“The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.”
–Alfred North Whitehead
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10 years later…
An audio/visual collage, from the days of Wilson when sheep roamed the White House lawn to the days of Bush, when politics had already been fully transformed into pageantry. Read more
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Follow me to the desert, my soul.
Follow me to the desert, My soul. Sing with me Until I lose my mind; Dance with me, Until my body unwinds, And my feet no longer touch the ground, And all that’s left of time Is the sound of wind shaping sand. Build with me a temple, My soul. Share with Read more
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The Democratization of Initiation at Burning Man
As religious scholar Lee Gilmore argues in her book Theater in a Crowded Fire: Ritual and Spirituality at Burning Man, the annual Burning Man festival in Black Rock City, NV provides that growing sector of the population who identify as “spiritual but not religious” with an opportunity to cultivate the communal ethos and participate in Read more
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Cosmopolitical Reflections upon leaving for Black Rock City
Since the dominant narratives bringing forth the ongoing misadventure of industrial capitalism fail to properly situate the human soul in its actual time and place, any serious inquiry into the nature of our individual and collective situation must begin with an act of counter memory: we must ask afresh in each generation, who are we, Read more
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Žižek on the worldlessness of global capitalism
He nails it (from a recent column in the London Review of Books about the UK riots): “Alain Badiou has argued that we live in a social space which is increasingly experienced as ‘worldless’: in such a space, the only form protest can take is meaningless violence. Perhaps this is one of the main dangers of Read more
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The Divine Function in Whitehead: Not Your Grandpa’s Occasionalism
In my last post in response Bob Woodard/Naught Thought‘s thoughts concerning the ontological fuzziness of process philosophy, I referred to Whitehead as an “occasionalist” without explaining exactly what I meant. After reading Steven Shaviro/The Pinicchio Theory‘s insightful commentary on the function of God in Whitehead’s cosmology, as well as Levi Bryant/Larval Subject‘s dismissive opinion that Whitehead is “a Read more
“In one sense philosophy does nothing. It merely satisfies the entirely impractical craving to probe and adjust ideas which have been found adequate each in its special sphere of use. In the same way the ocean tides do nothing. Twice daily they beat upon the cliffs of continents and then retire. But have patience and look deeper; and you find that in the end whole continents of thought have been submerged by philosophic tides, and have been rebuilt in the depths awaiting emergence. The fate of humanity depends upon the ultimate continental faith by which it shapes its action, and this faith is in the end shaped by philosophy.”
—Alfred North Whitehead
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Footnotes2Plato 