

    As much of a lofty goal as it may be to aspire to some impersonal "I", I am generally so inclined so as to be cognizant of my own subjectivity when engaged in discussion, particularly on online forums. My posting often has more to do with me rambling before a coherent theory comes back to me than any collective project that attempts to uncover some sort of abstract truth.

    Confusion certainly plays into my habit of talking incessantly, though.

    People put more effort into their posts here than on any other forum, by my estimation, and, so, though often abstract, I think care more about what they have to say than most. As I have a tendency to emphasize that our understanding of the world is situated by experience, even though within, let's say, an abstract Metaphysical conversation, you can say that we all have egos that we could just as soon do without, I am willing to admit that it just would be just simply impossible for a person not to care about what they written when they had done something like written over ten pages. Perhaps, you should lie and make the claim that there is a difference between criticism and critique? I don't really know. It's kind of like music criticism. I'd like to say that, even though they have four great albums which, I think, just about everyone should love, The Beatles actually have a better creative output than The Kinks when you consider the bands over their entire careers. As a Kinks fan, however, I just wouldn't ever want to change the relationship that a person has with them as such, despite what I have a near stake in getting across about the upper class in the United Kingdom.

    An explanation:

    The Beatles were a great band whom people who consider for themselves to be cultivated have kind of an aversion to celebrating, despite that they are willing to do so of The Kinks. Both The Beatles and The Kinks were British Invasion acts that began as Skiffle bands, later turned to Baroque Pop, and experimented with Psychedelia. Both of them concept albums and both of them became extraordinarily popular acts, The Beatles obviously moreso. Both bands can be criticized for having been either kind of chauvinist or somewhat dissolute and, though I often disagree, it can be argued that the decadent instrumentation on some of their albums detracts more than it adds to them at times. For all intensive purposes, we can say that they were fairly similar bands. Despite this, because The Kinks, though they were not, to my knowledge, as such, had adopted kind of an aristocratic mein, which The Beatles did not, The Kinks are considered to be a band for people with a certain degree of intelligence and The Beatles are not. What I suspect of the social ecology at Oxford is that such assumptions are intentionally created so as to retain an intelligensia of a certain class, though, were I to be fair, I should also level this critique against American Ivy League universities as well.

    I had made that non-sequitor and discovered that only I would understand it. The point being is that, even though everyone really ought to only ever talk about whatever the topic at hand is, you just can't but help but engage in the Mensa mind game of accumulating social capital and establishing a certain place for yourself in the world, and, so, will often become somehow defensive, as you do, even here, have a certain ground to gain and to lose within any debate.

    No one ever likes it when you talk about the things that no one ever talks about, though.
  • Open Conspiracy - Good or Evil?

    I never been one to accept Plato's rejection of the Athenian democracy, despite what was untenable of it, and hypothetical noocracy. Philosophers, for what they have going for them, often don't have all too great of political ideas or make for great politicians. I will avoid citing the most obvious one and point to Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's notion of absolute idealism culminating in the Prussian state as evidence of this.

    I am, perhaps, more pessimistic than you are. I think that it is quite common for people, particularly those engaged in politics, to dismiss all kinds of ideas as being somehow "idealistic" or to justify any number of concessions, however anyone would like to interpret that, as necessitated because of some form of pragmatism.

    Were Liberal democracy to genuinely be what people who care about liberty, equality, and all that could believe that it is, I would see no reason to be an Anarchist.
  • The role of conspiracy theories in the American right

    As I suffer from Psychosis, an ailment that does engender a certain degree of paranoia and mania, particularly as it relates to the analysis of information, I think that people fail to take into consideration the psychological and sociological factors that play into conspiracy theories.

    For starters, people who adhere to them are often socially isolated and alienated, often through little to no fault of their own, and, though there is an odd kind of persecution complex and delusion of heroic grandeur that comes with believing in conspiracy, I think that we ought to be willing to extend a certain degree of the benefit of the doubt to people who usually suffer from mental illness and have been marginalized by that account.

