"We are entering into a world without God, a world without Morals, without Good and Bad, without direction. We are entering into a world without meaning. Do not get lost." -Dr. Florentino Hornedo's Prelude to our class in Poststructuralism
What did you learn from Philosophy of History class in your first day?
"History is Fiction!" - Dr. Florentino Hornedo
 | yeh | Jun 12, '08 8:23 AM
for everyone |
and yeh, put a sock in it. nyahahahaha!
| June 12 | Jun 8, '08 11:16 PM
for everyone |
National Holidays are historical markers.History, as Ambeth Ocampo mentioned in his Rizal Lectures, is a story with meaning which helps shapes our social consciousness and our identity. But what is happening now is that we sacrifice the meaning behind this events for the sake of practicality: work efficiency and a longer vacation time when the government pass around important dates as if it was rag doll . We totally missed the point of the celebration, that is, the remembrance of a certain past which gives us meaning as Filipinos. Some may find it trivial, others finds it as nothing more but another day in the mall or an extension of some out-of-town activity.Most of us, correct me if i am mistaken, failed to grasp the magnanimity of such events. And sadly, many continue to put the blame on someone, on something, a person and/or an institution, in regards to the sorry state of things of our country. We blame everybody except ourselves. The radicals jumps the gun and outrightly calls out for a revolution. The moderates are just too comfortable with the status quo. The poor are still hungry. The conservatives are too hook up with fundamentalist convictions on traditions some of which goes against the tides of time. We may have different perspectives,but we could not neglect the fact that if there is to be progress in our nation,it always starts with the micro unit of society, the individual and then the family.
June 12 is our Independence Day. Let us be conscious of that. The meaning that is present in such an event. Some may call it a hypocrisy, arguing that it there never was an independence, but then again by branding it as such we are only insinuating the past of colonialism. The point is that celebrating its meaning would give much to the Filipino Soul. For the skeptics, we just have to make the best of it, it is afterall a work in progress so much as our nation and our social consciousness is a work of progress. The more we juggle this events to different dates, the more we confuse an already very confused nation.
Quite some time already since I blogged. Just this morning a Buddhist reminded not to be too optimistic, "Life afterall is suffering" so he said with a smile. Manila, once called the Venice of Asia, remains today as one of the most abhoring places to visit. The smog fools a visitor to think that the weather is almost always about to rain. Where commuting in the metropolis, between bus-jeep-rail, is a skill that needs to be perfected in order to survive. The attempt of some locals to trendset leaves a visitor who comes from real civilization to think of the entire metropolis as a busy open-access assylum where the wanderings idiots in the streets are mere understatement to those in the palaces. Thank God, I'm not in vacation. I miss my Jeanne. Havent read anything decent since "The Illusion of the End" and that was last month. Some may criticize that if i categorized Baudrillard's attempt to elucidate his idea on History as something decent, what then would be absurd in my category? Of all the things that I forgot to do, I forgot to upload Barber's Adaggio to my portable. Quite frustrating. And also, I saw for the first time, Derek Lee, a countertenor doing a Handel which gave me the creeps. I dont know why. Had to remind my friend Vince not to forget feeding the monastic nuns with a bus load of eggs if only to ensure that they pray for Divine guidance during the board. God has a soft spot for this yer nuns. It almost always work. And of course, a little prayer here. Yes, i believe in God. I wasn't able to finish my T.H White's The Once and Future King. God knows, when i would finish it. I still left the page open in my room back home. Something I learned: when crossing SLEX- CALABARZON for some absurd reason, i have to follow my father who had his own reason, for fun i guess, always remember that the vehicles are closer than they appear to be, and in this case always remember, dont trust your father who put you up in the first place and just leave you behind. I'm suffering from Chronic Sinusitis. Thus, i have to go home back in Batangas. Where the only thing you get to talk to, besides a weird father, is the wind.
| Waltz | May 15, '08 9:30 AM
for everyone |
Dancing in sorrow but one can see a slip of smile, how could this be?
tears and a dance does not marry so much more with a smile.
And yet her long furled sleeves caresses the air
as she struggles to speak of joy in speech without words
and her graciousness, almost perfect but even it cannot hide her pain.
Still, she dances with the air, while everything burns.
| Read. | May 1, '08 8:15 AM
for everyone |
 What else is there to do? Have to read. I'm half-way finished with that first book, Kant, and im done with the second book, have not even opened the third book, and the fourth has been consumed only by a quarter.
