Enjoying the view from Limbo
The selfie culture, as it is elevatingly called — the universal youth vanity obsession with taking endless photographs of oneself and spewing them indiscriminately throughout the cosmos — is a perfect emblem of the endtimes. It is our species’ final surrender to the fate of absolute self-annihilation, which is to say pure non-existence. The most obscure wisdom from the fog of philosophic antiquity...
About a year ago, John Cleese was interviewed by Reason Magazine editor-at-large Nick Gillespie, in front of an enthusiastic audience of libertarians. One of the topics of discussion was creativity, a subject on which Cleese has spoken extensively over the years. At one point in the interview, full of giddy expectancy, Gillespie, citing Cleese’s Monty Python writing partner (and alcoholic) Graham Chapman as...
“With all the atrocities and the humanitarian crisis ongoing in Ukraine, how can anyone care about something so insignificant as Will Smith slapping Chris Rock at the Academy Awards?” So say many self-important voices today, as they attempt to show their moral superiority over those who dare to care about this little Oscars story during a war. On its face, the criticism rings...
Parmenidean: If it is true that there is nothing, as you claim, then this still proves that there is something, namely that very truth and a mind capable of knowing it. Nihilism is self-refuting.
Nihilist: Oh, but the nihilist does not deny that there is something, but merely that the something has meaning.
Parmenidean: But a something without a meaning….
Failed rhetoric.— “Everyone knows that” is merely a rhetorically aggressive way of saying “Everyone believes that” — for there is literally nothing that everyone knows. And nothing could be more certain than this: Anything that “everyone believes” is likely false, since most people are completely ignorant of all but the most quotidian facts. Hence, when a person insists on a point of argument...
The word “culture,” as used with reference to human societies or societal customs, has been one of the key theoretical constructs in late modernity’s assault on being. I never use it, except in the most casual conversational context, without the qualification that the term is artificial, names an idea that is not only ill-defined but perhaps indefinable, and runs counter to the basic...
This is actually not a reply but more like Mayday. Be, it surely is a familiar word, but I’ve never met such a confusing one before. Even though it is not too much to say that “be” is the most common verb, it is extremely difficult to understand the meaning of the word. Be, exist, being, existence, property, essence…
It is admirable that they realized the importance of invisible but existent things and studied them this deeply, and it is surprising that my question was the one that drove metaphysics in the beginning! It feels like I’ve arrived at a strange place after wandering around here and there. You mentioned “metaphysics studies Being Itself, independently of any specific case or type,” and…
The defining mission of this website, sometimes pursued subliminally, sometimes overtly, is to undermine the corruptive influence of “current events,” which is to say the distracting noise of the everyday, in the lives of anyone within reach of my voice. As our civilization winds down, the attraction of building a solid spiritual fortress to defend the soul against the glittering degradations and nihilistic...
Follow: