July 2010
54 posts
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“The slaves of developed industrial civilization are sublimated slaves, but they...”
– from One-Dimensional Man, p. 32-33, by Herbert Marcuse, Beacon Press, 1991. The last part of the quote is originally from François Perroux, vol.III, p.600, La Coexistence pacifique, Presses Universitaires, 1958.
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Emergency: Ignite social wild fire & make idea...
Repost from: Emergent Transformation: (Next Step to) ignite a social wild fire & make idea sex publicly :) with subjective modifications (the title, the suggested new name for the movement (hope it sticks!) via Pippin, and the blockquotes below): Salut emergent fellows :) I had an epiphany yesterday when I spoke to an influential German journalist who covers Silicon Valley, and realized that...
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Childhood, suffering and the meaning of life
To look back to the circumstances under which a question arises helps us in understanding a question better thus making it easier to answer it. Moreover, it can even point to the dissolution of the question altogether and make the answer unnecessary or generate different, perhaps more interesting questions. The question regarding the meaning (or purpose, which is not exactly the same) of...
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An emerging movement
On July 7th 2010 at NASA Ames Research Center, I was part of a group of people who met in one of the buildings assigned to Singularity University. We came from different backgrounds and countries but all of us could feel that something momentous is happening. Never in the history of the world has there been so many daily attempts across different time zones to overcome the barriers from an idea to...
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“The best moments in reading are when you come across something - a thought, a...”
– Hector, in The History Boys written by Alan Bennett.
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Flooded by fragments
We are flooded by fragments. Countless bits of information are given to us from everywhere: the media, experts, friends and last but not least – our own experiences. The sheer amount of information is overwhelming for any individual. We thought a solution would be for everyone to concern themselves with only a small portion of reality; this way we would collectively achieve something like a...
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“There was a time when I was irritated by certain things that today make me...”
– from section 88, 15 May 1930, The Book of Disquietude, by Bernardo Soares (one of Fernando Pessoa’s heteronyms), trans. by Richard Zenith, The Sheep Meadow Press, 1996.
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Wisdom is more important than knowledge
With the tremendous advancements in science human beings have reached the technological capacity to exterminate themselves and their world. In fact, at least one time we came pretty close to a nuclear war. Over the past decades, with the rise of the environmental movement, we’ve become ever more aware of the impact we have not only on the health and well-being of our own communities but on...
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“The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil...”
– Plato
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A University of the Future
The vision:
Development of skills instead of the memorizing of information. For example, teaching you how to think, not what to think. Pieces of information become outdated more easily than an array of skills. Renaissance style Curriculum: Excessive specialization would be discouraged in favor of a more well-rounded approach. Philosophy, Music, Arts and Sciences as well as physical...
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Seducer of Wisdom
We finish high-school and know more about math than we do of ourselves. Yet knowing ourselves is more important than algebra. Current education does not create free, creative and wise individuals, but workers for the requirements of the market. Most universities give you an education that will supply you with a career – not a good life. But careers, as the etymology of the word betrays, are ...
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The Soul: Something delicate
Before I continue, a brief disclaimer: Do not be estranged by my use of the word “soul”. I am not presupposing abstract “substances” in other-worldly realms. Originally, I was thinking to use the word “mind” instead of “soul”, but then my heart intervened. The word “mind” has been too much associated with thinking and less with feeling. Yet our feelings are as important in correct judgment as...
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Correspondence: The Hammer that thinks Temperature...
We have a wonderful method for knowing that have served us well for thousands of years. It’s called correspondence. John tells you that Sara is behind the door. You look behind the door and you find Sara. John was speaking the truth.
What did just happen?
You found a way to see whether John was telling the truth. You used your senses and when you saw Sara behind the door, you found out that ...
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The Conceptual Bedrock of your Mind: Epistemology...
As we grow up in life we come to certain conclusions as to what we can know and how we go about knowing it. What exists in the world and how it exists is what metaphysics is all about and how we know what exists in the world and what this knowledge is makes up epistemology.
All our judgments about the world presuppose these two frameworks. In fact, any judgment is impossible without them. The...