Read.
It makes life more boring than it already is.
February 2, 1905- March 6, 1982
May she remain where she is.
Ayn Rand was wrong. In an arrogant attempt to build a philosophical system without considering the story of Philosophy, since she only considered Aristotle as the only philosophical influence of her work while she lambasted Plato and more so with Immanuel Kant whom, though not only limited to them, she considered as mystics because their philosophies conclude the limits of Reason in knowing, respectively, the World of Forms and the Noumena, has undoubtedly been her single greatest mistake in formulating the dogmas of her Objectivism, the name of her secular cult. Her strict and seemingly rigid epistemology, (i am referring to Leonard Peikoff strain as oppose to David Kelley but suffice to say Peikoff was the intellectual heir in would follow that Rand found Peikoff to be the right propagator of her Philosophy) where the world is either this or that, no space for compromise, has surprising similarities with two other epistemologies that belongs to two philosophical school of thought whom she regards as "Evil." I am speaking of course on radical Neo-Thomism and Lenin's Theory of Knowledge, respective representations of Religion and Communism, two institutions, for the lack of better term, which she abhors like a diabetic to sugar. This places her Epistemology as non grata in the circles of postmodernism. The hubris of maintaining that Reason has the ability to know without limitation places her Metaphysics in a questionable state. This is perhaps why the only words that describes the wonderful foundations for her entire philosophical system: Objectivism, which is her Metaphysics lies in two words: Existence exists. To which ironically, his student Leonard Peikoff, who is endowed with Ayn Rand's powers after her death, considered the question of anything before birth was nothing, and that nothing could not be a subject of rationalization. Although I would agree with that, it only points out that Reason is incapable of transcending such limitation which goes contrary to Rand's dictum "Reason as the Absolute." This idea is the same with Martin Heidegger's Geworfenheit, or Throwness, that Man is thrown from nothing to something, that is, he is thrown without his consent to exist, where nothingness is beyond the conception of Reason. (This later on was elaborated by Jean Paul Sartre in his "Being and Nothingness" but that does not concern this post) But unlike Rand, Heidegger never claimed the omnipotence of Reason, which absolves him from an obvious mistake that Rand committed. If Rand considered Metaphysics as the starting-point of her philosophical system and in which her's just failed miserably in a contradiction, then it would be logical that anything coming after that, which are her Epistemology, Ethics, Political-Social Philosophy, and Aesthetics, which are appendages or theorems built from that metaphysical axiom are also questionable. "Existence exists" and therefore human beings possess inalienable rights to "life, liberty and property." But the Escherichia Coli also exists, does it mean that it is entitled to life, liberty and equality? An oriental perspective, Rand may actually be misconstrued as student of an exotic guru, as Umberto Eco said: "oriental panpsychism that make certain gurus walk around with gauze over their mouths so as not to kill microorganisms by breathing." This becomes problematic, especially with the rise of Animal and Environmental Ethics, which Rand's Philosophy was not able to anticipate. The question on whether primates could be afforded the same rights as those of Human Beings. If rights are only granted to rational beings, does that mean that people with psychological and neurological disabilities forfeits their grassroot rights of Life, Liberty and Equality? or if they are granted these rights, why not higher form of animals such as Chimpanzees? Also, the problem of the environment is an issue, even before Al Gore, presidentiable-turned-oscar-awardee, produced the documentary "An inconvenient truth," especially with Rand's brand of Capitalism: Laissez-Faire, which she considers as the purest form of Capitalism. A particular example of this is the infamous Hybrid Rice, which besides from being a health risk due to its nature as a Genetically Modified Organism, its capability of killing local rice and replacing it with its own, the possibility of exponentially expanding, guarantees a corporation with the intellectual property rights to that variety of hybrid rice the advantage to impose certain rules without any regards to which soil that rice field belongs to, having of course made the necessary paperworks. In this regards, Laissez-faire becomes problematic. Also, waste production and deforestation in the name of progress, although belonging to a private property is not merely an issue of management policies, but because we already belong to a global village, that is, if a certain corporation with his right of acquire property acquired a vast land of forest, say, the ancient forests of Canada, and decides to cut off all the trees in the area, and replace it with a factory complex, what do you think would happen? In laissez-faire, the market forces would purify all the non-profitable, badly managed firms from its system, hypothetically, if this factory complex turns out to be a bad investment, its effect is not only a concern of the