A Shot in the Arm

lolz

2006-06-09T16:54:00.000-04:00

wonder what lolz is up to right now

Sartre is cooler than you say he is...

2006-06-01T17:39:00.000-04:00

At Oglethorpe, it was given that some philosophers didn't "make the team", regardless of your personal experience with the philosopher, and in most cases, regardless of any reading of that philosopher at all.

Jean-Paul Sartre probably gets more undeserved criticism than anyone by undereducated Philosophy students. (Not presuming I would know, but I have read a fair amount of Sartre as well as his critics and have listened to many lectures on him and his philosophy.)

I do believe that a lot of post-modern thinkers have really transcended and countered (fairly) ideas Sartre brought forward in "Being and Nothingness", but it should not be to discredit his crucial role in modern Philosophy's fascination with "exisentialism" (or other branches of Philosophy that seek the questions the questions of existence as it relates to an individual experience.)

All that aside, Sartre was a beautiful writer, and I wanted to share with you an excerpt of his Preface to Franz Fanon's "The Wretched of the Earth". This was Fanon's masterpiece, and dealt primarily with the unlawful invasion by the Europeans upon Africa. The book was popular and controversial for his assertion that violence was a necessary pre-condition to solve the problems of his country.

Relate this to our current situation in the Middle East however you will.

From Colonialism and Neo-colonialism, an essay on The Wretched of the Earth. (pg 147)

"They will benefit from reading Fanon; this irrepressible violence, as he demonstrates perfectly, is not an absurd storm, nor the resurrection of savage instincts, nor even an effect of resenment: it is no less than man reconstructing himself. We knew this truth, I think, but we have forgotten it. No gentleness can efface the marks of violence; it is violence alone that can destroy them. And the colonized cure themselves of the colonial neurosis by driving out the colon with weapons. When their rage explodes, they recover their lost transparency, they know themselves in the same measure as they create themselves; from afar, we regard their war as the triumph of barbarism; but it leads by itself to progressive emancipation of the fighters, it progressively liquidates the colonial darkness within and outside them. Once it starts, it is merciless.

One must remain terrified or become terrible; that is to say abandon oneself to the disassociations of a falsified life or conquer native unity. When the peasants pick up guns, the old myths pale, prohibitions are one by one overturned: the fighters' weapons are their humanity. For, at this first stage of the revolt, they have to kill: to shoot down a European is to kill two birds with one stone, doing away with oppressor and opressed at the same time: what remainds is a dead man and a free man; the survivor, for the first time, feels national soil under his feet.At this instant, the nation does not desert him: it is found wherever he goes, wherever he is - never any further away, it merges with his freedom."

----------------------

I tend to agree with Fanon. I don't know exactly how he would feel about our current affairs in Iraq or other countries, because the circumstances are different in many ways. Anyone who has read 'The Wretched of the Earth' should comment on this though.

For those who don't know Fanon, you really should. He led an incredibly interesting life. There was great turmoil surrounding his death. It has been said he never wished to visit the United States, but fell so ill with cancer that he was sent to the States for treatment against his own wishes. Most accounts of his death insinuate, or directly state, that he was treated poorly, and often beaten or mistreated in America because of his status as a common enemy of the country. He died in Washington D.C. in 1961.

2006-05-09T17:03:00.000-04:00

Jason's D.H. Lawrence post inspired me to consult Herr Nietzsche for some aphorisms I enjoy.

"The attraction of knowledge would be small if one did not have to overcome so much shame on the way."

"Half-knowledge is more victorious than whole knowledge: it understands things as being more simple than they are and this renders its opinions more easily intelligible and more convincing." I can't think of a quote that pertains more to those of us who attended a liberal arts university. I feel this is definitely a critique by Nietzsche. Just from my basic understanding of his writing, I don't think he supports this idea as much as he says it is true. Does anyone disagree?

"Christianity gave Eros poison to drink: he did not die of it but degenerated -- into a vice."

"One is twice as glad to leap after a man who has fallen into the water when there are people present who dare not do so."

