“The Real You” Alan Watts (remixed by Colorpulse)
Hegel and Marx
In this program, contemporary philosopher Peter Singer discusses rational Hegelian philosophy, and the historicism and organicism at its root. Hegel’s theories of absolute idealism and of a dialectic, emphasize history in their development of a model of reality. His concept of this reality as ultimately spiritual, and of philosophy as organic and constantly changing, is examined. The theories of Karl Marx are discussed as essentially Hegelian, but a practical economic spin.
“In the liner notes to Stop Making Sense, Talking Heads frontman David Byrne wrote “Nuclear weapons could wipe out life on Earth, if used properly.” The brilliant fake naivety of this seemingly obvious remark should make us pause. We have indeed created things that we can hardly understand, let alone control, let alone make sensible political decisions about. Sometimes it’s good to have new words for these things, to remind you of how mind-blowing they are. So I’m going to introduce a new term: hyperobjects. Hyperobjects are phenomena such as radioactive materials and global warming. Hyperobjects stretch our ideas of time and space, since they far outlast most human time scales, or they’re massively distributed in terrestrial space and so are unavailable to immediate experience. In this sense, hyperobjects are like those tubes of toothpaste that say they contain 10% extra: there’s more to hyperobjects than ordinary objects…
Repeat after me: climate is not weather. It’s sort of like how momentum is not velocity. If you’re tied to a train track, and a train is coming towards you with constant momentum, it doesn’t matter if it slows down—you will still be dead.
You can’t see climate, but it’s more real than wet stuff under your boots. This sudden turnaround has a weird effect on all of us. Think of those conversations you can’t have any more with strangers, about the weather. You can’t have them because at some point one of you mentions global warming, or the conversation trails off into an awkward silence (because of global warming), or, heaven help you, the other guy says “See! This global warming thing is a crock!” The conversation loses its redundancy, its nice, comfy, just-passing-the-time-of-day feel.
This loss is part of a more general loss of a sense of a neutral background against which human events can become meaningful. In a globalized world of hyperobjects, there’s no background anymore—and so there’s no foreground (you have to have one to have the other). This sudden loss of meaningfulness is dreamt up in countless sci-fi fantasies—our hero arrives at the 13th Floor, only to find that “reality” outside the window has become a horrifyingly blank zone of uniform gray… The realization of climate change is just as disturbing. The meaningless background of weather, our everyday experience of the world, now means something. Climate change represents the possibility that the cycles and repetitions we come to depend on for our sense of stability and place in the world may be the harbingers of cataclysmic change.
”
Beautiful Soul Syndrome: Towards a Dark Ecology. Environmentalism is in danger of impeding a truly ecological view. Timothy Morton, author of Ecology without Nature, explains how.
The attitude of the boycotter is that she or he has exited consumerism, but one could just as easily claim that this attitude is itself a form of consumerism, as I’ve just argued. It’s a performance of a certain style of aesthetic judgment. So thinking that you’ve exited consumerism might be the most quintessentially consumerist attitude of all…
— Timothy Morton, Beautiful Soul Syndrome
“How far my efforts agree with those of other philosophers I will not decide. Indeed what I have here written makes no claim to novelty in points of detail; and therefore I give no sources, because it is indifferent to me whether what I have thought has already been thought before me by another.” - Ludwig Wittgenstein”
Robert Anton Wilson - Maybe Logic
Guerrilla ontologist. Psychedelic magickian. Outer head of the Illuminati. Quantum psychologist. Sit-down comic/philosopher. Discordian Pope. Whatever the label and rank, Robert Anton Wilson is undeniably one of the foundations of 21th Century Western counterculture. Maybe Logic - The Lives and Ideas of Robert Anton Wilson is a cinematic alchemy that conjures it all together in a hilarious and mind-bending journey guaranteed to increase your brain size 2 - 3 inches! From the water coolers and staff meetings of Playboy and the earth-shattering transmission of the Illuminatus! Trilogy, to fire-breathing senior citizen and Taoist sage, Robert Anton Wilson is a man who has passed through the trials of chapel perilous and found himself on wondrous ground where nothing is for certain, even the treasured companionship of a six-foot-tall white rabbit. Featuring RAW video spanning 25 years and the best of over 100 hours of footage thoroughly tweaked, transmuted and regenerated, Maybe Logic follows a reality labyrinth which leads through the hollows of human perception to the vast star fields of Sirius where we find one man alone, joyfully accepting his status as Damned Old Crank and Cosmic Schmuck. Beaming with insight, frustration, compassion, and unshakable optimism, the ever-open eye of Robert Anton Wilson penetrates human illusions exposing the mathematical probabilities and spooky synchronicities of the 8 dimensions of his Universe.
What you resist persist - Carl Yung (via bureaulamp123)
Pet peeve: people who believe in “the Secret”. The problem with focusing on only one side is that you give power to its opposite. That goes both ways. Positivity casts a shadow. It stalks the ignorant. “What you resist persists” is a quote by Carl Jung often misused by “the Secret” peddlers to support their philosophy. There can be no front without a back. The true Secret is the two, seemly opposites, are really one. When you realize they are one then you can rise above both.
Jesus said to them, “When you make the two one, and when you
make the inside like the outside and the outside like the inside,
and the above like the below, and when you make the male and the
female one and the same, so that the male not be male nor the
female female; and when you fashion eyes in the place of an eye,
and a hand in place of a hand, and a foot in place of a foot, and
a likeness in place of a likeness; then will you enter [the
Kingdom].” — From the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas
Pet peeve #2: preachy diatribes