capitalist who build it, as laissez-faire wants it to be, but it becomes a global issue since the whole world who is suffering from the effects of Global warming ( it does not matter if its a good investment or bad, the effects are the same to the world, only that a bad investment would also affect primarily the financial status of the capitalist, which is of course, the essence of capitalists). To simplify terms, Rand pointed out that you are free to do whatever you want as long as you do not infringe the rights of others, but the very notion of laissez-faire is not only an issue of the capitalist anymore, everybody is affected. Such is why laissez-faire is not as practical as it is ideal. She also pointed out that America, although not completely laissez-faire, but the closest one to it, is the apotheosis of Capitalism. American Economic History tells us, that when the United States of America went beyond an agricultural economy to industrial, they decided that laissez-faire which was their current system is not applicable in an industrial economy and thus the shift to a General Welfare policy. This is what Sidney Fine wrote in her, Laissez Faire and the General Welfare State. Although Rand criticized Kant for limiting the reaches of Reason, for placing an unknowability to things, she, from her ignorance of Modern Philosophy it seems, unconsciously used Kant's Categorical Imperative as a framework of her Objective Ethics, that is, as Kant wrote: "Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end and never merely as a means to an end." Rand's Ethical principles are internal or deontological as oppose to external or teleological. Rand's Objectivism ends up as a Subjectivism in the province of Ethics. That although she would reject any form of notion that is mystical and whimsical, in origin, she was unable to realize that somewhere in the convolutions of her ethical frameworks a certain loophole would place her ethical system as subjective. To start with in tracing this problem in Rand's Ethical system, the meta-ethical conception must be pointed out. In this regard, the question is posed: Does Rand's Ethical system acknowledges that the "self" is "one among many"? If No, then it ends up as Solipsism which fails to be at least a decent ethical system ethics concerns itself with others, but since this kind of perspective does not recognize the real existence of others then there would be no point to endeavor with ethics. If yes, then the question goes, is this Ethical system which acknowledges the "self" as merely "one among many" based on Reason which makes it Objective or is it based on mystical intuition/beyond this-world knowledge/whimsical/emotionalism/sympathy which makes it Subjective. If it is Subjective, then this ethical system would not be universalisable therefore it ends up with Ethical Relativism. If this Ethical system is Objective, then, it goes further to ask, is the motivation altruistic, primarily for others, or egoistic, primarily for self? Rand's Ethical system follows this: It acknowledges the "self" as "one among many" which negates solipsism. It is as, Rand would always say: Rational, which makes it Objective as opposed to Subjective. It is Egoistic or Selfish, as opposed to Altruistic which she claims to be, she uses this word often, "Evil." Until that point, there is no problem with her Ethical System. But if a situation like this occur where: You have a significant amount of bread which is going to expire soon and you are unable to eat them or give away to friends or relatives so you decided to throw it away since it is of no use to you.You passed by a very hungry person, a stranger, who is malnourished and very hungry. In which you would-nt profit if you give the bread to the stranger. What would you do? This does not pose a problem to an objective altruist, he/she recognizes that he/she is merely one among many, and thus do what he/she can, as objective reason obligates him/her to uplift the other's suffering.(The model of Objective altruism is that of Thomas Nagel in his "Possibility of ALtruism" in which it would take another post to explain the objectiveness of Nagel's Altruism, for the sake of argument, it is taken as an axiom that there is such a thing as Objective Altruism, that is, Altruism based on objective reason.)The problem here is with the objective egoist. If he/she gives his/her bread to the hungry malnourished person how is this suppose to be a selfish principle since he/she could not profit from it? (the giving away of bread is also subjective since reason does not obligate him/her to give away the bread as opposed to Objective altruism) If he/she neglects the person, and just decides to throw away the significant amount of bread he/she possess, what is the rational motivation to do so? (the answer is necessarily subjective or whimsical) In this dilemma, a objective egoist, has no objective rational argument to support his stance. In either choice, the motivation for the action would either be subjective or objectively altruistic which is both an opposite to the ideals of Rational selfishness. Another example, a classic example of Dr. Rosario Espina, my professor, is with the case, granting for the sake of argument that there are no other factors that would affect the situation, of somebody, a stranger, dropping his/her ballpen. An objective altruist, as long as it does not entail self-sacrifice, would picked it up or tell (or to