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Neon Genesis Evangelion

    [Originally posted on facebook messenger, 8/15/2019] Okay... I read a bunch of stuff on the internet, and took notes. Here they are, if you’re interested.    Somewhere in the galaxy, there was, or is, intelligent life known as the “First Ancestral Race” (FAR). The FAR sent seeds, in vessels known as “moons”, to planets all across the galaxy. There were (at least) 2 types of seeds: the Fruit of Life, and the Fruit of Knowledge, and both types were never supposed to land on the same planet, for fear that the beings that arose from those seeds would be as powerful as the FAR (that is, more or less god-like, from our perspective).  4 billion years ago, there was an event known as the “First Impact”. One of the seeds, known as the “black moon” smashed into, and embedded itself into, the Earth, knocking enormous amounts of debris loose, which became the Earth’s moon (the one we call “the moon”). It also created an empty space inside the Earth, directly under...
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My friend Evan was complaining about postmodernism.  I said, Oh, don't worry, postmodernism was a fad, but that fad is pretty much over now.  Culture has moved on.  He said that I should contact him and give him information about how we are moving beyond postmodernism.  So here is my response to Evan. Before I get started, I just want to note that I've written (a LOT) on this topic before, so here's some links to some other things I've written.  Some of these are finished, some are not finished. I'm opposed to postmodernism.  Here's why:  " Why I am not a postmodernist " - better yet, " Why Postmodernism is Annoying ".  I try to clarify my position here: Anti-Postmodernism .  I'm trying to clarify it, to distinguish my own attitude from those of certain other people who complain about postmodernism - here: " Postmodernism sucks, but it doesn't suck as much as you think it does. "  If you want the short version, here's ...
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Hyperinformation

The era from somewhere around 1980 until at least 2008, or maybe as late as 2020, in the United States, and probably in many other countries as well, could be described as having a liberal cultured that was hyperinformed : paralyzed by too much information.  It wasn't just that we felt an "incredulity towards all metanarratives" - even if we had been credulous, we wouldn't have been able to apply metanarratives even if we wanted to.  The phrase "infodumping," which was coined in 1978, is telling.  So much information was dumped on us that it became impossible to process it, to categorize it, to feel anything about it, or to do anything about it.  We became numb, jaded, depoliticized, more thoroughly alienated, apathetic.  We were so overwhelmed that it didn't even feel like being overwhelmed anymore - it ceased to have any emotional, rational, or conscious impact on us whatsoever.  We became mere passive spectators, information flowing at us from all dir...
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The State is Depoliticizing

  As Yudkowsky says, "Politics is the mind killer."  Holding back scientific progress, technological innovation, economic growth, math, philosophy, poetry, literature, art, music, entertainment and who knows what else, was that fact that for millions of years, humans and our pre-human ancestors had to spend a huge portion of our time and energy fighting against neighboring tribes and arguing (and sometimes fighting) within our own tribe to gain power in order to compete for mates, resources, etc..  It was not fun.   Social groups grew and split, grew and split, perhaps hovering around Dunbar's number. But eventually, larger social networks formed - larger systems of power and obligation.  The effect is depoliticizing - the larger one's group is, the less of a chance any one individual has of making any substantive difference in collective decision making, and so it becomes less of a worthwhile use of one's time and energy to engage in politics.  Eventu...
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In a way, I believe in the exact opposite of what Georges Sorel believed.  Not that Sorel was a stupid person - far from it.  He was smart, and interesting, and worth reading.  (I also don't agree with the people who blame fascism on Sorel.  Yes, you can "trace ideas back" to him - but so long as you are "tracing ideas back," you are engaging in an idealist theory of history, not a materialist one.  And you're forgetting that history is often dialectical, so that authoritarian ideas can arise from anti-authoritarian ones - and vice-versa.)  Sorel was correct that modern people believe in "myths".  But my own position happens to be the opposite of Sorel's. Sorel thought that the concept of the general strike was a myth, a myth that workers could organize around, whereas real political change came from politicians ruthlessly using violence to achieve their ends.   Here's why I'm skeptical: does the general strike work as a myth?  Look thr...
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Xenosaga

  Okay, just like I did after we watched Neon Genesis Evangelion , I'm going to try to look up and summarize the lore of Xenosaga.   In the following, I'll put contextual information from real life in brackets [ ] , and bold , and the rest will be in-game narrative.   [In 1930, the great physicist Wolfgang Pauli, one of the founders of quantum physics, who made many important discoveries, including the concept of "spin" and the Pauli Exclusion Principle, had a personal crisis and sank into deep depression. He sought therapy in 1932, and it just so happened that his analyst was none other than the famous psychoanalyst, Carl Jung. The therapy was successful, Pauli felt much better, and the two men hit it off. Not only did they respect each other, but they started bouncing ideas off of each other, mostly through letters, and eventually developed a whole new theory of the universe together, which was eventually published as a book, "Atom and Archetype...
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