I’m a Canadian living in England and traveling Europe. Likes: theoretical bakery, documentary film making, magicians. Dislikes: Internet celebrities, the roof of my mouth after eating Captain Crunch, ersatz.
REPORTER: How do you answer the charge that you’re a fascist?
REPORTER: How do you answer the charge that you’re a fascist?
WILSON: What?
REPORTER: Your band, Joy Division, named after a group of women recruited by the SS for the purpose of breeding perfect Aryans. Isn’t that sick.
WILSON: Have you never heard of situationism, or postmodernism? Do you know nothing about the free play of signs and signifiers?
-24 Hour Party People
"We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of..."
“We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering - these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love - these are what we stay alive for.”
“Ensure that the child’s linguistic development is arrested at the negation stage, since lack is where desire begins, and that is what one must dwell on. Ensure the child does not learn any negations, since stemming the tide of desire facilitates the construction of pyramidal power.”
and
“Demand that all actions have a self-referential dimension. Remember that children do not do as you say; children do as you do. You should thus perform the following speech act: “All actions hereafter are self-referential, hence this speech act.”
one more:
Rub your child on some carbon paper. Then cut up the paper and stick the pieces to the child’s body. Question the child as an original. Question the child as a copy. Question the carbon paper as a construction. If your child accuses you of incomprehensibility, then accuse it of logical positivism.”
"arah Palin has been a governor of state inhabited by more moose than people for twenty months, and..."
“arah Palin has been a governor of state inhabited by more moose than people for twenty months, and before that mayor of a town with a population smaller than two blocks of downtown Manhattan. Although she has barely exercised power, she is already under federal investigation for abuse of it. And while Ms. Palin is perfectly entitled to believe that evolution is a myth, that women should be barred from choosing to have abortions, and that global warming has yet to be proven, these views all run counter to the views of mainstream America.”
When you won the Nobel Prize in Literature last year, he (Harold Bloom) described the choice as “pure political correctness,” presumably because you are female.
Yes, I remember. It was a very malicious thing. If he gets the Nobel Prize, believe me, I won’t be as bitchy.
The distinctive habit of the pseudo-intellectual: the extraction from a personal emotional morass of a thesis, a complex condemnation of the state, civilization, history, species. No sooner am I seriously depressed than I start to suspect that society is hollow, catastrophically false, terminally flawed. […]
It is not that something is wrong with the world; it is that much is wrong with me. And at the core of most philosophy, political thought, and cultural rhetoric is the simple problem of the individual’s unhappiness.
This is a brilliant assessment, stated with all of the beautiful force of a Nietzschean aphorism. And like that miserable old German’s aphorisms, it need not be entirely accurate for it to be enlightening.
How much of our philosophical and cultural inheritance has been produced out of broken hearts and mental illness, lonliness and frustration? A great deal, I am happy to report. The development of Western philosophy has been carried along in large part by healthy doses of pessimism and neuroses.
Like most sentient beings, I prone to bouts of depression whose origins are by no means solely biological. The outside world affects me, as I do it. And given that all is certainly not well with the cosmos, it is perhaps fair to say that ‘much is wrong with me because there is much that is wrong with the world’.
We must not be too quick to dismiss our individual unhappiness as something that is peculiar to us and us only. We must be open to the idea that our unhapiness is symptomatic of a more general social fact from which we can extrapolate some sort of contemporary malaise.
It is obviously dangerous to become overly self-indulgent or uncritical of our own emotions, yet at the same time I think that for better or for worse, our emotionally subjective experience of the world is worthy of a voice. The best of what has been thought and said is notable for the effortlessness with which it slides from the personal to the public.
There is no more truth to be found in joy than there is in unhapiness.
My 2 favorite people on the internet. Well worth reading.
I’m traveling to the south of France. Staying in Aubigny-sur-Nere, at a cute little B&B. Interestingly, they serve morning coffee in a bowl. Food is excellent, and last night we started our tour of regional wines.
Pics to follow.
"Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather..."
“Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values. It requires that their proposals be subject to argument, and amenable to reason. I may be opposed to abortion for religious reasons, but if I seek to pass a law banning the practice, I cannot simply point to the teachings of my church or evoke God’s will. I have to explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all. Now this is going to be difficult for some who believe in the inerrancy of the Bible, as many evangelicals do. But in a pluralistic democracy, we have no choice. Politics depends on our ability to persuade each other of common aims based on a common reality. It involves the compromise, the art of what’s possible. At some fundamental level, religion does not allow for compromise. It’s the art of the impossible. If God has spoken, then followers are expected to live up to God’s edicts, regardless of the consequences. To base one’s life on such uncompromising commitments may be sublime, but to base our policy making on such commitments would be a dangerous thing.”
I think Obama’s pretty much right on this one. I would only add the wrinkle that if I am opposed to abortion for religious reasons and seek to pass a law banning the practice, I can point ot the teachings of my church or evoke God’s will. I think the language of religion has every place in the public sphere. However, this method may be a poor way to build a consensus.
We do not have a majority religious tradition in this country—at least not a majority voting block. Catholics and Evangelicals may both oppose abortion, but they do so for very different reasons. If they are going to organize they will need to reach out to others, which means leaving room for a lot more ecumenicalism than some are comfortable with.
(via squashed)
For the philosophy nerds out there, this is John Rawls’ notion of an Overlapping Consensus.
"Political principles, so understood, will not be separate from the rest of what religious and..."
“Political principles, so understood, will not be separate from the rest of what religious and secular citizens believe. Instead, they will constitute a realm of overlap among all the “comprehensive doctrines” in the envisaged society — at least all those that are “reasonable,” by which Rawls means willing to respect the equal dignity of all citizens. Each religious or secular doctrine will accept the political principles, and the independent moral arguments that ground them, as one part or “module” in their overall view of life, though most at this point will connect them to deeper metaphysical ideas and arguments. At the same time, citizens will also endorse the political conception as the basis for a mutually respectful and reciprocal life with one another. Thus the public realm is a realm in which we join hands and talk a common language.”
I was a great tourist in Paris. I did everything a great tourist ought to do. I even shyed away when the protestors got too close. Here’s a pic of Sash:
