Speculative Realism Blog GeneratorFunny and awesome all bundled up into one (dare I say) object! Cool. My favorites include Vital Ruin and Dwindling Canker. And I'm definately going to use several of the pictures displayed on the site!
Just saw this funny spoof on Speculative Realism posts – not sure who has done it – or how old it is.
“What is really real is that the unchanging substance of which all good blog names are made is a gothy adjective and a philosophical noun. Here, finally, is a website that creates blog names so great, you don’t have to go to the trouble of making the actual blog.”We all love a good mockery, they make the mocked thing more real in most cases. Heres some of my favourites; Withdrawn Conception; Putrescent Conception; Hostile Erosion; Hostile Generation (a good unexpected pun); Dwindling Ruin; and finally my very favourite Aesthetic Realism of course. There aren’t many words in both databases, so more work is needed there. Plenty of scope in the Speculative Realist lexicon.
12.1.11
Speculative Parody
From Robert Jackson:
11.1.11
On Cosmic Contingency
"Earthly thought embraces perishability (i.e. cosmic contingency) as its immanent core …. such perishability … grasps the openness of Earth towards the cosmic exteriority not in terms of concomitantly vitalistic / necrocratic correlations (as the Earth’s relationship with the Sun) but alternative ways of dying and loosening into the cosmic abyss … The only true terrestrial ecology is the one founded on the unilateral nature of cosmic contingency against which there is no chance of resistance – there are only opportunities for drawing schemes of complicity ... Hence, the Cartesian dilemma, 'What course in life shall I follow?' should be bastardized as 'Which way out shall I take?'"
- Reza Negarestani, Solar Infernal and the earthbound Abyss [ via Scott Wilson ]
10.1.11
Meillassoux, Ancestrality and Flesh
A gorgeous statement from Quentin Meillassoux in After Finitude (p.48) - which I mostly agree with:
One caveat: the “grasping” is ultimately not going to happen within “thought”, but through the collapse of thinking upon the foundations set by our visceral intimacy with the world. “Thought” is not the royal road - but a refraction of what comes before it. The way out of the ‘correlationist’ dilemma, then, is attenuation to that which is prior to the correlation itself; namely, the Flesh.
"…we must understand that what distinguishes the philosopher from the non-philosopher in this matter is that only the former is capable of being astonished (in the strong sense) by the straightforwardly literal meaning of the ancestral statement. The virtue of transcendentalism does not lie in rendering realism illusory, but in rendering it astonishing, i.e. apparently unthinkable, yet true, and hence eminently problematic. ... The arche-fossil enjoins us to track thought by inviting us to discover the 'hidden passage' trodden by the latter in order to achieve what modern philosophy has been telling us for the past two centuries is impossibility itself: to get out of ourselves, to grasp the in-itself, to know what is whether we are or not".
One caveat: the “grasping” is ultimately not going to happen within “thought”, but through the collapse of thinking upon the foundations set by our visceral intimacy with the world. “Thought” is not the royal road - but a refraction of what comes before it. The way out of the ‘correlationist’ dilemma, then, is attenuation to that which is prior to the correlation itself; namely, the Flesh.“There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.”
- Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra; Part I, Chapter 4, "On the despisers of the body"(1885).
9.1.11
The Sympathetic Species
Popular science author Robert Wright and University of California-Berkeley psychologist Dacher Keltner (author of Born to Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life) discuss human nature and our capacity for sympathy and compassion over at Bloggingheads.Tv:
also check out:
Learn more: here. [h/t Bill Harryman]
also check out:
Daniel Dennett on Philosophy, Cognitive Science and Consciousness
Philosopher and scientist Dan Dennett argues that human consciousness and free will are the result of physical processes and are not what we traditionally think they are. His 2003 book Freedom Evolves explores the way our brains have evolved to give us -- and only us -- the kind of freedom that matters.
Below is the abstract and link to a paper Dennett wrote about the relationship between philosophy and cognitive science. The conclusions he comes to may not be as easy to dismiss as you may think. Check it out:
In the 22min video below Dennett picks up on the theme of philosophy relating to cognitive science, and makes a compelling argument that not only don't we understand our own consciousness, but that half the time our brains are actively fooling us:
Below is the abstract and link to a paper Dennett wrote about the relationship between philosophy and cognitive science. The conclusions he comes to may not be as easy to dismiss as you may think. Check it out:
Read More @ Tufts UniversityThe Part of Cognitive Science That Is PhilosophyBy Daniel C. Dennett
There is much good work for philosophers to do in cognitive science if they adopt the constructive attitude that prevails in science, work toward testable hypotheses, and take on the task of clarifying the relationship between the scientific concepts and the everyday concepts with which we conduct our moral lives.
