[Socrates]

“Identity Is Always Accompanied by Violence” — Marshall McLuhan on Globalism and Tribalism

Your ideals sound great, but unfortunately, we live in a world where the worst intentions have facilitated the medium and there hasn’t been much criticism about how much the medium determines our actions aswell.
[hr]
I think Foucault is great thinker for Anarchists myself, rather than improving democracy.

[Socrates]

Form seems to be the last thing of interest to this thing, it is more interested in something like transformation or destruction or change.

As @”thetrizzard” put it to me earlier –

It’s only essential in the sense that ‘forms’ have become stable over time giving the appearance of being fixed when this is clearly not the case in reality…all is process, in flux

[Socrates]

In my opinion, the golden elixir, the philosophers stone, is kind of like the ‘layout’ of what philosophy is about, its ‘goal’ so to speak, it is the most general way to describe a journey through yourself and the world, loving wisdom and the pursuit of it. Check out Michel Foucault’s ‘care of the self’.

[Socrates]

The more I think about this analogy, the more amazed by Wittgenstein I become. What he’s saying is that all is flux and essence/identity (the what it is) only appears solid, but it’s really like an amalgamted congealed construct. While it has the appearance of solidity, it is like a given, something we take as eternal, universal and unconditional, but the pebbles in the stream may move in a month after we have seen them stay in the same place for weeks.

[Socrates]

To me, it’s a matter of principles and empathy. Don’t throw away rights you wouldn’t like taken away from yourself, but then again, sadness can lead to acceptance of domination.
[hr]
Domination for others, always with a double standard. It’s such spiteful rhetoric.

[Socrates]

Have you ever read any Marshall McLuhan? I think he’s essential for discussions about technology and politics.

His view is that technology leads to relief of pain, effort is diminished and so laziness and tribalism become almost inevitable.

[Socrates]

I suppose it’s like any form of applied practical philosophy, alchemy is all about knowing ‘the elements’ and substance in order to unite with the processes of formation to aid transformation. Pretty much all of the works of Spinoza, Michel Foucault and other thinkers like them have similar approaches to philosophy as practice. Although I would argue that all philosophy can be viewed this way.

[Socrates]

My first defence of Butler comes on page 69 of the PDF where the botched operation to remove a problematic foreskin which thwarts urination is described. It wasn’t until a whole year after the botched operation that the parents had watched TV and encounter John Money, who offered the chance for child sex reassignment that would then lead to socialisation as a gender different from the one originally assigned at birth.

If gender is performative and we learn scripts from an early age, some I have bought up before, for instance:

The idea that mimesis is an ‘automatic’ tendency present in humans from birth is supported by the pioneering work of psychologists Meltzoff and Moore (1985), who studied newborn babies of even a few hours old mimicking movements of tongue and lips.

Further evidence comes from studies of the ‘delayed imitation paradigm’ featuring infants of a few months old (Meltzoff and Moore 1999; Bauer et al. 2000; Nelson 2007:94). Here the psychologist shows a child, usually with a number of repetitions, a series of three- or four-step action sequences, e.g., moving some toys in a particular order. Some weeks or months later, the baby is brought back and given the same toys to play with. Nine month old children tend to repeat some part of a sequence they were shown a month ago. And children who were 20 months old at the start of the experiment can still repeat a sequence two years later. It seems unlikely that any conscious recall is involved here: these do seem to be cases of ‘implicit memory’, of unconsciously imitated patterns becoming incorporated over time.

One year is well within the time frame as these experiments have shown for David to have embodied being a boy/male/masculine, as the script performance was not introduced until after the surgery.

[Socrates]

Mushroom experiences are not what I would call hallucinating as such, more a ‘highlighting’ of what is already there, it just makes you stop and actually look.

[Socrates]

I does in some sense die from time to time as it transforms, what mystics and philosophers refer to as ‘ego death’.

[Socrates]

This is a great lecture from Yale about ‘gender as performance’ and how heterosexuality is dependent on the origination of homosexuality. Drag exposes gender as performance. Lesbian, trans and queer are not legitimised in the same way as homosexuality, which is both legitimised and prohibited.

[Socrates]

Philosophy basics is a good site.

[Socrates]

I should rephrase that (was tired when typing) – If nobody is around to hear a tree fall in the woods, does it still make a sound?

[Socrates]

I think @”notathoughtgiven” is saying we all experience reality differently, which is true, but it is also true that there are things that don’t require experience for them to be a part of reality – if a tree falls in a forest, does it make a sound? 

What about the body, or the sun, are they mental?

[Socrates]

Michel Foucault’s take on the ancient view of disease is seen as positive- as the ‘evil invisible other’ of the body.

[Author]

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