Aesthetic Materialism

  The answer, as usual, is both, and the answer, as usual depends on how we define the terms of the question.   Mathematics is a formal structure, or more accurately it is several formal structures - a tremendous number, in fact.  An infinite number? Some of these formal structures are very closely related and resemble each other closely.  Others are more distant. Some formal structures are close enough to each other that it can be very difficult to distinguish between them. The progress of human mathematics can be understood as humans getting better at distinguishing between formal structures. Indeed, that is what is meant by "formal": informally, we may use concepts in a loose way, which may change from one meaningful context to another, and people will still generally be able to understand each other about a great variety of topics.  Indeed, a poet might borrow terms from different areas of life and use them freely and creatively, in combinations that have ne...

  The idea that there is something wrong with thought taboos is itself a thought taboo. Aesthetics consists of nothing but thought taboos.

  In a certain sense, the Frankfurt School was more "totalitarian" - more totalizing in its ideology - than Stalin. One thing that's nice about Stalin is how stupid he was.  He misuses technical language, and uses it in contradictory ways, whatever happens to serve his purposes at any given time.  Like Trump.  In other words, he was a politician.  And politicians aren't very smart.  They don't have to be.  In fact, being smart in politics is usually a weakness.   That's why Stalin opened the door to postmodernism . The Frankfurt School was much more careful, and much more consistent, and thus more totalizing.  One thing that I admire about the Frankfurt School is that, unlike Stalin, they were not postmodernists.   For instance, Adorno has a much more totalizing vision of capitalism than Stalin ever did.  So totalizing, in fact, that you can't see any way out of it.  For Adorno, sociology and political science and ev...

  The title here is a play on Lenin's famous pamphlet, "Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism" - that is, "highest" in two senses - its apogee, its greatest accomplishment as it were, but also the high point, after which it is all goes downhill.  After the crisis of imperialism, Lenin speaks of "decadent capitalism," "moribund capitalism," that is, capitalism that is about to end.  As Lenin sees it, imperialism and its crisis foretells the approaching end of capitalism.   Similarly, after punk, we can speak of a period of moribund hipness - a zombie-like carryover; living dead hip.  Hip no longer functions as a value, but it persists, lifelessly, mindlessly, responding with knee-jerk reflexes, in much the way that you can cause a disembodied finger to twitch with the right stimulus.   1991 - "The Year Punk Broke" as the movie title put it, was thus also the death knell of hip.  The world was introduced to "Nirvana,"...

    This is a beat-em-up (or as I like to say, beat-em-off), with elements of an action RPG. You can pick either single-player mode or multi-player mode.  The following will assume single-player mode (story mode). At the beginning of the game, you do some character customization.  You choose a basic body shape, which can be in a variety of formats.  The default is a pretty feminine-looking woman, but you could also choose a variety of female body shapes, a variety of male body shapes, and quite a few nonbinary or intersex body shapes.  You can also, to some degree, pick the height, adjust general thinness or thickness, and some other slight bodily adjustments.  Nonetheless, at this point, your character will look like a normal person, and your choices are somewhat limited.  You also have much greater flexibility and room for creativity and individuality in terms of the design of the face.  You have a few voices to choose from.  You have ...