Yeah, that’s one of those deliberately provocative titles of mine. The thing is, the word “culture” has such diverse meanings that it makes it easy to be offended by the claim, Cultures Are Disgusting. I mean, if we talked about bacterial growth on a Petri dish – a culture – few would disagree with it!
Obviously enough, that’s not the case here – I’m not referring to bacterial growth. I also don’t try to attack being cultured, since, equally obviously, the entire existence of Home for Fiction revolves around art, philosophy, knowledge, thought.
Rather, by arguing that cultures are disgusting, I attack the prevalent societal idea of conglomerating thought, boxing identity, (de)limiting expression.
Cultures are disgusting – we can imagine hearing Slavoj Žižek saying that while watering his (?) flowers – because any given culture (and I will attempt to define it more precisely in this post) is essentially an attempt to direct your thought.
Cultures are disgusting; cats are not – guess why: because they are individuals(more…)
In Bertolt Brecht’s play Galileo, the character of Andrea affirms: “Unhappy the land that has no heroes!” To this, Galileo responds: “No. Unhappy the land that needs heroes”. People seem to hold heroes in high regard. Few are those who realize the repercussions of having heroes in a democracy.
A hero is generally an individual (this is important, as we’ll see) who displays great courage, aspires to great achievements, and overall plays an important, central part in a certain event or historical period.
What could possibly be bad about that, you might wonder.
The operative element here is democracy, so let’s see the definition of that word as well: It comes from the Greek words δήμος (people) and κρατία (power, rule); rule of the people, that is.
Democracy relies on informed, rational citizens collectively and intelligently deciding on the affairs of the state. Ironically enough, that’s precisely the reason why democracy inevitably fails.
In reality, people are a collection of individuals. Most of them are of, well, average intelligence and with, well, adequate moral convictions. A few (or…?) are truly stupid and malicious, and very few are highly intelligent and benevolent. Obviously, there are many gradations in between. Moreover, the systemAs this word carries a lot of baggage and can convey an aura of conspiracy theory ("them", "they", or "it"), I should clarify that system in this post simply refers to the ruling class; the status quo. has an incentive to undermine or even silence those few whose integrity is so powerful, they completely disregard danger – with a few shining exceptions, their stories are lost.
The thing is, in such a setup, heroes in a democracy that struggles appear as an attractive solution. Heroes in a democracy almost feel like what the “mortals” need to be inspired by.
And yet, heroes in a democracy are a dangerous paradox: the very element that assures democracy is dying.
Heroes in a democracy is a dangerous paradox (more…)
Certain things are relative: Although we can say “hot” or “cold”, we can also compare, and say “hotter/colder than”. There are also things that are binary – either or. No matter what Hegelians might claim, I doubt you can be “a little bit pregnant”. In this context, an intellectually honest philosopher has to acknowledge a methodological flaw in agnosticism.
Theism is the belief in the existence of a supreme being – “God”. A pedantic observer would perhaps make all kinds of elaborations on this (arguably focusing on the difference between a theist and a deist), but for the purposes of this post – and focusing on what I term as the methodological flaw of agnosticism – the above definition should suffice.
That is, we have people – theists – believing in the existence of God. We also have atheists, who don’t find evidence for such a claim, and therefore do not accept the existence of God. Agnostics, on the other hand, are people who argue that nothing is known or can be known about the existence of God.
Agnosticism is effectively a perpetual suspension of judgment. As an agnostic, you basically say “I can’t know that there is a God, but I also can’t know that there isn’t. Hence, I refuse to take a stance”.
However, that’s precisely what the methodological flaw of agnosticism really is, as we’ll see.
– Is there a God or is there not? – Trick question, I am God(more…)
