The curious thing about the psychology of taboos is that (generally speaking) the more a thing is prohibited, the more psychological currency and cultural value it (inversely) acquires, and – consequently – the more the associated behaviours self-propagate. We might identify this counterintuitive displacement of value, meaning and fascination (or attention) as semiotic elasticity.
What is the aggregate consequence of so (very) many people spending most of their lives in concrete and glass labyrinths, bound. Where (almost) all stimulus and perception is normalised, by regularity, uniformity, aspiration to control through linear precedent, by axiomatic illumination of certainty (such as it is) and knowledge, there is little room for the […]
You do not exist. Not, at least beyond that very limited aggregate of abstractions, words, images, ideas and narrative (or cultural) conventions within which you find yourself embedded and as a transient expression of. It is a little-known fact that from within any non-trivially sophisticated system of ordered symbols, logic and (inevitably, also) psychology and […]
There is a well-known meme which features a photograph of a notoriously unintelligent celebrity – take your pick, there are certainly plenty to choose from – with the accompanying text: “stop making stupid people famous.” The thing is – stupid people might actually be the perfect candidates for celebrity. These lucky (or – if we […]
It is not just what is said that matters, but also – the way in which it is said, the nuance, the poetry and the subtlety. This is the second-order semantics of meaning and style in communication and thought. It is not enough to simply know the names of things, the measures and to collect […]
In seeking truth and meaning I find that I must return again and again to the endless mysteries of emptiness, negation and nothingness. It is clear that any assumption of the existence of meaning (or meaningfulness) is of a different order of existence than is an equivalent assertion regarding truth. Notwithstanding that both of these […]
I wonder what she is reading. It may be the eternal burden of a reflective mind to be unable to simply accept reality at face value, to question what lies beneath, to investigate what hidden meanings or purposes might exist or dwell below or behind the superficial appearances of things. At least she is not […]
Looking into such a beautiful face, it brings to mind all the lives I have lived, all the dreams that I followed in some alternate reality, and all the lives that I will never, can never, live. It is as though all of these dreams, aspirations and desires have followed every possible path and configuration […]
Culture, like meaning, is not found in one single place but is distributed across the entire surface of our shared cognition and the proliferating multiplicity of artefact, image and a logic of sequential algorithm and rationalised procedure that informs our experience. The self-evident fact that we are unable to unambiguously or unproblematically define or agree […]
Words are those windows and apertures upon the world that in naming and framing facts themselves become things, entities, artefacts in the endlessly oscillating hyper-inflation of logical and referential, representational space. It is as though the glass pane of abstraction through which we see becomes opaque with the carried meanings (and burdens) of its own […]
Fear of missing out is much deeper and more challenging than the superficiality with which it is commonly portrayed. At some level we are all aware that we have very little effect on this world, that despite our starring role in the narrative theatre of our own life – we have almost no influence or […]
The more technology connects us, the more it isolates us and the more these tools of information and communication allow us to define ourselves and our lives, the more uncertain they leave as to who we are and what (if any) purpose we have in life. We do not use information technology so much as […]
Daedelus Kite 