make any form of communication that would relay the same essential message) the person to which it belongs to that his/her ballpen fell. A objective egoist, would not profit in telling the person that her/his ballpen fell. It would also make no rational sense not to tell her/him. Either ways, the choice made would end up subjective. And this is the problem of Rand's Rational Selfishness. Ayn Rand is wrong. And for the readers who does not take into consideration the "appearance of truth," as Descartes said, spoken by philosophers throughout the intellectual progress of human civilization, would find her pseudo-philosophy quite alluring and consequently, only by contingecy, prompts a following with motivations that ranges from the mere enjoyment of an ephemeral fad to the dogmatic-worshiping-secular-cultic-"fundamental." There are also interesting tidbits in Rand's convolution, which means, that this tribute/critique does not necessarily mean that everything she has to say in her philosophy is wrong. Written under the influence of ennui born from the anxiety of graduating from philosophy and the irritating Summer heat that dissolves every possible passion to embrace the comforts of sleep. Daryl Y. Mendoza 10:40 PM April 21, 2008 p.s Forgive me though for stating this tribute/critique however you wish to look at it, in a perhaps simplified form. Suffice to say, I have presented key concepts worth criticizing in her philosophy. The absence of footnotes, suggest that this is not a formal academic paper, so forgive me again with this leniency since this is only written in the span of 34 minutes. I leave this article's, or whatever you want to call this, grammar and spelling to my faith of multiply's spell check.
Francis Fukuyama pointed out that the end of history is seen in the ubiquity of neoliberalism in Society. This is the fate of the world. A point higher than High Capitalism where the world is held in the all-encompassing embrace of Globalization. Where then is Marx? The hero of the proletariat and the oppressed, the Buddha of Political Economy, the light in the dark ages of the Machine? Has he wither away before his prophecy on regards to the State? Suffice to say, that whether he has come to pass or not, he is reduced to a whisper of frustrated intellectuals in their ivory towers. The revolutionaries up the hill have lost their flare, they are nothing more but mindless leeches waiting in a protracted state for the warm blood of power to which they could suck to satiate an already lost and hopeless cause, they are no different from those who are on the streets.
Modern Globalization is the child of Capitalism, and thus expound its mother's niche in reality, to exploit and oppress under the name of profit, or how the yanks would say "the american dream." Indeed, the United States of America is seen as the apotheosis of this phenomenon, perhaps this is because she alone is left with the title "Superpower" and thus holds legitimacy, as if she needs it, to dictate Global policies and trends.
But the unfolding of History brought about the process towards the end of history ala Fukuyama in a standstill. September 11 happened and everything began to realize History's attempt of purification. Did it work?
Capitalism manifest itself in our times through Globalization, the apogee of Profit. It is a hegemony. It exterminates domestic cultures and presents a global culture, a 'universal' social reality, a global standard. The system dictates what is good and what is bad, metaphysics is dead, God is dead.
This Hegemony to a Global Order, in its attempts to be such, failed. Butterfly Effect. September 11, is the key to the self-destruction of this order. Terrorism, with the use of the system's own resources, among other things, the Media, has frozen the fall of the Twin Towers in history. A spectacle that has captured the world. It is not the fall of the physical structure that is important but its symbolic essence, globalization.
The Hegemonic system attempts to counter this threat to its survival through waging war, but to whom? It's faux pas is to wage a war in the physical realm but the war is situated in the symbolic. Sept. 11 was a success not because it killed so many Americans and sowed terror in her soil but rather because it attacked an important symbol of this Hegemony, the twin towers. No matter how the system replies, it is bound to its own destruction. Have the "Coalition" ever found any WMD in Iraq? Have they found Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan? While waging this war of no ends, America is losing. And she will continue to lose and bleed until she has exhausted all her blood, she will die. And when she does so shall globalization for American is the heart of Globalization.
The war of no ends is Cancer to America, but doing nothing would also kill her. Either ways, September 11 presented a death blow to America, slowly but surely, Lady Liberty would soon blow out her torch.
September 11 is the starting point to liberation from this hegemony. It has nothing to do with Religion or Ideology, although it hides in that veil, it is beyond that. Septemeber 11 is the reply towards the hegemony of Globalization, Chaos happened (in an attempt to determine and control a complex system it is bound to self-destruct.) It also has brought us to a time of irony. The more we enjoy freedom and liberty with globalization, the more we become less free with surveillance.