In the 22min video below Dennett picks up on the theme of philosophy relating to cognitive science, and makes a compelling argument that not only don't we understand our own consciousness, but that half the time our brains are actively fooling us:
7.1.11
The Cartography of Oil - Part 2: Food
The systems that produce the world's food supply are heavily dependent on fossil fuels. Vast amounts of oil and gas are used as raw materials and energy in the manufacture of fertilisers and pesticides, and as cheap and readily available energy at all stages of food production: from planting, irrigation, feeding and harvesting, through to processing, distribution and packaging. In addition, fossil fuels are essential in the construction and the repair of equipment and infrastructure needed to facilitate this industry, including farm machinery, processing facilities, storage, ships, trucks and roads. The industrial food supply system is one of the biggest consumers of fossil fuels and one of the greatest producers of greenhouse gases.
Only 21 percent of overall food system energy is used in agricultural production, 14 percent goes to food transport, 16 percent to processing, 7 percent to packaging, 4 percent to food retailing, 7 percent to restaurants and caterers, and 32 percent to home refrigeration and preparation.
Oil fuels our food from fertilizer to pesticides. It fuels the tractors on the farm and the trucks that take it to market. The markets are everything from your local grocer to the huge food processing plants. Oil fuels the food processing plant, the food packing plant and the truck that hauls its remains away to the landfill. Since the 1950s, crop production has relied on fertilizers to replace soil nutrients. Nitrogen fertilizer production relies heavily on natural gas to synthesize atmospheric nitrogen. Oil is needed as well to mine, manufacture, and transport these fertilizers around the world. China is now the top consumer of fertilizer with use rising beyond 40 million tons in 2004.
World grain production has tripled over the last century. New grain demand has been met primarily by raising land productivity through higher-yielding crop varieties in conjunction with more oil-intensive mechanization, irrigation, and fertilizer use, rather than by expanding cropland.
Processed foods now make up three-fourths of total world food sales. A two pound bag of breakfast cereal burns the energy of a half-gallon of gasoline in its baking. Processing breakfast cereals uses about five times as much energy as is contained in the cereal by itself. All together the food-processing industry in the North America uses about ten calories of fossil-fuel energy for every calorie of food energy it produces.
However, all this is about to change. Many experts suggest that oil output is expected to peak in the next few years and steadily decline thereafter. We have a very poor understanding of how the extreme fluctuations in the availability and cost of both oil and natural gas will affect the global food supply systems, and how they will be able to adapt to the decreasing availability of energy. In the near future, environmental threats will combine with energy scarcity to cause significant food shortages and sharp increases in prices - at the very least. We are about to enter an era where we will have to once again feed the world with limited use of fossil fuels. But do we have enough time, knowledge, money, energy and political power to make this massive transformation to our food systems when they are already threatened by significant environmental stresses and increasing corporate control?
from Harper's Magazine:
Only 21 percent of overall food system energy is used in agricultural production, 14 percent goes to food transport, 16 percent to processing, 7 percent to packaging, 4 percent to food retailing, 7 percent to restaurants and caterers, and 32 percent to home refrigeration and preparation.
Oil fuels our food from fertilizer to pesticides. It fuels the tractors on the farm and the trucks that take it to market. The markets are everything from your local grocer to the huge food processing plants. Oil fuels the food processing plant, the food packing plant and the truck that hauls its remains away to the landfill. Since the 1950s, crop production has relied on fertilizers to replace soil nutrients. Nitrogen fertilizer production relies heavily on natural gas to synthesize atmospheric nitrogen. Oil is needed as well to mine, manufacture, and transport these fertilizers around the world. China is now the top consumer of fertilizer with use rising beyond 40 million tons in 2004.
World grain production has tripled over the last century. New grain demand has been met primarily by raising land productivity through higher-yielding crop varieties in conjunction with more oil-intensive mechanization, irrigation, and fertilizer use, rather than by expanding cropland.
Processed foods now make up three-fourths of total world food sales. A two pound bag of breakfast cereal burns the energy of a half-gallon of gasoline in its baking. Processing breakfast cereals uses about five times as much energy as is contained in the cereal by itself. All together the food-processing industry in the North America uses about ten calories of fossil-fuel energy for every calorie of food energy it produces.
However, all this is about to change. Many experts suggest that oil output is expected to peak in the next few years and steadily decline thereafter. We have a very poor understanding of how the extreme fluctuations in the availability and cost of both oil and natural gas will affect the global food supply systems, and how they will be able to adapt to the decreasing availability of energy. In the near future, environmental threats will combine with energy scarcity to cause significant food shortages and sharp increases in prices - at the very least. We are about to enter an era where we will have to once again feed the world with limited use of fossil fuels. But do we have enough time, knowledge, money, energy and political power to make this massive transformation to our food systems when they are already threatened by significant environmental stresses and increasing corporate control?
from Harper's Magazine:
The Oil We Eat: Following the Food Chain Back to IraqRead More: Here
By Richard Manning
"The secret of great wealth with no obvious source is some forgotten crime, forgotten because it was done neatly." - BalzacThe journalist's rule says: follow the money. This rule, however, is not really axiomatic but derivative, in that money, as even our vice president will tell you, is really a way of tracking energy. We'll follow the energy.
