Posted on

20170120

​Slavoj Žižek defending his stance against political correctness in Zero Squared #95: Žižek And The Double Blackmail podcast. He argues (in short) that political correctness comes to play only after public moral and decency has been corrupted. Political correctness tries to enforce decency through rigid dogma and etiquette, but it’s doomed to fail because decency is not a matter of form, it’s a mode of existence. 

He also shares interesting notes on academic power, arguing that it is: 

  1. The power to employ. 
  2. To fund research. 
  3. To make publication. 

And that academicians do not have this power!

He also outlines a new memesis for the political left: “Liberal fascists” i.e right wing politicians who execute social transfers which benifit the working class. He claims that the possibility for “liberal fasism” arise from the lefts lack of motivation to adapt to new political realities. Hes mapping a route to leftist populism.

Posted on

20170119

Humans are not alienated, we are in our element because we are the element. #ॐ We don’t eat meat because we are unaware or the pain animals feel when they are slaughtered, we eat because we are aware of their pain. Our societies are unjust because we like them this way. By making the world unfair we get to excuse ourself from the real work ahead, the process of changing ourselves.

Catching up on Marx: Marxism by David L. Prychitko. A weird source but a nifty text.

I want to rehearse the skill of talking while listening. I want to have conversations in which both parties talk, listen and understand each other at the same time.

Posted on

20170115

The moment when you ponder, is claiming a Google account in your childs name intrusive or a rite of passage which should not be interfeared by the parents.

If life is about money, businessmen are the best leaders. #ॐ

Donald Trump is a politician of the attention economy age. He is an attention politician much like Putin, Berlusconi and Stubb. Such politicians work to convert national stereotypes into political dogma. They are nouveau-nationalist. Putin uses stereotypes associated with street thugs in drafting Russian foreign policy, Berlusconi used Machiavellian macho-culture to keep Italy in the focus of EU and Stubb went for sports to pave way for fund cuts on education and universities (conducted by the Sipilä administration).

Every Finnish media outlet is packed with news about Trumps presidential journey. USAs political efforts of becoming the centre of the world are working out well. Everytime Trump is mentioned our attention to local politics, the politics we could imagine to affect are hindered. Our imaginations are captivated with contemporary North-American mythology. He is a tool selling the American dream.

Democracy is being blinded by nouveau-grand-narratives (best illustrated in the the MacGyver reboot). Every sentence spend on Trump is a sentence lost from the critique of the Sipilä administrations neo-liberal shenanigans.