Why are global symptoms of capitalism (recessions, financializations, slow motion crashes aka inflation) subjects of speculation but the cause - capitalism itself - not?
Subjectivity is an abyss. The Real is the tension between symbolizer and symbolized as we try and fail to fill reality, which is unfinished. Theories of Everything do not come from science but from philosophy. Plato, Hegel, Lacan, McGowan, Dolar, Zizek, Freud, Fanon.
Yes. I don't take all those supplements but I have performed most of the eating/sleeping/exercise rituals because it's normal to do that and not normal to not sleep 8 hours, overeat and not exercise. There are endless new markets to be created from telling people how to be healthy that is not: every day do the same healthy things forever. I think it is sad that this implies that we should wait until we have cognitive decline before we do anything.
I am studying in Russia and one of my teachers told me that it must be so that North Americans have some disease that has made them all so large. It was after I told him two of my neighbours had tummy tucks in the same month... he did not know what that was.
Having lived in the Netherlands (Eindhoven - not even Amsterdam) I can confirm that the English spoken there was superior to the English I was raised in in rural Ontario where my teachers said "warshing" instead of washing. The Dutch have an incredibly faculty for language and I admire it.
'using' empathetic statements is the least empathetic thing ever as is "winning" people over. I claim, perhaps provocatively, that prioritizing being liked and "winning" is makes it very difficult to behave ethically. Ethical acts - things that cut through given knowledge - are not necessarily well liked.
Same. I started online in the late 80s with something called Wired Writers - we shared stories online with famous writers who critiqued us. At the time I didn't think much about it (I was a kid) but it was sponsored by an oil company. Now I think about it a lot. I went on to digitize libraries, set up university databases (Silver Platter etc). I think about how my nieces don't know that internet that we saw. It is because the form of our society does not allow decentralization. This censors the content. I think about that.
I'm glad this is hitting the mainstream. I have asthma and when I get any flu it lasts and lasts in my lungs for ages. When I was younger and did nothing to avoid it I'd basically cough brutally all winter long. Due to the pandemic I've had the longest healthy stretch (no flu of any kind or cold) in my life and it is great.
I am a woman beyond 40 and I would have kicked my 20 year old selfs ass. I have been a daily runner (1okm) since 23 and yoga/pilates but 5 years ago I started krav maga training and eating more protein ( I started eating meat ) and my speed increased by 2 miles/hour and I can do 20 marine push ups in 20 seconds and pull ups. I feel really great. I also got rid of my chronic back pain by this muscle-building method (from scoliosis) coupled with stretching (yin stuff plus my own variations). Experts I visited were useless; and women I meet of all ages tell me "i'm just lucky/special" so this study spreading around I hope inspires people because it's hard to go on walks with my peers because they need to stop for rests. What will happen when I'm 20 years older?
And I've done daily running 25 years, pilates 20 years, yoga 10 years and 5 years ago I started krav maga and it has changed my life. I think it is just a lifetime of it or something.
As a horror writer I cannot help but imagine moralizing scenarios where in the west, we vaccinate and lockdown and hoard vaccine and have immunity from vaccines, while in the Global South and places forced to reach herd immunity are realized to be immune to all variants while we must race to make and inject ourselves with boosters against each new variant. A variant arrives that is even more deadly and it wipes us out while the Global South survives better and ascends. I'm always writing stories!
Yes. The problem is, the way ideology works today is not so simple. It is not that we need to realize we have ideology aka - 'we know not what we do but we keep doing it'. It is: We know fully well what we do is meaningless/oppressive and yet keep on doing it thereby perpetuating it. The cornerstone of modern ideology today is that we all think we are free of it - the surest marker of total entrenchment. The media outlets are not evil/plotting/bought - it is far worse. They think they are free of ideology and think they are very critical of it even as they perform the service of power. There is no way for them to 'stop telling stories that only benefit their own ideological systems' because they already think they are doing that. Alongside experts and scientists we need some philosophers and thinking.
Yes. Race/gender/sexuality are classes that are fighting to be respected and co-exist. This is an upper class dream. They need to be abolished. My graduate degree is in Equity Studies from the late 90s. I was trained to write what is called "critical race studies" curriculum. We did not call it that - we called it critical theory. My work was on class intervention, specifically being working class in the Academy. My advisor, the late great Roger Simon (who was also born working class) told me there was one book on this subject and it was anecdotal. I was further told that there would be no future for me in the academy if I pursued this.
One of my favorite things about St. Petersburg is that there are no lawns - specifically the parks. They are weeds and wildflowers and let to grow (I have a friend who picks some she knows for teas and gives them to me) and then, before it gets too bad mowed down a bit. In North America when I walk my tiny dog I'm always afraid to let her go on the perfect lawns for fear of what is on there. Here we both walk freely.
I've had such bad sinusitis that I've lost my sense of smell thus taste for months at a time. It came back slowly but it was awful. The treatment I use now is nasal cortosteroids to prevent an oncoming attack. But I do not dare suggest anything of course, considering.
Agreed: moral acts are received as evil. We are attempting to 'save our democracy' and 'protect everyone' and that always only ends in one place: totalitarianism. The paradox of sustaining safety/risk is where we need to sit. But the coordination (blind and ideological; I don't think any of it is evil) of media wanting clicks, politicians being paid means we all serve The Economy. Thank you for your comments!
The worst thing you can do is go to university - 'the only place you cannot study' (Moten/Harney The Undercommons). One must be prepared to confront one's own ideology and individuation which both run counter to the university structure. For me, philosophy was a calling and my first interest in it I can remember was at nine. Truth is a whole in knowledge and paradoxes are what are to be sustained not resolved. Today, universities still teach that Hegel invented thesis/antithesis/synthesis - he did not and nowhere did he write this. His work undermines this very concept. Start with your own curiosity and move from there. Of course, if you want a job, go to university.
Yes. Thank you. "free" in the land of "unfree" in the west where we equate free to surfing the net, shopping for infinite products compartmentalizing paradoxes as we go - working ourselves to death even though we don't believe in any future.
A main reason why so many in the West have taken part in the protests against China is ideological: Tibetan Buddhism, deftly spun by the Dalai Lama, is a major point of reference of the New Age hedonist spirituality which is becoming the predominant form of ideology today. Our fascination with Tibet makes it into a mythic place upon which we project our dreams. When people mourn the loss of the authentic Tibetan way of life, they don’t care about real Tibetans: they want Tibetans to be authentically spiritual on behalf of us so we can continue with our crazy consumerism.https://mondediplo.com/2008/05/09tibet
It seems the Chinese Communists finally learned the lesson: what is the oppressive power of secret police, camps and Red Guards destroying ancient monuments, compared to the power of unbridled capitalism to undermine all traditional social relations? The Chinese are doing what the West has always done, as Brazil did in the Amazon or Russia in Siberia, and the US on its own western frontiers. (Tibet: dream and reality https://mondediplo.com/2008/05/09tibet )