Tuesday, March 22, 2016
Saturday, March 19, 2016
File Under Time: Amazonians Reference Time Through Gestures
This Article offers an interesting account of Time, and one which demonstrates a prehistoric deviation from Proto-Indo-European norms. As such, it may help to broaden our understanding of Time.
Saturday, March 12, 2016
Existence, History, and the Oblivion of Time
Historical participation in civil life means, being-as-a-citizen.
Ethics, in its primordial, existential manner of presentation, comes-forth, comes-into-being, as the initiation and repetition of the face-to-face encounter (qua Levinas).
Seeing the right, Hearing of the right, Speaking the right—the cor-rect, (to wit, "the True")—amounts to participation in civic life.
Seeing the right, Hearing of the right, Speaking the right—the cor-rect, (to wit, "the True")—amounts to participation in civic life.
How one chooses to share this, depends upon one's dispositional attitude toward being, whether given as sattva, rajas, or tamas (existence, passion, or ignorance).
Have we yet become adequately existential about existence yet? Have we understood the phenomenon of existence just as it has given itself to us yet? Such is the basis of the Whole-being of ontology.
Have we yet become passionate about history? Have we yet to see the day of history, in its Whole-ness? Or have we still just fragments of it? Will we lose history? Does not a crippled man better appreciate the health of the healthy? Such is the drive toward historicity.
Have we yet overcome our ignorance of Time? We are, each of us, finite, by virtue of history. This we know by virtue of death: All men are mortal. Quid Est Demonstratum: Socrates is mortal.
Socrates, in his dying breath, teaches us about civic life. He, the wisest of the Athenians (because at least he was aware of his own ignorance!) would not reject civic life (He would have thereby embraced banishment!). "Better the Hemlock than Exile!"
Shame follows the exile for the rest of his life. "No longer a citizen of the polis, No longer a participant in democracy, the rule of the many, by virtue of law, over the chaotic gifts of nature's assignments; to wit, "one's own genetic nature".
Ethics today is a serious assignment for us all. How to participate in civic life? How to end our days, here on Earth, by virtue of teaching ethical phronesis (φρόνησις), excellence in goodness, the quintessential Virtue of virtues; (सं॰, "शूद्द-सत्त्व")?
Such serious questions arise among us philosophers in these, the Times of great crisis! The existentialists were driven to rethink history anew because of WWII! Now is upon us this great task: to think! Now, and without hesitation! To be a sage of our times! To announce by virtue of ethical action our attendance to the needs of the many for wisdom: to be a philosopher in a time of war.
Turning the Conversation
If civic life is to lead, on the whole, toward excellence in goodness (or rather, to a verdant contest of goods), one needs to turn the conversation toward higher avenues. In an age of internet debates, where quick wit and sharp tongue make for the major virtues of trolls, there arises an evident need to frame the Trump phenomenon within this culture of soundbites and half-lies.
The frustration felt by victims of internet trolls is not different from that felt by opponents of Trump. With each attack, his strengths in the media spotlight grow, as if the very medium through which he was arising acted to prevent his verbal assailants from success. Even as severe a roast by the POTUS as this must be considered as short of fully halting Trump's meteoric rise. Words are not the strength of his supporters, so high-minded burns must also be considered out of their general purview or understanding. Such jokes "go right over their heads" (though perhaps not at all intended otherwise).
In my thinking about the national stage our current presidential candidates have ascended, I see a contest in which the media is itself the message. We citizens are left with a choice: upon whom to bequeath the mantle of POTUS. Do we seek merely to be entertained, as by bread and circus? Or do we seek excellence in goodness? Are we to be ruled over by our inferiors?
The legacy of great presidents gives us pause to recognize the dawning of a quickly approaching time, a post-Obama presidency. Even should the Republican obstruction of Obama's judicial nominees survive him, and the next president-elect nominate Obama himself to the Supreme Court, the office of the POTUS shall be in new hands, a new chapter to be written. Will it be America's final chapter? Or among its earliest? Only Time will tell. But let us not forget that the lucky few, we US citizens, are helping to write it.
The Danger of Comedy
In wanting to humiliate a thin-skinned will—to shame it into turning from its aims—we may be tempted to resort to comedy. But there is a crucial and dangerous seriousness to this turn in American politics which cannot simply be laughed away; our laughter may yet come to be considered by later thinkers as a willful ignorance of the coming days. A serious discussion of Trump's public appeal is indispensable to the outcome of this next year.
34 Senate seats are up for grabs this election year. The slender majority of Senate Republicans make them generally less difficult in working together with the minority of Democrats. The House of Congress is another story. A total of 496 seats are up for re-election! As such, the real battle for the future is much closer to home than the office of POTUS. It will be fought out, state to state, district to district, in promoting and electing local democratic leadership to stand with the president-elect come November (or to oppose his fascist fantasy, should the worst come to pass).
