Archive for year 2011
A Christmas Shadow
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Is there not a ‘dark side’ to the ‘cleansing of Ebenezer Scrooge’ in Charles Dickens ‘A Christmas Carol’? Scrooge, the ‘bad boss’ transforms into Scrooge the ‘good boss’, persuading us that ‘goodness’ and ‘badness’ are absolutes that fountain forth from the interior of individuals understood as ‘sovereign powers’ or ‘things-in-themselves’. Surely the ‘good action’ of the individual is, as Nietzsche says, a ‘mediocre truth’ that conceals a ‘shadow’ aspect. (more…)
The ‘Experiential Reality’ Beneath the ‘Language Game Illusion’
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Introduction: Behaviours can be ‘situationally animated’ and they can be ‘language animated’. When we get together to try to understand ‘the world dynamic’, we do so using synthetic realities constructed with ‘words-as-subjects’ to depict the ‘animating agencies’. In the above graphic, situation animated dynamics ‘actually’ shape the boundaries of ‘states’. But once we have a ‘name’ for the state, we can use that word, as if it were a real ‘thing-in-itself’; i.e. as the fixed subject of predicative behaviour. ‘Subject animated dynamics’ are clearly not the same as ‘situation animated dynamics’. The problems that arise when we put our psycho-LOGICAL view of the former into an unnatural precedence over our experience of the latter are increasingly manifest in today’s society. (more…)
Figure and Ground: Dynamic Version
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The phenomena of figure and ground, wherein we can extract meaning from a static array of shapes by bringing a subset of those shapes or ‘spatial-relations’ into connection in our minds so that they form a familiar, recognizable pattern, is usually exemplified by a black and white silhouette such as the above.
The point ‘made’ is that the ‘figure’ is not ‘innate’ in what we are looking at, but is something that we fabricate with our mind. That point is underscored by the fact that we can see this pattern either as a black figure on a white ground (a saxaphone player) or as a white figure on a black background (a woman’s face). (more…)
Reconciling Experience and Thought
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Reconciling our experiencing of inclusion in a transforming space with our thoughts of ‘what things do’
Please read the following ‘preparatory’ comment before watching the video-clip … (more…)
The Followers of the Democratic State
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“People do not live in the state” … “The state lives in the people” – Gustav Landauer
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The recipe for constructing a democratic state is as follows; (more…)
Who Am I? Quiz : How Authoritarian/Anarchist Are You?
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S’il vous plait, … answer the following questions, do a quick review and modify your answers as necessary to maximize overall consistency, and then view your Authoritarian/Anarchist profile using the key at the end of the quiz.
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1. Do you believe the relationship between organisms and the earth’s evolving biosphere is; (more…)
Anarchism: The Return of the Übermensch
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Introduction/overview:
For years I have been inquiring into the source of social dysfunction which my intuition informs me, and I know I am not alone in this, … is ‘unnatural’ and arises from some poorly chosen ‘assumptions’ in our acculturated thinking. (more…)
9/11 Remembrance and; ‘Those Who Walk Against the Wind’
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On September 11th, 2002, the first anniversary of 9/11, the CBC aired a Peter Mansbridge interview with Prime Minister Jean Chrétien. The comments were republished in Canada and around the world under such titles as “PM Says US Attitude Helped Fuel Sept. 11” (Toronto Globe and Mail, 9/11/02), and, “The Power to Humiliate” (Sidney Morning Herald, 9/17/02). (more…)
Conflicting Realities: Immigrant and Indigenous
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After Columbus ‘discovered’ America [formerly known as ‘Turtle Island’], waves of colonizing European immigrants moved westward from ‘the Old Country’ and began the process of constructing the New World. There were many new things that they had to deal with including grizzly bears, poisonous snakes and the troublesome aboriginals that infested the forests and plains. The knowledge and technology of the immigrants easily overwhelmed resistance from the indigenous ‘fauna’ including the indigenous aboriginal peoples.
In the historical narratives that have been written about this era, those written by the immigrants eulogized the ‘creation of a New World’ while those written by the indigenous peoples spoke of the contamination and degeneration of a superior world, by waves of destructive rodent-like Europeans. (more…)
Ideas: Deconstructions of experience that humour mocks and politics holds us captive to
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Rochus Misch recounts his boss’s humour in his book (The Last Witness); (more…)
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