Upward Spiral #8 – The Interpersonal.
In this very intimate episode Eric Duffy and Ken Vallario explore the interpersonal as a political space.
Upward Spiral #3 – Homeland and The Holy War
In our third episode we explore the oft neglected fact of the ongoing Holy War, and how our Western habit of neglecting the power of culture is an aspect of this Holy War that only becomes apparent after we’ve been engaged in it. We use the show Homeland (Season 1) as a starting point for [...]
Culture Is Your Reality.
Culture is a field of perception, a mind-state that pre-registers incoming information as belonging to conditioned categories. It is an inevitable totalitarian aspect of growing up as a social animal. It is innate to the experience of culture that many aspects of one’s own are not only imperceptible but that they are perceived by other [...]
21st Century Man – The Male Gaze
Haydn Long Joshua Marc Levy Daniel Alzamora-Dicken Last night I went over to my Facebook Profile page to see if one of my posts showed up, and on one’s profile page there is an area that has a random selection of one’s friends with their profile pictures. There, in that dozen or so faces, I [...]
Human Rights
All human beings have rights. By this I mean they have the right to act, express, struggle, resist or surrender. It is the protection of these rights that is a luxury. And such protection requires protectors, people who are capable of applying force (either physical or moral) in opposition to those who seek to exploit [...]
A Hero Rises – Follow Up
The practice of philosophy demands we put down our thoughts, even if they are raw, in order to get beneath them to the deeper insights. It is a wasteful art, and this cannot be helped. And the reason I point this out, is to defend the reason why I would return so quickly to what [...]
Saints and Sinners
If terrorism is defined as ‘the use of fear toward political ends’ then who among us has not cast this stone. In other words, who has never made their political arguments based upon some fearful future outcome. In an age of fear, the accusation of terrorism is itself a form of the crime. My point [...]
New Tactics for OWS #2 – ONE WORLD CURRENCY
HEY OCCUPY WALL STREET! PUT OUT A CALL AROUND THE WORLD FOR A SINGLE GLOBAL CURRENCY. From the beginning of my participation with Occupy Wall Street I have advocated for an absurdist approach to demands. Why? Not because I want chaos, but because the problems we face are too large for singular or systemic legislative [...]
New Tactics for OWS
I received the following letter from an anonymous contributor. I thought it was an interesting set of ideas. I like some of his/her reflections on the non-violence. What do you all think? New Non-Violent Techniques For Occupy Wall Street Non-Violent E.M.P.s (ElectroMagnetic Pulses) Dear Occupy Wall Street, I have struggled emotionally, watching Occupy Wall Street [...]
Superstition and Superposition
Philosophy is only understood as having a relationship with the truth by those who practice its most superstitious form. For those of us who read between the lines, philosophy is a non-fiction form of character development, whose greatest end is found in the fullest expression of the self. By doing this, by inscribing in language [...]
2 Party Systems – Polartics
Our inability to settle upon shared universal values has to do with legitimate tensions that arise out of dichotomies in many many branches of human thought. I will list a few and invite you to add to the list. The important point I am making is this; as these polarities overlap one another it creates [...]
An Inappropriate Truth #3 – Tyranny of Unknowing
Democracy and Enlightenment are mutually dependent. Therefore, because we are far from the latter, we cannot expect, any time soon, to have anything like the former. We are doomed to experience either the tyranny of power, or the tyranny of the mob, and these too are mutually dependent. Our laws are poems we write to [...]
Empire and Imagination
Imagination is the primary driver of compassion, as it enables us to feel what those who suffer feel. Compassion drives revolution, because shared feelings compel us to act in solidarity. Thus Imagination is the primary threat to all empires, and so every measure is taken to squash it. In our time, Imagination is squashed by [...]
Revolutionary Tools … puns for fundamentalists…
If I have a gift, in the realm of revolution, it is for creating linguistic frames that allow us to perceive the problem in a way that implies a next step. And one of these problems is found in our use of the word Solidarity. There are two forms of solidarity; negative and positive. Negative [...]
Inception – 21st Century Miracle
I was talking with my friend E.D. last night about my theory of ‘The Miracle Dream.’ I have long believed that the only thing that could create the kind of lasting progress that many in the world hunger for is a genuine miracle, something unexplainable that appears real to everybody. There can be no political [...]
Movie Review – A Dangerous Method
It is often the case when we think about Freud and Jung that we project backwards our ideas about what it means to be a doctor, what it means to provide treatment, as the world in which we live, at least in theory, has very rigid notions about how we are to relate to medicinal [...]
Legacy #1 – Obscenity
In this series I will frame the way I want to be perceived by my colleagues. I want to be an obscenity to those who peddle pornographic art and have the balls to call it post-modern feminism.
Movie Review – Melancholia
Last night I was feeling melancholic…this is rare these days…I am usually a happy ole chap…but I am familiar with the feeling…I have swum in its waters enough in my life to know when my feet are wet. After my family went to sleep I decided to put down my work and look for a [...]
2012 Campaign Slogans #3 – War on Women
I am giving these new campaign slogans away free of charge to any of the politico-gangsters who want them…. “All Wars Are On Women”
Paragraphorism #2 – American Beauty 2.0
The artistry and elegance involved in the precise yanking of a toilet paper roll, the tearing and poetry of the folding that follows, the origamic diversity of heuristically derived forms, utilized to a foul but efficiency-driven endeavor, however pure it might be prior to its end, is hidden from the world of ideas, from the [...]
Admission of Guilt
April 5, 2011 Most of the things about me some consider great exist because of some neglected responsibility. I was thinking of my wife this morning and how we met, working together for a week at a camp for underprivileged children. That whole week was spent neglecting my duties in favor of pursuing the object [...]
21st Century Dialogue
I posit that the following video is to our time what Plato’s dialogues were to his. The use of video allows for a kind of perfect reading that was impossible in earlier times, giving us a chance to meditate not just on the words spoken but the interpersonal dynamics, the subtext, that will make the [...]
Societal Diagnosis – Personality Disorder
I have long believed that all of society could be looked at through the psychological perspective. And I think, at some point, one is able to diagnose one’s immediate social environment as lacking all the signs of mental health. In response to the ongoing Travon Martin controversy, I’ve been horrified by the willingness of our [...]
The Carnage of Law
After watching this hilarious and dark and serious film I was compelled to point to it as a great exemplification of a feeling that is particular to our time, in the way that existentialism was particular to the early 20th century. In this film you will encounter something that has become a norm, when people [...]