Thought 645: Twelve Notes

(1) 

Emotional agency is a fiction in so far

as those physiological manifestations

that move us out of ourselves, i.e.

e-motions, are not voluntary.

(2) 

The conditions for philosophising

are hard-won and rare. 

(3) 

'Alas! There will come the time of the most

despicable human, who is no longer able to

despise himself. Behold! I show 
to you the last man.

"What is love? What is creation?

What is yearning? What is a star?"—

thus asks the last human and then blinks.'

—Friedrich Nietzsche,

Thus Spoke Zarathustra—

A Book for Everyone and Nobody,

First Part, Zarathustra's Prologue, §.5

Published in 1992: Francis Fukuyama's 

The End of History and the Last Man 

Published in 2005: Malcolm Gladwell's 

Blink: The Power of Thinking without Thinking

(4) 

Few things nauseate me more 
on televised news footage 

than the sight of mob-elected 

(the δῆμος of demo-cracy, 'cracy' for its part coming 

from the Greek κράτος, 'might', 'power', 'holding sway') 

representatives shaking the hands of law-enforcing policemen.

It is clear from such footage

—at least for those of us who are awake—

that these two types of human being, shepherd and dog, 

need each other and are in (barely secret) 

collusion for the purpose of controlling, 

shearing, and punishing the nation's sheep.

 (5) 

All epochs bring with them

forms of violence.

(6) 

'New battles.—

After Buddha was dead, they still showed

his shadow in a cave for centuries—

a tremendous, gruesome shadow.

God is dead; but given the way

people are, there may still for

millennia be caves in which they

show his shadow.—And we—

we must still defeat his shadow

as well.'

—Nietzsche,

The Gay Science—

With a Prelude in German Rhymes

and an Appendix of Songs,, 

Book Three, §.108

The dead God 
Jehovah-Typhoon's
projected white shadow began
to be displayed in the last decade
of the nineteenth century—only a few
years after the publication of the above
aphorism by Nietzsche—in the 
first motion picture theatres,
which figure as a kind of 
modern equivalent of 
the cave on which 
Buddha's shadow 
was shown.

(7) 

In Ali G's interview with former United Nations 

secretary-general Boutros Boutros Ghali, 

the last name of whom is practically 

an anagram for 'Ali G', 

the following words 
are exchanged:

ALI G

Is Disneyland a 
member of the UN?

GHALI

No because Disneyland 
is not an independent state.

ALI G

Do you think in a hundred years time 
Disneyland or Disneyworld 
could have a seat?

GHALI

Disneyland is not doing politics, 
Disneyland is...

ALI G

Well, some of them is, 
some of them characters...

GHALI

It is for the young, 
for the young children

***

And yet Disney has more
wealth and power than many
an independent state.

(8) 

When someone tells you about yourself,

simply say, 'I agree with everything you

said, except that you said "you" instead of "I".'

(9) 

A correctly designated
'politically incorrect'
statement:

ours is the age 
of mob-rule.

(10) 

'The need to show that as
the consumption of man and mankind
becomes more and more economical
and the "machinery" of interests and
services is integrated ever more
intricately, a counter-movement is
inevitable...On that first road
which can now be completely
surveyed, arise adaptation,
leveling, higher Chinadom,
modesty in the instincts,
satisfaction in the dwarfing
of mankind...In opposition
to this dwarfing and
adaptation of man to a
specialised utility, a reverse
movement is needed—
the production of a synthetic,
summarising, justifying man
for whose existence this
transformation of mankind
into a machine is a precondition,
as a base on which he can invent
his higher form of being.'

—Nietzsche,
The Will to Power—Attempt 
at a Revaluation of All Values,
Book Four. Discipline and Breeding, 
I. Order of Rank, 2. The strong 
and the weak, §.866

Higher Chinadom 
it is indeed that
enables me to share this
Thought with you,
assuming your screen-enabled
device was made in China.

(11) 

The Myers-Briggs personality label for
philosophers, i.e. those who love 

beauty and wisdom, is INFJ.

'In Phaedrus...Plato speaks of the
"lover of wisdom or of beauty" as though 
these two were actually the same because
beauty is what "shines forth most"
(the beautiful is ἐκφανέστατον)
and therefore illuminates
everything else.'

—Hannah Arendt,
Between Past and Future—
Eight Exercises in Political Thought,
3. What is Authority?

(12) 

In our age of ever-curioser
and attention-seeking
 YouTube videos,
let us remember that

'The principal quality of the curious is reflected
in the fact that whatever they are curious about
ultimately and from the outset means
absolutely nothing to them.
All curiosity thrives on this
essential indifference.'

—Martin Heidegger,
Nietzsche Volume II—The Eternal 
Recurrence of the Same,
Part One. The Eternal 
Recurrence of the Same,
11. Four Notes Dated August 1881