thoughts in and out of season
This is inspired by the recent Houellebecq discussion. In sum, and in further praise of Houellebecq, I believe he is at least aware of the cutting edge of psychological thought, and incorporated it into “The Possiblity of an Island.”
From the book:
“The day’s orator was a very tall, thin, bald guy, impressively serious –when … More ...
Here’s a provocative if somewhat odd piece on hatred from Taki’s Top Drawer. A quote:
… More ...According to the old, religious “psychology” of hatred, people controlled by this sin are inherently quarrelsome, because they see slights everywhere. Hate-dominated individuals perceive as snubs actions in which others see nothing, for example a glance, a tone of
Here’s an example of how ways of thinking play out in daily life that reject the concept of the natural, and therefore common sense, in favor of technological conceptions and controlled rationalized organization: one woman’s account of Catholic parish life post-Scandal. Because of the scandals resulting from episcopal protection of clerical pederasts, a group for … More ...
A “cultural issue” is one people have strong views on but don’t know how to discuss. That makes for discussions that are sometimes interesting but sometimes repetitive and aside the point. People come up with odd and inventive arguments to back up gut reactions, repeat them again and again, and ignore everyone else.
Here’s a … More ...
The past week saw a couple of events that were both predictable and widely predicted, at least among right-wing cranks, but they were still blatant enough to be a bit shocking:
In my last entry I suggested that materialist science can’t deal with all realities, even all important realities. It can’t give an adequate account of “importance,” for example, and if you can’t sort out what is more and less important you can’t deal with anything at all. In other words, materialist science can’t even make … More ...
An obvious problem with a materialist understanding of the world is that we have subjective experience and can’t begin to imagine what a materialist explanation for subjective experience would look like. What do atoms and the void have to do with our sensation of redness, as opposed to redness as a wavelength of light, type … More ...
Here’s an interesting graph showing how liberals (blue), conservatives (red), and one self-described libertarian (green) test on a survey of “moral foundations”:
Basically, liberals emphasize “harm” and “fairness” and don’t care so much about “loyalty,” “authority” or “purity,” while conservatives give more equal weight to all five dimensions. (The libertarian can speak for himself.)… More ...
I’ve sent my revised manuscript off to my editor, so I should be be posting again. I’m told that publication will be in 10-12 months, just in time for Christmas next year. So if you can get through this season, all your gift problems will be solved!
I thought I’d mention this, even though it’s irrelevant to this weblog, because you gotta know about it: in Utah 15 years ago they detected a cosmic ray—a fast-moving proton—that hit the earth or rather upper atmosphere with a kinetic energy equal to that of a well-thrown baseball. To pack that kind of wallop … More ...