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The Vertical Dimension
Just as most of us are not aware of all the complex bio-chemical processes that are involved in thinking the same goes for all the conceptual presuppositions that determine the way we think. In other words, our thinking is guided by certain unconscious beliefs about the world. Fortunately, it is possible to access those beliefs and change them.
To use a metaphor (and one should not forget...
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“Dress good thought with words it deserves. A truth attractively clothed makes...”
– from “The Art of Enquiry”
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The Art of Enquiry
“I already know how to ask questions, what more is there to learn?”
Under normal circumstances, nobody receives extensive lessons in the use of one’s hands and fingers for everyday tasks like grasping, carrying, moving etc. In the same way, when it comes to ordinary enquiries we become naturally proficient in the use of questions. But if one wants to learn the piano then he must receive...
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“The sort of education given, especially in Italy, to those who are educated...”
– from section 104 in Thoughts by Giacomo Leopardi (1798-1837), Hesperus Press Limited, 2002.
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One needs to get dirty to become brilliant
Thinking can be an Art. With its own colors, brushes and canvasses, indispensable for the greatest Art of all, that of Life. To learn it well one needs to be acquainted with its artists and their artworks. But that is not enough. One does not become a Picasso by merely looking at his paintings. One needs to get dirty to become brilliant.
The works of fine art may indeed be more tangible. But the...
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Catching the rainbow
We do not eat to relieve the conscious pain of hunger. You have to start assuming more of you behind the reasons for doing something other than the small part of you that makes up conscious feeling. Were there to be a drug that relieved the feeling of hunger in indistinguishable ways that food did but without any of the nutritional benefits, we wouldn’t expect people to eat the drug when they were...
“Only barbarians are not curious about where they come from, how they came to be...”
– from “The Pursuit of the Ideal” in The Crooked Timber of Humanity, by Isaiah Berlin, Princeton University Press, 1990.
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The fable of the seed and the oak tree
One day a seed and an oak tree fell in love. The seed turned to the oak tree and said: “Love me as I am.” The oak tree replied: “I love you too much to do that.”
Then the seed one day broke open and a shoot made its way out of the soil towards the sun. The shoot turned to the oak tree and said: “Love me as I am.” To which the oak tree replied: “I love you too much to do that.”
Time passed and...
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The pride of one's scars
A philosopher is a vivisectionist of himself. In learning himself he has inadvertently inflicted some injuries that may be irremediable and may steal some of his grace. That is why students can become more graceful than the teachers who really pushed the boundaries of their discipline; they learn the lessons without suffering the injury, like cadets who learn lessons of a battle in which others...
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Socrates
You can learn a lot by a man who knows nothing.
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Life after death
A Greek painter once said that Greece is beautiful as a set but lousy as a play. During the end of the summer at the Cyclades, when all the actors had departed to their urban caves, the Aegean regains its splendor. A sense of possibility envelops the narrow streets and whitewashed houses, as the clouds start reappearing in the crystal blue sky – the possibility of a play as beautiful as the...
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We cannot get rid of dependence
We achieve independence from our parents, and end up dependent on our employer. Self-employment is an illusion: you need customers, or some sort of framework which is not of your making or control, under which your services will be rewarded. Even beasts of prey depend on their prey, herbivores on the grass, and grass on the weather. In fact, life may be defined as that which depends for its...
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Icarus as the involuntary Herostratus
Nobody remembers Daedalus. People are more prone to remember those who flew and fell – to their level.
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Mostly as a chauffeur
Reason might be in the driver’s seat, but mostly as a chauffeur.
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An aphorism for bilinguals
Idiosyncratic is the person who holds his idiocy to himself.
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Chain-seekers
Some people being unable to find something for which they want to be free, wander the world in search for chains. They are good at breaking them, but can’t do without them.
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Not a proof of profundity
An inability to express something is not a proof of its profundity.
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Even though it has become our blood
It is very easy for a philosopher to internalize his objections to society to such a point that he doesn’t remember them anymore even though he embodies them. The same way we don’t remember all the food we’ve digested even though it has become our blood.
