December 2011
“Why are we worn out? Why do we, who start out so passionate, brave, noble,...”
– Anton Chekhov, Russian writer and playwright (via whyexistence)
“We have spent too much time in thinking, supposing that if we weigh in advance...”
– Dietrich Bonhoeffer, written while in prison for resisting the Nazis (via omchomsky)
1 tag
“Ultimately, science has never stopped churning out a reassuring scenario in...”
– Jean Baudrillard, Impossible Exchange (1999)
(via judaizers)
“What, do you imagine that I would take so much trouble and so much pleasure in...”
– Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge (via derradiokopf)
Anonymous asked: Forgive me if I'm too forward, but how old are you, and where are you from? Every time I return to your blog I am truly blow away by your intellect and cannot help but wonder what ill fitting backwater breed such a mind, and how does this young philosopher not simply slip into melancholy in the face of the rabid anti-intellectualism that permeates our culture?
“Wealth, if limits are not set for it, is great poverty.”
– Epicurus (via cultureofresistance)
5 tags
scientifictesseract asked: Because of you I decided to pick up "The Communist Manifesto. One thing that begins to bother me, however, is how a bourgeoisie could cause a society to suffer from famine due to overproduction. Could you elaborate? Sorry if my question seems stupid, it just confused me. And is science considered a "necessity" in a Communist government?
6 tags
Anonymous asked: If you own an iPad, how can you consider yourself a communist?
“I like art, and by art I mean music, poetry, sex, paintings, the human body,...”
– Hunter Reveur (via atomiclanterns)
6 tags
“A few months after Stalin’s death, strikes broke out in labour camps all...”
– Slavoj Žižek, Did Somebody Say Totalitarianism?: Five Interventions in the (Mis)Use of a Notion
“The political class’s current problem is that what is required today is not that...”
– Jean Baudrillard, Cool Memories II
2 tags
In Praise Of
This Christmas I’m grateful for the gradual erosion of family traditions that rendered it possible for me to be enjoying homemade tabbouleh and green tea right now. As I predicted, things have definitely turned up.
1 tag
Merry X-mas
For people like my father, predictability means routine, stability. I suppose that’s just one more area where we differ. Predictability, as far as I’m concerned, is neither inherently good nor bad, but I find that, more often than not, when I invoke the idea that something is “predictable,” I mean it in a negative way: “I should have seen this (shit) coming,”...
“Which of us, walking through the twilight or retracing some day in our past, has...”
– Jorge Luis Borges, Paradiso (via human-voices)
5 tags
“Here, let me quote Alain Badiou: ‘I must particularly insist that the formula “respect for the Other” has nothing to do with any serious definition of good and evil. What does respect for the Other mean when one is at war against an enemy, when one must judge the work of a mediocre artist, when science is faced with obscurantist sects? Very often it is the respect for others which is...
1 tag
fairylights:
‘Yes, everybody has colds,’ said Aunt Kate readily, ‘everybody.’ ‘They say,’ said Mary Jane, ‘we haven’t had snow like it for thirty years, and I read this morning in the newspapers that the snow is general all over Ireland.’ ‘I love the look of snow,’ said Aunt Julia sadly. ‘So do I,’ said Miss O’Callaghan. ‘I think Christmas is never really Christmas unless we have the snow on the...
“That Home” — The Cinematic...
“There are some of us who do not want to keep silent about anything. It is our...”
– Albert Camus, Resistance, Rebellion, and Death (via nekroterrorist)
8 tags
A Wicked Company Indeed
Happily I’ve finally finished the book that I’ve been reading for a few weeks now, A Wicked Company: The Forgotten Radicalism of the European Enlightenment. Simply put, the author’s premise is that modernity has lost touch with the truly radical elements on which it is founded, instead preferring to locate its origins in the decidedly moderate, sometimes even reactionary ideas of men like...
“The only position that leaves me with no cognitive dissonance is atheism. It is...”
– Christopher Hitchens (via its-london-calling)
3 tags
Melancholia
I keep opening Facebook due to some truly obscene compulsion, only to find myself confronted with litanies of ignorance, ironically self-assured displays of the profoundest stupidity, and the most disheartening manifestations of provincial thinking imaginable. Of course, I’m just being nice. The reality is much more hopeless than even that.
“In the name of what law, of what morality, of what society are they...”
– Blaise Cendrars, Moravagine (via negations)