We learn as children that there is no free lunch, that you don't get something from nothing, that what goes up must come down, and so on. The scientific version of these verities is only slightly more complex. As James Prescott Joule discovered in the nineteenth century, there is only so much energy. You can change it from motion to heat, from heat to light, but there will never be more of it and there will never be less of it. The conservation of energy is not an option, it is a fact. This is the first law of thermodynamics.
Special as we humans are, we get no exemptions from the rules. All animals eat plants or eat animals that eat plants. This is the food chain, and pulling it is the unique ability of plants to turn sunlight into stored energy in the form of carbohydrates, the basic fuel of all animals. Solar-powered photosynthesis is the only way to make this fuel. There is no alternative to plant energy, just as there is no alternative to oxygen. The results of taking away our plant energy may not be as sudden as cutting off oxygen, but they are as sure.
6.1.11
The Cartography of Oil - Part 1: Addiction
"The cartography of oil as an omnipresent entity narrates the dynamics of planetary events. Oil is the undercurrent of all narrations, not only the political but also that of the ethics of life on earth."In light of rising oil prices, and the relatively quiet but increasingly intense panic coming from most global financial managers, I thought it would be a good time to reflect upon our deep petro-addiction and the "politics" and barbarism that underlies global demand/supplies. The next few posts will follow this theme and perhaps point a way forward out of this pathological dilemma.
- Reza Negarastani, Cyclonopedia [via SC Hickman]
The phrase "addicted to oil" was made famous by former United States President George W. Bush in a State of the Union Address on January 31, 2006. One year prior to Bush's public admission Kurt Vonnegut used the phrase in his memoir A Man Without a Country.
The fact is that a vast majority of our civilization's economic activity, productivity and social infrastructure is completely dependent on fossil fuel use. Without relatively cheap oil in large quantities our transportation would be severely limited, our lifestyles would be drastically different, and we would not have technology and institutional systems that are the foundation for contemporary civil society.
This addiction will not be easily cured. Politicians, bankers, kings of industry and financial uber-elites will do everything in their power to maintain the petro-system as long as possible if only because all of their wealth, privilege and control are ultimately entangled in ventures and institutions that wholly rely on the steady flow of 'black gold'. To radically change would be for be close to suicide for most global elites. So they come out fighting instead: global-warming disinformation campaigns, billion dollar lobbies against environmental protections, and coordinated efforts to control key governmental personal and mechanisms are the everyday arsenal of the mighty petro-oligarchy.
If we are indeed addicted to oil, our twelve-step program should begin with admitting that we have a problem. Below I offer two videos. The first one is a stylist synopsis of the global energy crisis and how it relates to modern socio-economics and food production (produced by GOOD Magazine), and the second is a much longer in-depth report by award-wining journalist Thomas L. Friedman on the scope and nature of civilization's pathological and entrenched addiction to oil. Please take the time to experience both.
Thomas Friedman reporting for The Discovery Channel: 'Addicted to Oil'
5.1.11
all too heavy indeed
.
.“A revaluation of all values: this question is so black and so huge that it casts shadows over anyone who puts it forward – this sort of a destiny of a task forces him to keep running out into the sunlight to shake off a seriousness that has become heavy, all too heavy.”
– Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols
[ via Nicola Masciandaro ]
4.1.11
How Experience Gets Under the Skin
Another great post from Daniel Lende at Neuroanthropology:
By Daniel LendeHow Experience Gets Under the Skin
Clyde Hertzman and Tom Boyce published an excellent article, 'How Experience Gets Under the Skin to Create Gradients in Developmental Health', in the 2010 Annual Review of Public Health. I am going to cover their concepts of biological embedding and social causation, both of which are relevant to neuroanthropology. And then we get some great media from both authors at the end.
Here is the abstract:
Social environments and experiences get under the skin early in life in ways that affect the course of human development. Because most factors associated with early child development are a function of socio-economic status, differences in early child development form a socio-economic gradient. We are now learning how, when, and by what means early experiences influence key biological systems over the long term to produce gradients: a process known as biological embedding.
Read More @ NeuroanthropologyOpportunities for biological embedding are tethered closely to sensitive periods in the development of neural circuitry. Epigenetic regulation is the best example of operating principles relevant to biological embedding. We are now in a position to ask how early childhood environments work together with genetic variation and epigenetic regulation to generate socially partitioned developmental trajectories with impact on health across the life course.
2.1.11
The 10 Biggest Wall Street Lies of 2010
From the Huffington Post:
Check Out Related Crazy-Making Stories:
Read More: HereWall Street's 10 Biggest Lies of 2010By Les Leopold
What a great year for Wall Street: profits up, bonuses up and, best of all, criticism down, especially from Washington. Somehow Wall Street has much of America believing its lies and rationalizations. We're even beginning to forget that Wall Street is largely responsible for the economic mess we're in.
So before we're completely overtaken by financial Alzheimer's, let's revisit Wall Street's greatest fabrications for 2010.
Check Out Related Crazy-Making Stories:
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