The system has gone paranoid. It does not know what to do. Waging useless wars, infringing privacy among others, they are not "solutions" but aids to a quicker death.
Rational choice is under the scrutiny of Big Brother. The end of history may actually never come to be completed. Fukuyama was dreaming. After Sept 11, the "Free world" has become a subject of the Camera. The more the system attempts to infringe privacy, the more it loses its ideals of Freedom and equality, and the more we become a fascist state. And these meaningless wars are only aggravating the situation. Nothing more legitimizes a revolution, not just any revolution, a global revolution, an authentic "Internationale." It is Terrorism that has awaken the oppressed from their slumber.
And perhaps then, Marx is still alive afterall, although mere whispers in some university halls, like the flap of a butterfly wing it produces a hurricane somewhere.
Strange, who would have thought that Terrorism would be our salvation? And Osama Bin Laden, our messiah? The prejudices of the current System wants us to believe otherwise.
Let's cut the crap. I have enjoyed my silence from blogging this summer, but somehow, some appalling individual resuscitated some dormant frustrations which inadvertedly spark-started a domino effect.
Some guy, who studies in one of the big four universities in Manila and mind you, is a Ph.D student replied to my statement in regards to Relativism in Post-modernity in the most, how should you say this: naive, primitive, down-right-god-knows-it-does-not-make-any-sense, conspicuously ungrammatical, tautologous, suffice to say: Champion for Intellectual BS for the year. Forgive the arrogance, i would have let it pass as a respectful discussion on the topic, but it appears that he's reply, obviously delusional in his part, included some attempts to undermine my reply with jest as if saying, he is right, which of course is nothing close to Reality.
When he attempts to intellectually undermine people he should at least have the following: a.) knowledge of the subject, b.) cogency in argument at least an iota, c.) some background with the english grammar ( i may not be perfect with my grammar but at least i do my best to make my ungrammatical statements less conspicuous and oh, i dont go around undermining opinions) and of course d.) a brain, no matter how small. The poor bastard is a Phd student, god knows how that came about.
What else is there to say?
Life ain't fair. And somebody took my Oreos away.
and i still cant get it right.
He's a fucking Phd student in a top philosophy University in Manila? pardon the french, but what the fuck is going on!?
And i just graduated from undergrad philosophy.
I'm lost right now, pretty much lost.
The single drop of water from the almost dried-up faucet violates the most innocent tone of serenity that blankets this shangrila, a dark room of concrete, bleak in first impression, where the glare of the summer sun is unable to penetrate fully to which only the most caressing shine of warmth radiates in the softest tone. Everything was distrubed when that, the salient symbolism of life, decided to embrace the ground as if it is its long lost love and shattered itself into pieces of inumerable quantification.It dissipated and left a mark of the most violent kind but even the mark is slowly fading to obscurity, and so did everything.
| Lenten | Mar 22, '08 9:29 AM
for everyone |
Every year God dies, well at least in the Christian sense. And what do we do? We of course have to celebrate it, most of us prefer to go to the beach, whether in Bora or Bantayan or some exotic island, but a celebration nonetheless. Some Catholics would ask: "why the celebration?", it is a time of mourning for God is dead. But such is exactly the reason for celebrating, that "God is dead" and to top it all of, it is us, "we killed him."