    Within various contemporary activist movements, there were any number of conspiracy theories that became enough of a cult phenomenon for most people to note. Some of them were evidently anti-Semitic, some implicitly so, and some not at all, though often characterized as such purely because of that they were conspiracy theories. Though I do think that it did create a serious problem for people to endorse what were ultimately anti-Semitic conspiracies, I found for the general tendency to disseminate things like Kymatica to be relatively benign. When a person has a fairly limited set of information to go on, is fairly isolated from society, and particularly prone to either paranoia or manic episodes, conspiracy theories, though often dizzying, can present a cohesive enough depiction of the world to construct their own interpretation of it, based off of what they haven't considered is entirely suspect evidence. Though unfortunate, I think that this is entirely understandable. Rather than assume that such people are just simply crypto-Fascists or quote unquote insane, I think that it would be better to offer them a clear and succinct depiction of a world that is just simply complex. I, for instance, would recommend that they read Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt's Empire. I would do so because of my own political inclinations, but, for whatever anyone else's are, I would suggest that there is probably a comparable text. This, at least, is what I would recommend for either the Anarchists or Libertarians that I have encountered who had taken up such ideas. Though, as I admittedly do tend to relegate my reading to the libertarian Left, I don't know what the equivalent text for the Right would be, I would bet that there is one.

    What is far more troubling to me of the alt-Right is its reliance upon thought-terminating clichés, particularly in the form of internet memes. The general proliferation of these images on a certain former home to Anonymous is not only effective, but also dangerous enough for me to be so inclined to think that Interpol should force the Federal Bureau of Investigation to shut the aforementioned website down, and, as an Anarchist, I am the sort of person who would generally like to avoid the FBI on more or less every given occasion.

    From a philosophical perspective, I think that the reliance upon such images should serve as evidence that Hannah Arendt was correct about the banality of evil. It is extraordinarily disheartening, to me, that such a low form of political praxis could be so effective.
  • Open Conspiracy - Good or Evil?

    I think that you are grossly mistaken. It is just this kind of cynicism that de facto makes me an Anarchist and not a Liberal.

    I am an Anarcho-Pacifist. Though not a single-issue voter, I do tend to put a person's general attitude towards human rights first, their likelihood of involving the nation of which I am a citizen in a war second, and the rest to follow. Were I to live in Israel, for instance, were I think that this or that Israeli politician, let's say a fairly conservative member of Yesh Atid, to be more likely to bring an effective and lasting resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, I would certainly consider voting for them over this or that Labor Zionist. The Left is operating under the assumption that such people do not exist, which is just simply false. There are people, from all walks of life, who are willing to engage in the difficult tasks, such as what has come to be referred to as "dialogue", that are requisite to make the world that we live in the kind of place where such conflicts do not occur. Such tasks ought to be considered as noble. All too often, however, within partisan politics or this or that adherence to this or that ideology, people lose sight of the purpose of Politics in general, namely to do things like facilitate conflict resolution. We fail to value what is truly important and, because of this, it becomes all too easy to rely upon an odd kind of pragmatic cynicism that, as a generalized pathology, becomes as if it were true via a form of self-fulfilling prophecy. If people are ever to elect politicians who are worthy of respect, then they will have to be willing to respect that which is ethical and that which is pertinent.
  • Open Conspiracy - Good or Evil?

    I don't know. I think you may be too concerned with electoral politics. On some level, if no one is in office, what can be done? By the same token, however, I think that we ought to consider just what we elect politicians for.

    Engaging in dialogue so as to bring a resolution to a conflict is precisely the sort of thing that I not only entrust a public official to do, but also respect. If we are to do without the difficult tasks that some characterize as being contentious in kind of a condescending appeal to a somewhat illusory mass audience in the name of winning an election, why is it that we should even vote in an election? I also wonder as to whether such a middle of the road strategy is even effective. I think that there's a strong argument to make for that voter apathy exists because of that politicians via some form of pragmatism or another, often concede too much.

