posted by Donal McGraith, June 18, 2019
The Twilight Zone
I think that post-truth has been growing over time. The “enemy within” of the 50s, i.e. communists colluding with Russia is a part of post-truth. The enemy within idea generates the Twilight Zone which is our current frame of reference or our horizon. Not sure which metaphor sucks better.
Just now my partner was watching some CNN on You Tube and a predictable argument between the right and further right just goes through the motions. There is no debate, its generated out of nothing.
Anosognosia, Donald Trump, and Ontology
A definition: Anosognosia is a deficit of self-awareness, a condition in which a person with a disability is unaware of its existence. It was first named by the neurologist Joseph Babinski in 1914.
In terms of mental illness, most problems involve anosognosia. My own declining memory with aging will eventually, perhaps, become something I am no longer aware of. Would one in an advanced state be able to assert that one was experiencing anosognosia? One might say it is its own symptom. The circular logic is a metaphor for the experience of the inflicted party.
In the case of Trump it can appear wilful and so not anosognosia. Stupidity does not prevent it, they can co-exist. If one says Trump is ignorant and stupid are we talking about a condition which is his way of experiencing the world in that he sees his perceptions as confirmed by reality as he sees it? His own Plato’s Cave is solitary. Should Plato’s Cave be solitary by definition? If we share the same delusion it might be said we share a common reality. In the mental diagram I have of Plato’s Cave there is a shared experience of 4 or 5 persons watching the same illusion, in other words a screen.
There is something of the old fart here, I think.
But what of neo-luddites and saboteurs gumming up the works. There is a very interesting Wikipedia entry for Neo-Luddites. I guess this is what my books were promoting. I don’t know if I talked about “screens.” The word screen’s original meaning is something in between the viewer and the object and thus often hidden. A see through screen is often what we mean but that is a contradiction. We know the screened image is not real by definition. A screen, like a veil (with sexual implications), hides something. From Plato to movies it is that which is not real but presents itself as realer than real.
The screen is an image of our own separation from everything not within our body or perhaps ultimately not within our head. When we look at our body it is other than us. The focal point of our existence is directly behind our eyes where we can look at our own body as other and experience the Cartesian cogito as the limit of our existence. We are the thinking thing looking at a screen, we exist as an eyeball attached to a computer within a virtual reality environment.
I suppose there is nothing new there.
In outer space no one can hear you scream
The more I read on DNA the more skeptical I am becoming. This is not my first go at this. I read a lot, a long time ago, in the philosophy of science and also Darwinism. There is a tendency for all of this to be presented as settled. At the very base of science there is absolutely no certainty. Quantum mechanics and relativity contradict each other. The uncertainty principle, etc. The picture we have of Darwin’s theory of evolution is absolutely cartoonish. In the philosophy of science, which is of no interest to scientists, it is as unresolved as are relativity and quantum mechanics’ seemingly irreconcilable differences.
Recently I have been thinking about these unbelievably vast distances in space and how there is virtually no indication of life. I think that making statistical probability conjectures that there is other life in outer space because it seems infinitely large is total theological nonsense. “In outer space no one can hear you scream” is the ultimate description of the pointlessness of life.
It is no wonder that people of faith look with absolute horror upon the endless pointlessness of human life. There is a kind of Kierkegaardian terror in all of this, which he calls a leap of faith. This leap, as Camus indicated, is a reaction to the concept of suicide. But even in dealing with death of my father or mother, there is a kind of emptiness. You can see why Camus said “suicide is the only truly philosophical question.”
Donald Trump: This Is Not A President
I don’t mean to be facetious or smart ass but doesn’t Donald Trump raise a question about suicide and pointlessness? Donald Trump as personification of an idea is best represented by Rene Magritte’s painting “This Is Not a Pipe” (as corny as that might sound).
Trump, without any conscious understanding of the meaning of what he says or his own actions, is the embodiment of a kind of surrealist conundrum: This is Not a President, not because he is incompetent or corrupt but because there is no ideology at all. It’s always been about counterfactuals. There is no guile because there is no business. There is no product. There is only a brand. Trump sells a pure idea: money for nothing. Somehow Trump can sell the idea of failure as success. You make some declaration, let there be a casino, let the casino have all the appearance of a casino and let the casino have all the games guaranteed to create losers, to take candy from a baby, and in spite of all that make the “sure thing” fail miserably. Let this failure be the mark of your success which you then sell as a brand which you paste on a building.
In some ways Trump is like an inverted Sisyphus. He stands at the top of the hill and when the boulder rolls up (in Trump’s inverted world) he pushes it back down and declares victory. Crowds gather around to cheer him losing.
CHARIVARI PRESS 