Jean Baudrillard is famous for his notion of Hyperreality which is a concept born under the Postmodern milieu. But in order to understand Baudrillard’s Hyperreality, it is important to understand the roots of its origin before he conceived of it as such. Suffice to say that Baudrillard, before he became a Postmodern superstar, was a critic of the excesses of the capitalist mode of production and its derivative cultural consumption using the lens of Marx’s Critique of the Political Economy, which consequently led to Baudrillard being labeled as a neomarxist. His point of departure is the idea of reification presented by Gyorgi Lukacs and by so doing ended-up presenting a semiological analysis in his perspective to the critique to the Political Economy. He calls this as a “Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign.” In this critique, he presented a semiological analysis of the Marx’s Critique of the Political Economy and asserted that in the current times, the commodity does not only possess functionality, that is Use-value, and equivalence with other objects, that is, Exchange-value, but it also possess a Sign-value. The Sign-value proliferates in the commodities of the current times. The Sign-value is that of Difference, that is, it creates a difference, in terms of social ranking, between individuals. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy points out that: …this historical stage, from around 1920 to the 1960s, the need to intensify demand supplemented concern with lowering production costs and with expanding production. In this era of capitalist development, economic concentration, new production techniques, and the development of new technologies, accelerated capacity for mass production and capitalist corporations focused increased attention on managing consumption and creating needs for new prestigious goods, thus producing the regime of what Baudrillard has called sign-value. On Baudrillard's analysis, advertising, packaging, display, fashion, "emancipated" sexuality, mass media and culture, and the proliferation of commodities multiplied the quantity of signs and spectacles, and produced a proliferation of sign-value. Henceforth, Baudrillard claims, commodities are not merely to be characterized by use-value and exchange value, as in Marx's theory of the commodity, but sign-value — the expression and mark of style, prestige, luxury, power, and so on — becomes an increasingly important part of the commodity and consumption. From this perspective, Baudrillard claims that commodities are bought and displayed as much for their sign-value as their use-value, and that the phenomenon of sign-value has become an essential constituent of the commodity and consumption in the consumer society. With the advent of technology, the Sign-value of the commodity and the temptation to consume it has greatly magnified. This is seen with the emergence of new forms of mass communication: cinema, print, radio and most importantly television. The power of Contemporary Mass Communications and the failure of Marxist thought to preconceive it motioned Baudrillard to cite Marshall Mcluhan and stated that: …Marx, the spiritual contemporary of the steam engine and railroads, was already obsolete in his lifetime with the appearance of the telegraph. …he is saying that Marx, in his materialist analysis of production, had virtually circumscribed productive forces as a privileged domain from which language, signs, and communication in general found themselves excluded. In fact, Marx does not even provide for a genuine theory of railroads as “media,” as modes of communication: they hardly enter into consideration. Later on, Baudrillard cemented his break from neomarxism which he deemed as obsolete and unviable tool to explain the form of political economy of the current times. He asserts that the very critique of political economy by Marx was at the outset a tautology. He mentions that: And in this Marxism assists the cunning of capital. It convinces men that they are alienated by the sale of their labor power, thus censoring the much more radical hypothesis that they might be alienated as labor power, as the “inalienable” power of creating value by their labor. This very tautology of Marx’s Critique, which he calls, “The Mirror of Production” that dominates “Western Metaphysic” made him resolved that: The critique of political economy is basically completed. The materialist dialectic has exhausted its content in reproducing form. At this level, the situation is no longer that of a critique: it is inextricable. And following the same revolutionary movement as Marx did, we must move to radically different level that, beyond its critique, permits the definitive resolution of political economy. This level is that of symbolic exchange and its theory. And just as Marx thought it necessary to clear the path to the critique of political economy with a critique of the philosophy of law, the preliminary to this radical change of terrain is the critique of the metaphysic of the signifier and the code, in all its current ideological extent. For lack of better term, we call this the critique of the political economy of the sign. It is this break from Marxism, and structuralism generally, that Baudrillard’s Hyperreality is slowly took its form without abandoning his concept of the Sign-value but rather expanded it by asserting its ubiquitous nature in the commodities of the postmodern times and in the process dismantling the rigid bifurcation of Structuralists since it has been subsumed by political economy. He cites Ferdinand de Saussure’s two dimension of language: structural and functional which Baudrillard respectively paralleled to Marx’s exchange-value and use-value, in which both, Baudrillard considers, representatives of the “‘classical’ economics of value.” He states also that: “Both are dialectically linked throughout Marx’s analyses and define a rational configuration of production, governed by political economy.” And these, “‘classical’ economics of value” for Baudrillard are “put to an end” through a revolution of value “which carries value beyond its commodity form into its radical form.” This radical form is what he intended as the next step from Marx’s Critique of the Political Economy. This dislocation of the Structuralists’ bifurcation has allowed the signifier to be autonomous from the signified, and thus the signifier’s relation to the reality principle; which is the signified, the objective, the utility, Nature itself; becomes not an obligation that is, the signifier being free from the signified allows Sign to be perpetually exchange with other Signs rather than “against the real.” This is the advent of Simulation then subsequently that of Hyperreality; the beginnings of the Hyperreal which dominates the Postmodern culture. This is the mutation of Capital, from utility to Social prestige; it has grown to include the entire scope of Humanity, from Art to Production. Society is now moving towards the full development of Hyperreality. Baudrillard presented this development of Hyperreality in the Order of Simulacra.