    As far as political candidates go, I think that Corbyn was a good choice and don't think it was a mistake on the part of the Labour Party to choose him as a candidate. I don't live there, but I'd guess that his loss had more to do with kind of a spurious meta-narrative concerning Neo-Liberalism and the United Kingdom's longstanding alliance with the United States, one that is often never explicitly addressed, as it relates to the British exit from the European Union than it does with anything that The Daily Mail or The Telegraph has to say about Corbyn's alleged sanction of political terrorism.
  • What are you listening to right now?

    Well, to tell the truth, that Medicine song is the sort of thing that sounds really good while exceptionally stoned. What I was moreso getting at is that the music community would be better off were people willing to admit that they do occasionally listen to music because it is enjoyable to do so and agree to that it ought to be kind of fun.

    To use a more well-known example, The Who's "Baba O'Riley" is just a great song. As much as it can be kind of bothersome for a person to not have put more thought into the music that they listen to than to just simply believe that it sounds better when you play it louder, kicking back, cracking open an imported beer, turning up the volume, and letting it reign is just a good fucking time.

    I'm actually not terribly into Electrionic music and so couldn't say either way with the song you have shared.
  • Open Conspiracy - Good or Evil?

    Though now willing to take your word for that you were giving a mere analysis of how Corbyn was portrayed in the press. I do think that doing something like facilitating the Good Friday Agreement is kind of more important than winning an election.

    Edit: Oh, it posted the first one. Well, whatever.
  • What are you listening to right now?

    The Stone Roses, especially their self-titled debut, is great!

    Though kind of a hipster, myself, I've always had kind of an aversion to put people down because of their musical taste and tendency to be overly critical and denigrating of music in general. People often fail to uncover what potential kind of a lot of bands have by that account or acknowledge that just about everything sounds good in context. Medicine's Once More", for instance, could easily be characterized by its excessive use of the phaser pedal, typical of Space Rock, and not a kind of Shoegaze that is of aesthetic quality by that account. In my opinion, though, it sounds awesome.
  • Open Conspiracy - Good or Evil?

    Perhaps, I have misunderstood you, but you do seem to have found fault with Corbyn because of how he was portrayed in the press, which I don't think is fair. To me, it seems like it would have been a lot more important for a person to facilitate the Good Friday Agreement than it would for them to win an election. Granted, I should probably just take your word for that you were giving a mere analysis of his depiction in the press as you have explicitly stated.
  • What are you listening to right now?

    I just took your playing of "Hotel California" as a dig against New Order. I had thought that you were suggesting that I had chosen a mainstream independent Electronic track, typical of novice music critics who often confuse running drugs with any form of veritable left-wing ethos. Because I think that New Order was a great band, I felt the need to clarify that I don't either pretend to or harbor any delusions about running drugs and actually consider for myself to have a gift for counter-intelligence, a partial entendre of which is of a certain irony to my general life situation. You'd have to know a lot about my life and mind to really get what I was on about, aside from being well-versed in hipster discourse, and, as even engaging in conversation, if you will, as such was merely motivated by a mistake on my part, what I am suggesting is that there isn't too much of a reason for anyone to put too much thought into the above statement. I was just making kind of a lot of in-jokes because I thought that you were making an in-joke.

    Anyways, my mistake. You are right to suggest that this thread should continue as normal.

    Here's one by Jimmy Cliff.
  • Buddhist epistemology

    I feel like that didn't come off well. What I mean is that, within any spiritual, social, or political circle, that a person would think that, what to me, would be the most vexing code of conduct that a person could possibly adopt, as I am so inclined to be willing to invoke that pride is a cardinal sin, aside from that self-righteousness is just generally infuriating, as somehow requisite to survive within it is just indicative of that it isn't the a set of society that that person should even want to take part in.

