February 2013
1 post
17 tags
On the Great Emancipator
Obviously slavery played a big part in the Lincoln’s war in that the secessionists seceded to preserve slavery (although i think it’s dubious whether slavery would’ve been able to be maintained without the union army’s execution of the fugitive slave acts - There was no war to end slavery in Brazil, the government just stopped catching runaway slaves at it became cheaper to...
January 2013
2 posts
15 tags
Charles Darwin and the Making of the Modern World
For most of man’s long history he has pictured himself as an observer, inhabiting the natural world but somehow profoundly separate from it. The belief manifests itself in religions where man is divine and the natural world was created for his pleasure - typified by St.Thomas Aquinas’ great chain of being, which nestles man snuggly between the angles and the animals.
The religious justification...
6 tags
Marxism vs Freudian Psychology
In the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels do three main things: 1) define the communist movement, and explain its significance, 2) Layout the basic goals and ideals of communists, and 3) explain the economic, historical and sociological theory that buttresses the ideology. Karl Marx is credited with much of the development of communist ideology which itself is heavily dependent on Marx’s own...
June 2012
1 post
16 tags
The Socialist and the Anti-Statist: Episode 3
Mark:
Me:
It’s too bad that welfare hurts the poor just as much as the wars and the banksters do. Poverty was steadily declining in the US until the 1970s
The massive expansion of the welfare state has been powerless to stop this at best (and probably contributes to the increase in the poverty rate.) Of course, if you subsidize something, you get more of it.
Not to mention that the...
May 2012
3 posts
13 tags
Obama's a Nazi Commie Muzlum!
Depending on how you measure it, 7 or 8 of the 10 planks of the communist manifesto are in place in America right now, and not in a clandestine way either, there all things most everyone supports (Public roads, schools, social security etc.) , I count anyone who supports the democrat or republican parties as a communist. Marxism isn’t radical, it’s the status quo. The only sizable...
29 tags
Creation Myth
So, i read “Creation Myth” about Steve Jobs visiting Xerox. I thought it was fascinating that Dean Hovey bought the parts to build their prototype mouse at a Walgreen’s. It’s seems like computer technology is so complicated and integrated now that something like that is a thing of the past. Of course, with only a few weeks of learning and practice, I could, in theory, write the next hit...
19 tags
Antigone vs Dido
I’ve always loved the Greek playwrights, and recently I read the epic Roman poem, the Aenied by Virgil. I found some interesting connections to the Greek fiction so i thought i’d analyze my favorite character from the Aenied and my favorite character from Antigone.
Sophocles’ magnum opus, Antigone, presents us with the soul crushing dynamic of a tyrannical king struggling to...
April 2012
7 posts
24 tags
Philosophy is Dead Part 1: Rationalism
In his most famous work, Meditations on First Philosophy, Rene Descartes aims to abolish from his mind all presuppositions about reality, and then syllogistically rebuild his knowledge based on self-evident truths. Not only does he utterly fail at this task, but he makes a perfect example of why such tasks, and indeed why much of western philosophy, however disciplined are both futile and...
11 tags
Ruling Imagination
Response to this. The author of the article makes the argument that property is not the foundation of liberty, and that the success of open IP industries demonstrates this.
First we have to understand property from the ground up. Life is scarcity. The Earth and all her bounties are finite, and since all of us will die eventually even time is scarce. Because of scarcity, man invented property....
13 tags
The Socialist and the Anti-Statist: Episode 2
Episode 2 Me:
Mark:Chomsky’s quite anti-statist in his beliefs and philosophy of Libertarian Socialism.
Yeah, Chomsky’s an anarchist. lol Me: ”What we need is a progressive tax system, of, incidentally, the kind that Jefferson advocated.”
” we’d be a lot better off if we were higher taxed, and it was used for proper purposes. And we know what those are. I...
18 tags
Homeless Hotspots
In response to this
Before I get into this I must confess that this one is much more opinionated and less rigorous than some of my others. I will cavalierly employ gross generalizations and this is intended to be taken less seriously than some of my previous writings.
I heard about this on NPR a few weeks ago, and I was shocked by the whole ordeal. People’s outrage towards this kind of action...
15 tags
Progress
He who thinks that the the general state of humanity is or has been declining over the long term has no systematic understanding of the historical context out of which modern man emerges. The greatest crimes committed in the 20th century, while on a scale never before seen, were the norm in centuries past. The mantle of science and technology has been gaining momentum, and i think we are on the...
21 tags
The Art of the Steal
Response to the Documentary, “The Art of the Steal”
You can find it on netflix. I found this to be a very interesting look into the the art world in general, but also in regards to historical art that is highly valued and ownership itself. The central conflict is around the estate of Albert C. Barnes, and those who hold it after his death. Barnes was adamantly opposed to the...
12 tags
The socialist and the anti-statist: Episode 1
From conversations i’ve had elsewhere on the internet. I am the anti-statist, and we’ll call the marxist/socialist, “Mark” Me: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0H2rSJayL_c&feature=g-vrec&context=G219a7f4RVAAAAAAAAAQ [it’s a video of Rothbard arguing that society should not be conflated with the state, and that in fact the state is anti social.] Mark:There...
