Archive for the ‘ Philosophy ’ Category

Destruction of the Self

Humans are the only beings that can have a self. Any child builds one naturally, and it is the greatest pleasure of any parent to watch this happen – and help it to happen. The same is true of society; any human society is built by its people – and it is their greatest pleasure [ READ MORE ]

An Empty Black Box

This is what people have become. In software terms: an object whose operations and states are known – not completely yet, but since everyone is focused figuring out what remains to be figured out, the unknowns are becoming less and less important. Now that I have said that – in my opinion, quite a mouthful [ READ MORE ]

People Who Made Things

In my father’s time people either made things (in manufacturing) or made things work (in the railroads). People were still important, because nothing would happen without them. What do people do now? Nothing, which is natural because they are nothing. And this is the reason, I believe, they are destroying their world: it has destroyed [ READ MORE ]

The Ideology of Utilitarianism

Having done my bit to improve the world this morning, this afternoon I resumed my reading of The Condition of Man by Lewis Mumford, one of my patron saints – fully aware that no one else will bother reading him. The following is from page 305: — On the basis of its quantitative success, this [ READ MORE ]

Sartre’s Nausea

I was much impressed with the RibbonFarm blog and Venkatesh Rao, its writer. Then I became obsessed with my own thoughts and forgot about him. But I am still on his mailing list, and I picked up this link from there. It’s an excellent intro to Sartre, the best I have seen[ READ MORE ]

Being Part of Something Big

This is one of the most powerful of our human obsessions. It probably showed up about the time we became civilized. Before that, we were content to live in small societies, and felt no need for something bigger. The coming of civilization has never been studied very thoroughly, as far as I know. Perhaps one [ READ MORE ]

Meliorism

I am reading Classical American Philosophy, and in the Introduction, on page 9, it discusses Meliorism. William James states: The melioristic universe universe is conceived of after a social analogy, as a pluralism of independent powers. It will succeed just in proportion as more of these work for its success. If none work, it will [ READ MORE ]

Be In The World, But Not Of It

I never thought my religious background, which was the curse of my young life, would ever do me any good – but all of a sudden it has come to my rescue. My family belonged to a small religion, more like a sect really, and one thing they hated was worldliness. The world was evil, [ READ MORE ]

We Have Put Too Much of Ourselves Into Our Machines

As result, there is little of us left. This is something thinkers of all kinds have overlooked. Perhaps because they thought of technology and people as two different things – when they are only one. Perhaps because technical change was so slow for so long. But about 500 years ago a technological and social speedup resulted [ READ MORE ]

Sordor

From Webster’s Third New International Dictionary: Function: noun Inflected Form(s): -s Etymology: New Latin, from Latin sordes dirt, filth + -or – more atSWART : REFUSE, DREGS; also : SORDIDNESS I can across this word reading Lewis Mumford’s The Condition of Man, which I have spoken of frequently before, on page  301: For those who found it impossible to accept the grinding discipline of the [ READ MORE ]

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