    You, I think, have spoken of your experience in another thread, which I haven't read, and, so, have, perhaps, lost too much. I can understand how you could feel a need to be somewhat assertive, given your situational context. I had honestly assumed that you were a person who identifies as being male, as that is what I tend to assume of most of the users of this forum, and, so, apologize by that account.
  • How important is our reading as the foundation for philosophical explorations?

    We must have varying reading styles, as though I kind of feel like its a waste of paper, I can pay attention to anything that isn't printed on a page. I used to have an entire file cabinet of books and articles that I had printed out.

    That's a good Woody Allen joke, by the way.
  • How important is our reading as the foundation for philosophical explorations?

    Though I am loathe to cite arguments either in favor of censorship or assume that young people are made of clay, there are grains of truth, I think, to that certain forms of media do have kind of psychological effect. I found for gunning down terrorists in the desert in Call of Duty to, to some extent, reinforce negative depictions of Arabs within American media and to desensitize me to the violence of fourth-generation warfare. If you become aware of such things, however, you can kind of deprogram what is untenable of what certain kinds of media teach you to do so as to be able to enjoy it.
  • Open Conspiracy - Good or Evil?

    Despite your clearly confused interpretation of Jeremy Corbyn's relationship to the Provisional Irish Republican Army, which the citation of The Telegraph and The Daily Mail as reputable sources of information upon such matters is evidence of, I am beginning to suspect that this thread is about something other than what I originally thought that it was, and, so, apologize for my wanton diatribes by that account.

    Of the Yippies, there were a series of debates between Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, who coined the term, "Yuppie", to describe young urban professionals. Rubin suspected that, upon figuring out how to get most of the young population to consider them favorably, they ought to just make enough money to take over the world so that someone else didn't do so in their stead. Though Rubin is kind of the classical example of a sell-out and I do feel so inclined to agree with Hoffman, I do think that he had a certain point to make. Were the music industry, for instance, to have been taken over by the likes of the Yippies, I think that you would a considerable improvement within Pop Culture and even just the social ecology of, at least, American society today.

    There's also that I'm of such an inclination to think that there's just nothing wrong with being kind of a libertine. If this or that "champagne socialist" wants to live it up, what's it to me?

    As an independent musician, I've noticed a kind of poverty of Do-It-Yourself sentiment in that, without there being anyone who runs a decent establishment, there is no place for artists like me to play. In so far that a person is not abusive with their wealth, I don't have any qualms with them having it. In so far that they use it cultivate a culture that is to the general benefit of humanity, I don't see why people, in good faith, can't accept and take this well and agree that their doing so is, perhaps, somewhat requisite for the world to become a better place to live. I don't harbor any illusions of philanthropy, though.
  • Open Conspiracy - Good or Evil?

    While the sentiment you have expressed seems fairly amicable, I fail to take your meaning. I was making a clarification about Corbyn's alleged IRA contacts. He hadn't established contacts with whomever it was in either Sinn Féin or the Provisional Irish Republican Army so as to bolster support for acts of terrorism; to the contrary, he had done so in order to facilitate the peace process. I am both a Pacifist and somewhat sympathetic to the plight of those who live in Northern Ireland and, therefore, care that the peace process is effective. As, though I assume for Apollodorus's take on such matters to merely be reflective of the political ecology of the United Kingdom, and, therefore, mistaken, I think that the characterization of politicians who have facilitated dialogue with any number of parties to bring about the Good Friday Agreement as having made a tacit sanction of political terrorism to disrupt the peace process, I felt a need to make a clarification.

    I don't understand what this has to do with the Democratic Party.
  • Open Conspiracy - Good or Evil?