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Against monocultural thinking
Why should I arrange my thoughts? Do painters pair the yellow with the yellow, the blue with the blue? Do musicians play the D’s together? Why do some people then expect us thinkers to write about one thing at a time, in one place? As if anything healthy ever grew in a monoculture. My writings are a jungle; insects as well as leopards, things hidden in dense vegetation and the vegetation...
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The Abolition of Work →
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The limitations of personal freedom
I remember one time we were sitting with my brother in a small park. We had just bought some snacks and were enjoying them in a crisp and sunny autumn noon. Just as we were laughing on some inside joke we had made up, I realized we were the only persons in the park. Not a single child running towards the swings; the benches empty, the birds chirping alone and the sun shining only on our...
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Blaming the cook instead of the recipe
The human being sketched by many of our ethical ideals is hardly ever personified in real life. An ethical ideal resembles a cooking recipe in that it usually contains a description of a final exquisite dish and a vague recipe with which to make it. Looking at some, I sometimes realize that some of the materials they require for such dishes do not exist, or if they do, they don’t turn out into...
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Wisdom and Hydrodynamics
The good life is a correct balance between know-that and know-how. Knowing in an intellectual way is simply not enough for a full understanding and embodiment of wisdom. In fact, a good definition of wisdom is embodied valuable knowledge. Or, in vernacular: (valuable) knowledge in action. On the other hand, wise action is impossible with ignorance in theory.
That doesn’t mean that a man...
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To be a philosopher
Philosophy is not boring. It talks about the most important issues in life – and it doesn’t tell you which those are. It is not an order, it is a question. You are supposed to find the answer.
Philosophers who are boring are failing in life. A boring life cannot be a good one. “So what if a philosopher is boring? He may still be a good philosopher.” Yes – only if you subtract one of the main...
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Life has no brakes
“Moral education” sounds like something contemporary teenagers would skip to go skateboarding. Why? Don’t they care about what is good for them? Of course they do. That is why they skipped class to go skateboarding! Contemporary teenagers are not corrupt! Corruption takes time – only old people are corrupted.
The teenager who is rebellious and does something different from what he is told is...
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The point of education
The point of education should not be the memorization of true sentences or beliefs. Because what we thought was true may prove false, and we are now stuck with memories of falsehoods. The point of education should be good judgment. If you have good judgment you do not need to remember the good judgments of others because you have one yourself. Your knowledge is not a passive retrieval of...
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It is important to laugh at yourself
It is important to laugh at yourself. If you don’t do it others will do it for you.
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To prove that we are metal
We endure the fire and blows of the blacksmith called Life, not so that we may become straight, but to prove that we are metal.
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Advice
Advice is two letters away from vice.
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The Dancers of Thought
My mind works aphoristically. It comes up with insights about a variety of particular things effortlessly, but it takes me a lot of effort to put those insights together into a coherent system. When I try to put them together, they seem to lose their life. It is the difference between an orderly military march and an improvised dance solo. Though the dancer’s movements are not following the...
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Those who need leaders
Those who need leaders deserve them.
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“We incomprehensible ones – Have we ever complained because we are misunderstood,...”
– Friedrich Nietzsche, Die fröhliche Wissenschaft, section 371
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“I dreamed I had come into an immense underground temple with lofty arched roof....”
– “Nature” by Ivan Turgenev (1818-1883), written in August 1879, found in Dream Tales and Prose Poems
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The only thing you ever need to find
When I finished my Masters degree in philosophy, I decided to fulfill another great dream of mine: Traveling throughout Europe, without a plan or a tour package. I traveled for almost four months straight, alone. From the bustling cafés in Saint-Germain; the astonishing Sagrada Familia in Barcelona; the arabesque Alhambra castle in Granada; the scenic coast of southern France; the imposing...
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Experiential Art
Introduction:
On February 2003, I came up with a novel form of art where the artwork is an experience facilitated by the artist; I named it experiential art. The artist gathers relevant information about the subject of experience (an individual or group) and then uses this information the same way a poet uses words to compose a poem of experience. I present two experiential artworks below.
...
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“I sit here
At the window
Waiting for you
To come jogging past
In your...”
– “During the Day” from the Book of Longing by Leonard Cohen