So much as I wanted to buy a new pc game, i rather opted to buy Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, or Kritik der Reinen Vernunft which is a fancier and more academic way of saying, that is, in German, for the reason, that i just realized that my hard disk was partitioned in such a way that my primary drive is almost to the brink of exploding in its fulness, while my secondary disk is almost as empty as the nutshells of most of those who are graduating with honors this monday. I began to reread Kant's first Critique since I started venturing out to this testament to teutonic thoroughness and complexity when I was in my second year. Suffice to say that during that time I was only up to his preface and introduction. But now, I am determined to finish the whole book even if it means letting two upcoming Baurillards ("The Illusion of the End" and "Spirit of Terrorism") and an already bought Foucault (History of Sexuality) to stand in line, while rereading along with Descartes Meditations and Plato's Republic. The Critique of Pure Reason is an examination of Reason through Reason itself. It presents a new avenue to the metaphysical dilemma of traditional thinkers concerning the origin of entities, which is either through an infinite regress in an attempt to search for the roots or a necessary postulate: an "absolute" such as God. Kant provides another alternative by introducing his Transcendental Idealism in which he considers to be a Copernican Revolution because entities could be explained free from a purely objective perspective, that is, our knowledge of entities are subject-independent. Like when Copernicus dethroned the reign of Ptolemaic Geocentrism with his Heliocentrism, Kant dethroned the tradition of a purely objective approach to knowledge which was accepted by both Rationalists and Empiricists, and pointed out that the process of cognition is highly dependent upon the subject. THese he calls the Categories of a priori concepts. But of course, I would not give justice to Kant by writing my own prolegomena to his Critique in my blog, which is an oversimplification. IT is enough to say, more or less, what Kant spoke about in the Introduction to his first Critique. and by the ways, Karlo thinks I have a tinge of ultra-nationalism in me, which of course is exaggerated. Just take away the ultra, everything is right in its place. :-)
A Latin honor is just what I need to serve as crutches for my already vitiated ego. I thought I'd be awarded with it, since my GPA qualifies. But sadly, due to some technical issues of being underloaded, I was disqualified. This is one of the most important events in my life and it is going down the drain. But I'm not crying, to think of it, I have problem on crying, that is, I cant cry.
Where am I going? Have I fallen that low already and yet I am too blinded to see it? Is it my arrogance to say that I could not stomach some people awarded with honors during graduation who I know are force feed with mainstream education and knows almost nothing about the grand thoughts that govern the Human civilization?
Perhaps I am just sour-graping. And perhaps, I really am not intellectually worthy to receive such an award. Would my toils in tinkering with yellow crinkled books of antiquity and the rather eccentric layouts of newer prints end up as mere futile attempts to understand the greater schemes of everything?
Was Bach, Kant and Dali mere hallucinations of an intellectual play going in my mind? A discourse of madness, streaming in a movement beyond the description of language with the appearance of insight and enlightenment but in its root just empty concepts, imaginations and make-believe brewed by my uncoscious to keep me afloat from the very meaninglessness of existence.
With all this unravelling, this process of unconcealment, perhaps the very enlightenment that i thought i had is presently occuring, where am i to go from here? With all these absuridities, Is there a God? I am compelled to disbelieve. Descartes' deus ex machina is inutile and untenable, much more then is its bloodbrother, Nietzsche's uebermensch for hOw could there be a Superman in a world which is absurd?
Truth, Justice, the Good and Beauty what are these but empty words. Everything noble has already been raped with such sadistic thoroughness. The world, its very virginity which it consecrates to God is an profane offering, a blasphemy. All we have left is the stench of a whore who enjoys her enterprise of profanity. Why bother to do good? or to speak of truth? or to grasp the Beautiful? or be just? In a world covered with decadence, everything is permissible but everything is rotten.
There is nothing noble left in this world. All is a dry orgy of half-goats and cadavers.
There is nothing left for us. We should pray for our obliteration. It is our only way to salvation.
These are the two things the will keep me entertain for this week, after a grueling week of facing idiocy and more idiocy at last i could give myself some break. Avatar Complete Season 1-3 and Foucault's History of Sexuality Vol. 1 simultaneously reached my desk just this afternoon, and i'm drooling as we speak. What better way to unwind than to watch Avatar and read Foucault? These are definitely the finer things in life. :-)
The drama of life is that it is a perpetual agony. Change tears us apart; dislocates us from where we find our simple happiness. It reminds us that life is a spectacle, without conflict, it wouldn't be life at all. And yet when we let go of this comfort, when we have finally given up to the fancies of change, we have unknowingly damned ourselves to commit things that would forever haunt us in our short lives. It makes life shorter that it already is.