    Corbyn supports united Ireland, which, though the only part in Northern Ireland to do so completely is Sinn Féin, is dissimilar from supporting terrorist attacks on the part of the IRA. He has said that he has maintained links with members of Sinn Féin in order to bring a resolution to the conflict, which, though I do expect for him to be the kind of left-wing politician to occasionally give the Provisional IRA more of the benefit of the doubt than they truly deserve, I do happen to believe. Meeting with affiliates of the IRA so as to bring about the Good Friday Agreement is not the same thing as meeting them in a tacit support of their actions. He did invite Gerry Adams to promote his autobiography following the Birmingham hotel bombing, which may have been ill-timed, but Adams doesn't seem to have had anything to do with bombing, aside from that he has been instrumental within the peace process. While Sinn Féin and the various organizations that have adopted the moniker, the IRA, particularly the Provisional Irish Republican Army, are not the same organizations, what I don't doubt is that there are any number of connections between them. For a Labour politician to meet with members of Sinn Féin so as to facilitate the peace process, even if they support a united Ireland, which I do as well, is not akin to condoning terrorism and actually quite to the contrary. This notion that Conservative politicians had the in the United Kingdom that The Troubles could have been brought to an end without engaging in dialogue with members of Sinn Féin, if not particularly those connected to the IRA or even members of the IRA, themselves, is entirely absurd, if not offhandedly immature. Confliction resolution necessitates that people are willing to talk to each other. Any person is taught this after having gotten into their first fight.
  • What are you listening to right now?

    As before, it's all good. I just mistook your appreciation for The Eagles as a hipster remark, which, given what limited encounters we have had, there was no reason for me to. I've just been around too many hipsters. Milling about in certain dancehalls will do that to you. Feel free to carry on, I guess.
  • Buddhist epistemology

    Well, that'd make more sense, though chauvinism does technically refer to a certain kind of arrogance.
  • What are you listening to right now?

    I thought that you were making meta-commentary about my play of that New Order song and, so, in turn, responded with some meta-commentary, but you probably just like The Eagles. It's all good, I guess.
  • What are you listening to right now?

    It was more of a meta-commentary upon a certain set of music fans' style of reviews and kind of an in-joke about a mistaken identity. The obvious entendre and allusion to music criticism aside, I was saying something like, "I just don't know why you have confused Roy Harper with Michael Randle." Only I get any of this, though, and, so, why wouldn't you ask? I see too much in everything and wouldn't wonder too much about it all.
  • How important is our reading as the foundation for philosophical explorations?

    I have said more than once that I took no offense, though you are correct of my idiosyncrasies.
  • How important is our reading as the foundation for philosophical explorations?

    There was something odd that I did in the past, which was to leave Jefferson Airplane's Surrealistic Pillow on display in my room and unwittingly organize the rest of it to go with it. I think that a partial purpose of dreaming is to process information. I had effectively habituated myself to find myself within situations where I would find people who liked Surrealistic Pillow. In retrospect, I should have done this with John Lennon's Imagine.

    Despite that, I feel like I must have had some reason to immerse myself within the ethereal language of the aesthetic of my room and wonder if I haven't done something similar with my rapid reading.

    I think that reading at an exceptional rate lets you pick out certain concepts to create an understanding of rather quickly. It teaches you how to be quick witted and inventive. The experience, however, is somewhat manic. Though a partial symptom of the chemical composition of my brain, I found that my thoughts were often disorganized and that I had difficulty formulating any theory that even bore the semblance of coherence. It teaches you to think very quickly, but not to process information well.

    Another thing that I noticed, however, was that I did seem to somehow absorb the information, despite that I would often quickly forget what I had immediately read. I even somewhat intentionally read through a few texts like this for the sole purpose of absorbing the information as such. The latter half of Bracha L. Ettinger's The Matrixial Borderspace is a good example of this. I understood all too well that I could not understand the text with what rudimentary knowledge I had of Lacanian psychoanalytic theory about a hundred pages in, but merely finished it so as to somehow embed the information within my psyche.