"Man is very well defended against himself, against being reconnoitred and besieged by himself, he is usually able to perceive of himself only his outer walls. The actual fortress is inaccessible, even invisible to him, unless his friends and enemies play the traitor and conduct him in by a secret path."

"The great epochs of our life come when we gain the courage to rechristen our evil as what is best in us."

"...the just argument against a stupid head is a clenched fist."

"Sometimes in the course of conversation the sound of our own voice disconcerts us and misleads us into making assertions which in no way correspond to our opinions."

"To divine in advance how ordinary people will act one has to assume that, when they are in an unpleasant situation, they always seek to get out of it with the smallest expenditure of intelligence."

"We talk so abstractly about poetry, because we are all bad poets."

"Perhaps truth is a woman who has reasons for not letting us see her reasons?"

"But you will have gathered what I am driving at, namely, that it is still a metaphysical faith upon which our faith in science rests—that even we seekers after knowledge today, we godless anti-metaphysicians still take our fire, too, from the flame lit by a faith that is thousands of years old, that Christian faith which was also the faith of Plato, that God is the truth, that truth is divine. —But what if this should become more and more incredible, if nothing should prove to be divine any more unless it were error, blindness, the lie—if God himself should prove to be our most enduring lie?—"

"...Some men are born posthumously."

Writing sample...

2006-05-09T12:49:00.000-04:00

Been writing some dialogue lately, maybe so that I can build up inspiration for a screenplay. Here's a short excerpt. Sorry if you have trouble following the quick dialogue without proper announcment of speaker, thats just how I've been doing it.

"Well, wasn't you s'posed to tell me something?"
"Yes, but I forget what it was."
"Bubs. You're to tell me all sorts of things."
"That is true."
"It will end with me telling you."
"That would be better."
"How do you make your way in this world?"
"Is that what you call it? I don't know, really. Suppose last month I made three thousand dollars-less capital gain."
"How did you get through the war without gettin' killed?"
"It was not through any doing of yours."
"Anh anh anh. And how do you appear so reasonable to Mother?"
"I feel reasonable with her."
"She thinks you're one of her kind."
"What kind is that?"
"A proper type. Bubs thinks you're a go-getter. But you don't fool me."
"You know."
"Yes."
"What kind?"
"You're like me, but worse. Much worse."

Lies and Liars and You

2006-05-05T16:30:00.000-04:00

WHY YOU SHOULD NEVER LIE (link)

Laken got interested in marketing a new technology for lie detection when he heard about the number of prisoners being held without charges at the US base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. "If these detainees have information we haven't been able to extract that could prevent another 9/11, I think most Americans would agree that we should be doing whatever it takes to extract it," he says. "On the other hand, if they have no information, detaining them is a gross violation of human rights.

It's hilarious how people are when it comes to their "rights as human beings". If the man was guilty then no harm no foul? Except we don't know for sure if he is guilty! Isn't this exactly why rights are for everyone and aren't offered retroactively and exclusively to the innocent? If it's a violation of an innocent man's rights, wouldn't it also be for the guilty? Seeing that we have no a priori knowledge of their guilt? It's also hilarious that this idiot presupposed that most Americans support this absurd method of information extraction (torture). Have we reached a point where that is true? I wouldn't think so. Or have we?

Later on in the article there is a statistic claimong a neuroscientist used a card bluffing experiment to determine that he was able to detect lying near 95% of the time.

Doesn't a lie detector just give us information relating to yes/no questions? And then you become their subject. You could (and will) be detained without legal representation, then asked questions until they extort everything that you know. It would never happen to you nor I of course, it would just be used for the bad guys, you know, the "terrorists". Of course they wouldn't use it on the rest of us. Uh huh. Never....

blolgfest

2006-05-04T11:44:00.000-04:00

Greetings hoopleheads.

I made a blog. I suppose this will be primarily for me to discuss art and music, so I doubt I will be doing much creative thinking or anything of that sort.

I do hope to get worthwhile discussion on art and music that I find neat.

Also, I plan to bitch about poker sometimes here. Deal with it.