metonymy4u

Talking about the reified concepts of experience (noumena) does not always (or often) make me want to stop speaking. Rather it alerts me to the need for increased awareness…of dialectics.

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When we blast our way all over the world trumpeting the coming of democracy and freedom, I think we forget the long history of cruelty that forms the background of our actions. I mean the cruelty of Rome and of Persia, of Aztec and Inca, of the Muslim Conquista and the Christian Re-conquista, thence the European invasion and the European Shoah, now the Palestinian Shoah. It is tempting indeed to read all of these cruelties as the fate of humanity written in the language of blood. But such a story ends only in more blood, it seems. Are we not due for another story?

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I think that the problem with racism is the problem of cruelty, which has been with us as long as we can remember. But far from seeing it as an essential feature of us, I think we need to think differently. If we re-describe cruelties not as necessary parts of our human landscape, but rather each as single events with unique beginnings and endings, the opportunity presents itself over and over again to choose another path. The antidote to cruelty, contrary to our classical liberal tradition, thus lies not in a byproduct of power, but in an understanding of habit. And we may look then, not to fear, but to mindful choice, to lead us to a new relationship with one another.

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One of the key developments in the vocabulary that we call science was to re-learn a connection between heaven and earth. We had to re-ascend Olympus, awaken the pagan gods (really no more than immortal human personalities) and collapse the catholic notion of separation and substance, amplified for a thousand years by an intervening monotheism.

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If truth is what corresponds to reality, then certain things must be true (corresponding to reality) such as:

The law of identity (LOI). “Things are what they are.”
The law of non-contradiction (LNC). “Things are not what they are not.”
I think, therefore I am (the cogito). “I am a thinking substance.”

If everything is what it is and nothing else (LOI + LNC) then, beyond a certain point, everything is indivisible. Because if it were divisible, it would be something other than what it is. So let’s divide everything to the point where LOI + LNC are applicable. This also means that things at this level are unchangeable, since to change would violate LOI + LNC. Which means that change is not truth, since it does not correspond to reality. So when we see change, something changing from red to green or from stationary to moving, we are not seeing truth. Change is illusion. But we see change all the time. So we see illusion all the time. So we live in untruth. So we live in illusion. So when I believe myself thinking, that is illusion, because my thoughts often change, and change is an illusion. So I don’t think. So I am not. (LOI + LNC + cogito).

Works for me!

🙂

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Much art trades on mystery and dissembling. In part I think because we are often trying to speak the unspeakable, which is quite often also the unpopular. As a result, many speakers have been ignored, locked up or killed.

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Are we free? Is there a god? Do we have souls? Did the universe begin? How does life emerge from non-life? Are science and religion compatible? We can choose to stay with these questions or move more quickly to where they usually lead me, the question of whether the world, apart from our speaking, is absolute or changing? Where I end up is speechless, non-knowing, the agnostic. But that does not mean the lifeless, the skeptic, the nihilist. I don’t think the world vanishes because I can’t finally verbalize it. Why would I want that? Shall I throw something away, if it feels different than what I expected?

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In a world for which the nihilistic myth of modernity means “do nothing, you don’t matter,” thinking itself is an act of political rebellion. Refusing to support the piety of the state. Corrupting the youth with new beliefs. “Time is how you spend your love” said Nick Laird.

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What would the world be like without our current relationship to desire? Fearful for a time I suspect. But beyond…..?

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Saying that I’m a skeptic about thoughts and not about the world does not mean that I think thoughts determine the world. Nor do I think the world is the way I think it. Actually, I don’t think I think the world at all.

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