    I now wonder if I didn't have some sort of reason for conditioning myself as such as well. There are certain habits that I've developed that I've both come to be skeptical of and trust that most would take to be indicative of some form of neurosis or another. I know, for instance, that, when I talk for considerable length that it is because I don't know what it is that I am trying to figure out. That I talk for considerable length, however, kind of poses a serious predicament, as it has the effect of isolating me from most of the rest of society, which, I think, is kind of a paradox, as, somehow, I'm usually ultimately trying to figure out how it is that I can feel welcome within society. Being said, the habit of rapid reading which I have since abandoned, I suspect, was not wholly indicative of madness and does bear some form of rationale. As to what that is, I can only guess.
  • Critical Race Theory, Whiteness, and Liberalism

    The assumption that I think that most people make about people who study Philosophy is that they are prone to off-topic theoretical abstraction and lacking in self-awareness. As there's a certain Western patriarchy inherent to the field, I'd say that it just comes with the territory.
  • The Last Word

    I'd bet that she has merely noted the difference between the bands, The Orwells and The Intelligence, and is now reflecting upon that, within any given situation, that a party has information about what the other party has information about, it changes the circumstances of that situation, but only up until a quaternary.

    I just wanted to start a band and be invited to a house party, though.
  • Critical Race Theory, Whiteness, and Liberalism

    Most of the discussion seems to have turned to a rather abstract philosophical exposition on slavery. I was told that people who study Philosophy are like this, but I never quite believed for that to be the case until now.
  • Critical Race Theory, Whiteness, and Liberalism

    I have wanted to provide counter examples in favor of Critical Race Theory, but unfortunately also know nothing about it.
  • “Why should I be moral?” - Does the question even make sense?

    I can't remember who it is, but someone else in this thread said the question was rather semantic, which I agree with.

    It seems like your postulating that Ethics just simply exist. I am of this supposition as well, but have no real proof of it at this current point in time.
  • “Why should I be moral?” - Does the question even make sense?

    I wasn't quite sure how you got from the drowning child example to the other examples of autonomous moral behavior. It seemed like you were almost arguing for a kind of evolutionary Sentimentalism before citing a set of examples which would either refute Sentimentalism or suggest that there was something wrong with human nature. You're also making arguments about what morality is and not what people ought to do, which I don't think you have adequately elaborated upon so as to have moved beyond Kant, Spinoza, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Socrates and Aristotle. It seems that you're suggesting that there exists autonomous moral behavior, which is innate and acquired through evolution, and acquired moral behavior, which is socially constructed, both of which you suggest are inextricably bound to the replication of a person's DNA. That seems like a sweeping scientific claim that would require further evidence, as well as that your philosophical claim about what morality is, one that is wholly apart from any suggestion as to what it ought to be, remains to either be proven or justified.

    I don't want to come down too hard on it as you have written over ten pages, but, as you have been so insistent upon people reading it in this thread, I felt like you were all too eager for any form of critique whatsoever. I would consider reading up on the Sentimentalism of David Hume that Immanuel Kant took such great efforts to refute, whatever evolutionary Psychology you can find on the subject matter, as well as even Peter Kropotkin's Mutual Aid, taking a step back, reconsidering putting forth a theory of Ethics that would be what The Origin of the Species was for both Biology and Christianity, tossing some ideas around, and writing a fuller description of your Ethical theory.

    Being said, you probably shouldn't be so insistent upon that people read it in this thread.
  • On Bleak Humor

    There are two kinds of people, to my estimation, who tend to appreciate black humor, the first being people with a general interest in something like Existentialism who would often be described as being fairly "nihilistic" and the second being people who are likely to do things like listen to Black Metal. Though not all Black Metal fans are as such, I could see an occult Neo-Fascist using the joke as kind of an implicit threat and it being disseminated within white nationalist circles. In rather arcane sets of society, Nihilism is occasionally used as a means to demoralize people who are in opposition to things like Fascism, and, so, Nihilist humor is somewhat exploitable by that account. I'm not really a Nihilist, anyways, though.