Aesthetic Materialism

Nationalism is the ur-romanticism.  It had several offshoots, including internationalism and individualsm, both of which are also mostly forms of romanticism. Of course, religion is even older than nationalism.  But that's a complicated story that I won't get into right now.   

Non-Cartesian Meditations "I think therefore I am"? - not quite.  After one doubts everything, there is indeed one truth remaining, but "I think therefore I am" ain't it.  It is clear that, even if everything is an illusion, nonetheless, this illusion is being perceived.  But this proves nothing that about the perceiver, or even that there is one, and not several.   To update Descartes' metaphors a bit, we could imagine that everything we're aware of is part of a simulation.  To make the metaphors a little too contemporary, we could imagine that everything is part of some kind of virtual reality game.  (I'm sure that vocabulary will sound hokey and old fashioned in a few years.)   But I want to be very clear, up front, and specify: do I think that the universe is an illusion, and we (or rather I) am merely living in a simulation?  No, I do not.  I think the universe is real.  I do not think I'm in a simulation.  All I'm sa...

 Sometimes some things are better than other things.

    Lenin was exactly wrong: rather than the crisis of imperialism (which reached its apogee in the outbreak of World War I) marking the death of capitalism, after which only "moribund" capitalism remained, the reverse was true.  The crisis of imperialism in 1914 marked the death of the proletarian movement.  Lenin was in denial about that and so he spun up a wonderful fantasy story that capitalism was about to end.  But this was pure delusion on his part.

    [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...

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 ...