Aesthetic Materialism

posted on facebook, July 19, 2013 One thing that I find interesting is the old saying, "The left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing." For a long time when I heard this, I thought it was a reproach (actually I think the first time I heard this phrase was in reference to the Soviet Union, of all things, and their - to the speaker - incoherent foreign policy), usually meaning that a group of people was badly organized. It looks like the "idiom finder" of thefreedictionary.com agrees with this interpretation, since they use, as an example of correct usage, "It was evident that the left hand did not know what the right hand was doing when we planned our potluck dinner party, since everyone brought dessert and no one brought a main dish."    But if you go back to the origin of this phrase, it's Jesus speaking, in Matthew, Chapter 6: "...when thou doest alms (works), let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth." It's...

 Posted on facebook, June 10, 2013 If you think Old Testament religion, with its emphasis on law (or more accurately, on the covenant), its violence, its mysogyny, its ethnocentrism, etc., is "wrong," then you haven't fully realized Jesus's "Judge not" in all its radicality. Judge not. Do not judge. Have no judgment. Maybe the Old Testament is right; maybe it is wrong; do not judge it to be either.   Ayn Rand called this a "moral blank check," and thought it was absolutely morally bankrupt. She wished to replace it with a new motto: "Judge, and prepare to be judged." If you think she's wrong, then you haven't fully realized Jesus's "Judge not" in all its radicality. Judge not. Do not judge what is right and wrong. Don't even try.    And when the Westboro Baptist Church seems to be judging people, saying "God Hates Fags" and so on, if this seems like hypocrisy to you, don't judge. Don't...

  Everyone is a nationalist.  No one is a nationalist.  Nationalism is a scam. More precisely, nationalism is complicity between two different kinds of scams.  There are two distinct scams called nationalism, being pulled by two different kinds of scam artists. First of all, nationalism is a scam being pulled by the ruling class.  The ruling class is inherently international and has absolutely no allegiance to any nation.  The workers they exploit are also international, but the international ruling class uses the ideology of nationalism to distract, confuse, and misdirect the workers so that they can maintain their exploitation. (We see an example of this kind of fake "nationalism" now, in the Trump administration.  The Trump administration likes to claim to be nationalist, but this is a very shallow lie, as can be seen in, for instance, in the fact that they are quickly installing a Qatari Air Force facility in Idaho, after the Qatari government "don...

The question: What is the relation between romanticism and the philosophy of J.-J. Rousseau? - it sounds like a very simple question, but the more one considers it, the more difficult it becomes. I don't have an answer.  Every attempt I can think of as a potential answer to that question fails. It's not even that I think that Rousseau is that profound or great of a thinker.  I think he's... okay.  But he's not in my personal pantheon of great thinkers. But the difficulty of thinking about Rousseau comes in retrospect.  It's difficult for us, as (post?-)Romantic thinkers, to try to come to terms with Rousseau's philosophy.  That's what makes Rousseau worth digging into.  It's not about him.  It's about us.  I can think of several potential answers to the question: What is the relation between romanticism and the philosophy of J.-J. Rousseau, and they're all wrong. In fact, I would say that each attempt to answer this question corresponds to a ...

If, 20 years ago, archeologists uncovered a tablet and scholars translated the message written thereon, and it read as follows, the headlines would have been "Scientists Uncover Evidence of Ancient Repressive Caste-Based Society"  

  The Artful Dodger One of the most important skills for the leader of a movement to develop is what I call the poetic dodge.  Human natural languages, such as English, Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, and so on, are profoundly, and perhaps ineluctably, polysemous.  That is to say, there are ambiguities.  There is something farcical about humans: even if we try to specify exactly what we mean, still people will find a way to misinterpret us.  And the reverse is true, as well: even if we try as hard as we can to understand each other, the closer we get to that which is signified, the more it will slip away.  Even when both the speaker and the listener, the author and the reader, are operating on purely good faith, the mystery persists.  Nor does this gap only appear between people: even when we are alone, the gap is there.  I do not fully understand myself.  Neither do you. If you use everyday vocabulary, precisely because these words are used every...