In the roaring 90s, people seemed proud of their idiocy. Consumption turned into a religion; growth seemed endless, new industries were popping up everywhere, and armchair philosophers were given a global voice in the form of America Online and other similar services. While this chapter continued in the early 2000s, now growth is going the [...]
Posts from ‘December, 2009’
Signs of decadence: truth is an offense
Someone slipped up and told the unpopular truth: Blaming the city authorities of the early 90′s, the former finance minister said that Berlin’s economy had stagnated. West Berlin’s isolation during the Cold War meant that it was never able to replace its business and intellectual elite. On the contrary, skilled workers generally left the city, [...]
Overpopulation, finally
In the annals of human bungling over our wholesale destruction of our environment, the follies will be recorded as first hinging on a strawman (global warming) until people noted that, at the root of all problems, was one we have denied for its social unpopularity for too long: Overpopulation. It used to be my litmus [...]
Heresies
A few heretical thoughts to keep you interested: We give extreme negative power to the wrong people in this society. We reward the voice who shouts an epithet from the crowd, maybe “Communist” or “racist” or “elitist,” but never demand accountability for him. As a result, we deprive people of the ability to build especially [...]
Refuting Gould
“Science” is just a word. Anyone can claim to be a scientist, and getting a degree in the sciences doesn’t guarantee one knows more than lab theory. Scientists lack an essential tool: critical thinking, specifically the ability to analyze an argument with the ability of a philosopher. As a result, we have a constant drama [...]
Third World USA
With the election of Barack Obama, Americans are starting to glimpse the reality of our political situation. No matter who we elect president, he or she is going to represent only one several groups — black people, white people, gay people, conservative people, liberal people. Even more, we realize that what makes each group distinct [...]
The world as a dojo
Imagine a world that was more like a martial arts dojo, less like an amusement park and trash dump. Personal integrity and earned respect would take the place of pretentious fantasy personalities empowered by equal rights. The novice multitudes in life would find themselves accountable to rather than the social equals of the fewer masters [...]
Crowdism in the wild
An amusing little tidbit came our way today from those who study horrible things and report back to us so we, from our armchairs, can pronounce judgment and then go back to feeling smugly detached: Anger is more likely among the young, those with children at home, and the less educated, a new study finds. [...]
Schizophrenia
Nietzsche was correct: for all of us, and us as a species, a gulf awaits which we must cross to get to the other side. This gulf is a challenge to our own minds: Do we accept reality as it is, or do we retreat into a human world where our judgments about it and [...]
