'structural'

[Mr. Tea]

This was pretty much every Zhao thread too IIRC.

There was a particularly good one where he told me, with absolute certainty, that the school history curriculum in the UK even to this day begins with Ancient Greece as the 'start of civilization'. I told him that, no, world history textbooks available here when I was a kid (and for decades before that) placed the beginning of agriculture, urbanism, large states, writing and everything else - at least as far as western Eurasia was concerned - quite clearly in Egypt and the Near East, but he wouldn't hear a word of it. The fact that I'd grown up here and he hadn't cut no ice at all.

 

[mixed_biscuits]

Chomsky says the West gave up on materialism once Newton came up with gravity, which Chompers says is a non-mechanical concept. What do you think @Mr. Tea, the flatulent physicist.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Chomsky says the West gave up on materialism once Newton came up with gravity, which Chompers says is a non-mechanical concept. What do you think @Mr. Tea, the flatulent physicist.

I fart in his general direction.

 

[mixed_biscuits]

McGilchrist speaks

 

[?!..!?]

Materialist cultural Theory for the win! Be more abstract, always~! We'll never get anything practical done if we fail to grasp the abstract STRUCTURE (i.e. organized collection of interrelated entities grounded on categories) of everyday practice. Plus pragmatism defines the Anglo-American capitalist ideology to the core. Sad to see so many capitulate to the mainstream demand to judge everything in terms of use value. Things have non-instrumental value whether y'all like it or not and it's up to femboys like me to tell you all about it. I never lost confidence in Theory. Postmodern pluralistic realism is da truth. I did lose all confidence in analytic philosophy, especially in its piss-poor criticisms of postmodern Theory, which I so often see echoed blandly here. The way ya'll act, you'd think some of you honestly believe that Sokal and Bricmont had mostly valid arguments (they didn't)

 

[?!..!?]

And in response to that reddit thread about deconstructionists not reading the canon: those aren't serious scholars. I have read the canon. I'm still reading the canon. I plan to continue reading the canon for the next 5 years and that's AFTER studying philosophy for 10 years as a serious historian of philosophy. It's true: a lot of people don't read the canon in college, but that only results in worse deconstruction. I've studied the canon in college and you know what I learned? I learned that the post modernists and the deconstructionists and the feminists and the queer theorists were right about the canon. So there. The canon does exclude and marginalize minorities. It's still great though. We should just expand the Western Canon to include more minorities as well as promoting an Eastern Canon for Asian, Indian, African and Middle-Eastern writers. I encourage you all to read more books in the canon, though. Get on my level.

 

[other_life]

^ dbi

 

[other_life]

The value-framework I'm talking about is the complete set of meanings that one holds about their world, the index of their particular lens. How can we guide the development of our lens? Is it a plastic lens - it must be, but is it plastic in the hands of our will? Is it elastic - can it be transformed into a new form and then return it its prior form?

Perhaps some kind of absorbent lens?

 

[?!..!?]

^ dbi

What does "dbi" mean? You guys really go wild with this obtuse slang huh?

 

[mixed_biscuits]

And in response to that reddit thread about deconstructionists not reading the canon: those aren't serious scholars. I have read the canon. I'm still reading the canon. I plan to continue reading the canon for the next 5 years and that's AFTER studying philosophy for 10 years as a serious historian of philosophy. It's true: a lot of people don't read the canon in college, but that only results in worse deconstruction. I've studied the canon in college and you know what I learned? I learned that the post modernists and the deconstructionists and the feminists and the queer theorists were right about the canon. So there. The canon does exclude and marginalize minorities. It's still great though. We should just expand the Western Canon to include more minorities as well as promoting an Eastern Canon for Asian, Indian, African and Middle-Eastern writers. I encourage you all to read more books in the canon, though. Get on my level.

Why don't you get into this canon?:

 

[mixed_biscuits]

McGilchrist pathologises postmodernism, saying it's the left-brain emissary stealing the reins from the rightful right-brain master.