Today we still enjoy the luxury of comedy, of levity toward the absurd theatrics of this never-before-seen Donald Drumpf drama. But this thin-skinned and small-minded willfulness did manage to pull us into what is now the Middle East quagmire. "Democratizing Iraq" hardly qualifies as a hot topic in the media today. Men obsessed with a New American Century—lacking the graces of an eye or mind for international diplomacy yet brimming with passionate greed—brought the US economy to its knees, accelerating our crumbling infrastructure and tearing open old wounds, which have now begun to fester in the form of degraded race relations. The medicine is working; but the patient may still die.
Comedy may thus turn out to have merely been a way of consoling ourselves: "I did everything I as an individual citizen might have been expected to do. I ridiculed him, and slighted his attempts at politicizing."
Let us not content ourselves with belittling Trump for, however small his heart, he still casts an intimidating shadow over civic life today. Civic participation which turns the conversation to higher avenues is necessary for all of those of us seriously concerned about his untimely rise; democracy is the blood-and-sweat sacrifice we must offer in return for our freedoms.
Turning the Conversation
If civic life is to lead, on the whole, toward excellence in goodness (or rather, to a verdant contest of goods), one needs to turn the conversation toward higher avenues. In an age of internet debates, where quick wit and sharp tongue make for the major virtues of trolls, there arises an evident need to frame the Trump phenomenon within this culture of soundbites and half-lies.
The frustration felt by victims of internet trolls is not different from that felt by opponents of Trump. With each attack, his strengths in the media spotlight grow, as if the very medium through which he was arising acted to prevent his verbal assailants from success. Even as severe a roast by the POTUS as this must be considered as short of fully halting Trump's meteoric rise. Words are not the strength of his supporters, so high-minded burns must also be considered out of their general purview or understanding. Such jokes "go right over their heads" (though perhaps not at all intended otherwise).
In my thinking about the national stage our current presidential candidates have ascended, I see a contest in which the media is itself the message. We citizens are left with a choice: upon whom to bequeath the mantle of POTUS. Do we seek merely to be entertained, as by bread and circus? Or do we seek excellence in goodness? Are we to be ruled over by our inferiors?
The legacy of great presidents gives us pause to recognize the dawning of a quickly approaching time, a post-Obama presidency. Even should the Republican obstruction of Obama's judicial nominees survive him, and the next president-elect nominate Obama himself to the Supreme Court, the office of the POTUS shall be in new hands, a new chapter to be written. Will it be America's final chapter? Or among its earliest? Only Time will tell. But let us not forget that the lucky few, we US citizens, are helping to write it.
The Danger of Comedy
"Fight gravity with levity!"
Friedrich Nietzsche
In wanting to humiliate a thin-skinned will—to shame it into turning from its aims—we may be tempted to resort to comedy. But there is a crucial and dangerous seriousness to this turn in American politics which cannot simply be laughed away; our laughter may yet come to be considered by later thinkers as a willful ignorance of the coming days. A serious discussion of Trump's public appeal is indispensable to the outcome of this next year.
34 Senate seats are up for grabs this election year. The slender majority of Senate Republicans make them generally less difficult in working together with the minority of Democrats. The House of Congress is another story. A total of 496 seats are up for re-election! As such, the real battle for the future is much closer to home than the office of POTUS. It will be fought out, state to state, district to district, in promoting and electing local democratic leadership to stand with the president-elect come November (or to oppose his fascist fantasy, should the worst come to pass).
Today we still enjoy the luxury of comedy, of levity toward the absurd theatrics of this never-before-seen Donald Drumpf drama. But this thin-skinned and small-minded willfulness did manage to pull us into what is now the Middle East quagmire. "Democratizing Iraq" hardly qualifies as a hot topic in the media today. Men obsessed with a New American Century—lacking the graces of an eye or mind for international diplomacy yet brimming with passionate greed—brought the US economy to its knees, accelerating our crumbling infrastructure and tearing open old wounds, which have now begun to fester in the form of degraded race relations. The medicine is working; but the patient may still die.
Comedy may thus turn out to have merely been a way of consoling ourselves: "I did everything I as an individual citizen might have been expected to do. I ridiculed him, and slighted his attempts at politicizing."
Let us not content ourselves with belittling Trump for, however small his heart, he still casts an intimidating shadow over civic life today. Civic participation which turns the conversation to higher avenues is necessary for all of those of us seriously concerned about his untimely rise; democracy is the blood-and-sweat sacrifice we must offer in return for our freedoms.
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