Context: The misinformation virus Systems of belief are without exception only ever aspirationally grounded upon the objects of their attention. It is as a function of endemic logical (as much as material or cognitive, cultural and communications system) extensibility that these systems become anchored as effective tautologies upon themselves. In this way they can adaptively […]
Category: Philosophy
Context: Juukan Gorge inquiry: Rio Tinto’s decision to blow up Indigenous rock shelters ‘inexcusable’ Wittgenstein at one point identified meaning as a function of use. From a social constructivist perspective, this follows quite naturally as a corollary fact of epistemological (as much as linguistic) self-reference that all integrated information-processing, meaning-generating or socially-constructed contexts embody. It […]
An introspective taxonomy of labels and the grammatical order of participatory technology in – and as – systems of knowledge and control has always been the nature, kernel and subjective essence of personal identity. It is difficult to identify a particular inflection point at which this Linnean, categorical game evolved from constructive personal boundary and […]
War
Sunday morning brought this little documentary gem of existential anxiety to my digital doorstep: The future of modern warfare: How technology is transforming conflict. Long gone are the days when a newspaper delivery, thrown from a footpath and having missed its mark might shatter our living room window, allowing us the superficially satisfying retort of […]
The Companionship of Ideas
I treasure freedom of mind and thought and as against tides of wilful ignorance and meaningless superficiality I can quite accurately assert that where a companionship and friendship in or of ideas does not exist, the ideas themselves can become your friends. In this sense, my best friends are the concepts I inhabit and endlessly […]
Intellectual Freedom
Intellectual freedom is a precious kind of friendship and honesty we can share with ourselves, even when it is unsafe or impossible to share with others. Sharing with others can be uncomfortable – and in some contexts, impossible – the emotional, visceral and intimately personal quality of ideas is as rarely acknowledged as is the […]
Science
Science as a system of belief is no less prone to fallibility than any other but embraces this implicit doubt and uncertainty as a core strength. The procedural aggregation of a body of verifiable, ordered knowledge as scientific truth is the foundation of our Global civilisation. It is significant to acknowledge that the essential and […]
Belief
We think and act as though the things we believe are reliable and unproblematically grounded upon an objective truth. This is a falsehood because all assertions, all references and all concepts – being defined in terms of other definitions and so in tautological circularity – are only ever the interior and half-mirrored surface of our […]
Fiction
Life can (and most certainly should) be enjoyed, where and when possible, but don’t forget to question the nature of the reality with which you have been presented because the truth, the secret hiding in plain sight, is that almost everything we believe and say or think is little more than myth, fiction and the […]
The Suspension of Disbelief
I spent years learning about the stars, the galaxies and the deep mysteries of logic, time and space; countless mornings staring out my window into the blazing furnace of the rising sun, afternoons in the hills watching the slow-setting peach orb descend, questioning all that I had by then knew, wondering how the immensity and […]
It is so difficult to step outside the unseen boundaries that our words and worlds draw across our lives, even as they indicate another life and possibility beyond those walls that are usually at least felt, if not directly seen. Being born into a particular time and place shapes us in ways that quite precisely […]
No achievement without danger…
No discovery without risk, no catharsis without suffering. The absence of presence in future knowledge is always the presence of absence in (and as) experience. No wisdom without pain, indeed, and as for information – no integration (or resonance) without difference (or alienation). Originally written as a comment here.