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Philosophy

Fractious Tribes and Ideological Recursions

Successfully negotiating the resonant dissonance of any democracy is indeed deeply problematised by an obligation to successfully define, negotiate and evolve strategies with which to do so. I see the contemporary American problem as being on one hand unique and specific to a particular entanglement of histories, motivations, incentives and value (or belief) systems but […]

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Philosophy

Not

The suspension of disbelief is a concept that illustrates a kind of game we play against, with and as our selves. The twist in this tale is that we seek to mask (as though by self-hypnosis) the unreality of a world that only becomes real as a function of the extent to which we become […]

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Philosophy

Evolutionary Logic

Technological metamorphosis tends by variously unacknowledged or linguistically and cognitively impermeable mechanisms to reproduce precisely the correct kind of uncertainty and communication or media system turbulence to assure the continuing tenure of those technologies and their logical descendants. It is reproduction, however, possessing an emergent variation sufficient to breed resilience as unscripted existential assurance.

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Philosophy

Dependencies

Oh yes contingent dependency, and yet value and assurance are always, if inadvertently, in some way grounded in risk and insecurity. Contentious, perhaps, but we shouldn’t need too many examples to validate the intuition. Interesting how the solution seems to be framed in terms of “more technology” which hardly takes account of endemic or axiomatic […]

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Philosophy

Emotional Experience

It strikes me as fascinating that the most significant things we ever experience in our lives are quite impossible to describe with language. Emotional life and other experiences occur at a level prior to language or ordered cognition. When we try to explain it, all we ever do is see our own descriptions reflected back […]

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Philosophy

You are Small, Fragile and Beautiful

Context: Solar storm on Thursday expected to make Northern Lights visible in 17 states These events are nothing if not a reminder of the diminutive transience of our own lives and (all of) our aspirations, agendas, affiliations and vanities. In Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the character Zaphod Beeblebrox enters a machine called […]

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Philosophy

Saving the Planet: Growth, Degrowth, Regrowth or…

I spend a lot of time considering abstract, complex and the many aspirationally “real” systems that exist between our ears and upon the surface of our planet. My acquired suspicion in this context is that neither “growth” nor “degrowth” represent sufficiently sophisticated concepts with which to effectively engage this vast and multidimensional problem we are […]

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Philosophy

Ambiguity and Existence

It may not always be obvious but the uncertainties, ambiguities and outright inconsistencies that inhabit our forms of communication are as important as any intention or purposive orientation. The constellations of intent and wilful self-determination that inhabit and haunt our systems of communication tend to generate as much diffusion and confusion as they do coherent […]

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Philosophy

The Meaning of (a) Life

An impassioned defence of anti-materialist ontology as addressed to the indeterminacy of provable, definable or unchanging values and the meaning of (a) life. The enigma infusing materialism must forever remain that of the partiality and incompleteness of any aspiration to construct (and reduce) knowledge in regards to the demonstrable facts with which the world presents […]

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Philosophy

Planet of the Mirrors

People seem quite naturally biased towards the lowest common denominator of what is really the most absurd and idiotic of behaviours. I understand that this is hardly charitable but I’d say that this applies to all of us and even more so when we are unaware or in denial of it. Further to this, it […]

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Philosophy

Sly Linguistic Self-replication

I wonder about the extent to which the ongoing evolutionary (as sedimentary, procedural) development of social and cultural systems is a function of the complexity and transmissibility of the linguistic systems they inhabit. This is to suggest that those species of psychological, behavioural and culturally expressive (or performative) identities that actually do occur and/or thrive […]

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Philosophy

Engaging the Riots and Violence in France

So, I’ll just leave this here: Yes, violence is NEVER the solution in these circumstances and wildfire complexities. The problem of juridico-political and/or racial and cultural inequity is one to which systems of governance classically apply linear solutions, quite unwittingly reinstituted g the matrix sacristan of self-propagating socio-affective turbulence. It is a poorly-managed problem and […]