Aesthetic Materialism

When I get in a certain mood sometimes, I start to consider that maybe utilitarianism is a symptom of a deeper issue, which is the failure to recognize the costs of rational choice theory and the benefits of irrationality.  We fail to see the costs of cost/benefit analysis. Then again, maybe not.  That would assume that utilitarianism is rational, which it isn't.

    I seek the proletariat.  Where is the proletariat?   Have they got lost?  Did they lose their way, like children?  Or are they hiding?  Have they gone on a voyage?  Are they afraid of us?  No. Where is the proletariat?  I will tell you.  We have killed them - you and I.  All of us are their murderers.   But how could we do this?  How did we wipe away the horizon?  What were we doing when we unchained the Earth from the Sun?  Where are we moving, now?  Away from all suns?  Are we not plunging continually?  Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions?  Is there still any up or down?  Are we not straying, as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space?  Has it not become colder?  Is not night continually closing in on us?  Do we hear the gravediggers who are burying the proletariat?  The proletariat is dead.  The proletariat remains dead.  And we have killed them. How shall we comfort ourselves, we murderers of all murderers?  What was most valuable and mi

If I wanted to reduce my entire political program to a single sentence, it would be this: I'm fighting to strengthen institutions, to make them more stable, more durable, more effective, more sustainable, more adaptable, more flexible, more limber, more efficient, more lively, and more fun, by making them more democratic, more responsive, more open, freer, with a deeper commitment to the rights of people they involve and affect. Institutions are social relations, and I seek to foster and strengthen these relationships.  The most important kind of institution, as Aristotle knew well, is friendship.  We can hope for more and better friendships. I recognize that not all institutions will survive, but I predict, or at least I hope, and I will work towards making it that those institutions that do survive will be the stronger, more sustainable, more flexible, more fun, more democratic institutions that provide greater rights and freedom.  I also think they will be institutions that are

  RULES: 1. 99% of everything that has ever happened in history, happened by accident. 2. Even most of those things that happened because someone wanted them to happen, didn't go according to plan. 3. If anything ever happened to go the way it was planned, this is just a coincidence.

      My first instinct is to say, as Wittgenstein once did, "It is indifferent to me whether what I have thought  has already been thought before me by another."  Perhaps I mean something different by this than Wittgenstein did, but that's a matter of indifference to me, as well.  But apparently it is not a matter of indifference to other people.  Undoubtedly this answer sounds evasive to some people, so, to my inquisitors, I'll say, I am not now, nor have I ever been, a member of any communist party.     Why isn't it a matter of indifference?  Well, of course, because people want to know whether someone is a Marxist so that they know whether or not to censor them and exclude them.  Flip on the television, or the radio, and turn to any news channel.  They will discuss today's events, and then they will say, "Here to talk with us about this is..." and they will introduce experts and analysts, either in a one-on-one interview, or in a panel