------------------------
Shattered Mirror. The fragments draw its share of my blood.
And it makes its way down to the ground, an intended pun.
But I was gazing at the horizon, whose impeccable thickness of Dark swallows the last vestiges of the Sun.
The zephyr whispered something inaudible, left, and never came back.
And then Snow came and everything petrified to ice.
Amidst it, the unmistakable drops of crimson unconceals the chaos in this seeming monotony.
I am always excited with our Symbolic Logic class; though this excitement is not shared by all, to be more accurate, only shared by less than 20% of the class. This is one of those times that makes me smile out of the sheer pleasure of following the convolutions of the art.
This day was different. It was pre-finals. We were told to provide proof for the following arguments.
And there was this specific number which gave me a certain challenge, which i would later on, remember with frustration.
It was the infamous number 2 argument in the test. Everybody in class knows it. An hour and 1/2 of gazing at it, i'm more than sure, that it had everybody worried. It is in itself 21 points, that is, it has 21 lines. Whose not going to be worried? The exam constitutes only three items.
It started with glee:
1 (T.O) = (E.P) / E > - S
2 S = (T.O)
3 (F v M) > A
4 - (E.P) v (F v M)
5 -A v - (W . R)
6 R > W
7 -W > -R TRANS 6
8 W v -R MI 7
9 -A v (-W V -R) DM 5
...and then the frustration starts...
10 (-A v -W) v -R ASSOC 9
11 (-W v -A) v -R COMM 10
12 (W > -A) v -R MI 11
13 (-A v W) v -R COMM 12
14 (W v -A) v - R COMM 13
15 (W v -R) v -A COMM 14
16 -A MP 15, 8
17 -(F v M) MT 3,16
18 -(E . P) DS 4,17
19
... and when i was about to ponder on the unprovable nature of the argument...
"I'm sorry class, its not 'E' implies negative 'S', sorry, its 'R' implies negative 'S', prove R > -S and not E > -S. lets extend another 30 minutes"
... and with that, everything dimmed. Didn't continued. Just plainly numb.
until now, the after-effects is unmistakable.
The country is in deep shit.
Are the people overreacting spurred by the noble ideals of justice and truth?
Or are they just being uncritical, the role that they have been perpetually playing in society?
Is it not in our interest to seek for truth? But there are those, who have already prejudged the situation, with the pretense for Truth.
How much do we know of the issue? How much do we know the Truth? What brings us the Truth? In these times, it is the Mass Media in its entire scope that brings us these events.
The events unraveling is a spectacle. It is purely public entertainment. A soap opera, only this time, the audience could actualize their anger for the 'villain' by marching to the streets. Even this action, becomes a part of the show itself.
Editing. It is the manifestation of social control in the realm of communication which pervades our time. The gaze of the camera is the death of the panoptic view. The movement of this gaze is motioned by capital. Virtues are nothing more but fantasies and fantasies exist within the gaze. What is beyond the gaze is the cold desert of the real. It isnt as entertaining as it looks on TV.
Who is the villain? Who is Hero?
With this kind of entertainment, why bother for the Real.
How do you think this would end up, in a comedy or a tragedy?
While Sipping some Longjing Tea, glaring at Wassily Kandinsky's Improvisation 30, listening to Vivaldi's Spoza son disprezzata sung by Cecilia Bartoli, cogitating on John Donne's The Ecstacy; i have come to write about today. (I'm suppose to be writing something on Hyperrealism, but i am a procastinator. Thus, i leave it to be unattended for now.) And this is what John Perry calls Structured Procrastination.
Knowledge is a farce. It is not viable.
Ramon-Horta was shot. He is critical.
Terrorism is media-made. There is no terrorism without the media. Media itself is terrorism.
The fuss on Jun Lozado. Quo vadis verum?
Richard Lisay mentioned that the Holy Spirit is not God. Merely a manifestation of Christ's teachings.
What is Idiocy? Fideists.
Vanitas vanitatum omnia vanitas.
Still, Kandinsy does not make sense, perhaps i should stop thinking of Donne. Or is it just the tea? Or perhaps, just perhaps, it is Bartoli singing a Vivaldi.
| |
