Well, since I started, might as well...

Monday, 25 February, Year 11 d.Tr. | Author: Mircea Popescu

It happened by accident, but... what can you do ?i

slut Master, is analytical philosophy in any way like mathematical analysis?
Master "Analytical philosophy", as the currently preferred endonymii for "typical anglo provincialism", ie the attempt at naive extension of "common sense" and broadly dysfunctional medieval solipsisms is methodologically sound, but unfortunately fundamentally rotten, and in the most laughable ways at that. "Postmodernism", as the anglotard xenonymiii for, mostly, post-structuralism, is fundamentally sound, but unfortunately methodologically rotten in most applications you're likely to encounter. As it stands, between the "mechanical birdwing" that never could possibly take off and the early aeroplane that generally crashes and burns, you're stuck picking the latter.

slut I couldn't say then "analytical philosophy is the systematic study of limits in gnoseology"?
Master You could say anything you wish. As a much younger man I attempted to restructure and thereby revive the dead on exactly these lines, "nevermind the nonsense, reform it into a study of the limits of the possibility of knowledge". It went nowhere, coincidentally just about the time I first retired.

slut I always thought that was driven by political and business considerations, "the dying 90s" I call it for myself.
Master The 90s died in more ways than just the mob.

slut Why do they call it analytic, then?
Master I suspect someone from a Math department was printing fractals, strange attractors and the like in the late 80s somewhere in Leeds or w/e, and someone else saw them and liked them, went "Good sir, what do you call the kitchen making this delish dish???"

slut So it's analytical philosophy in the sense FOSS could be called Happy Meal Computing, or java could be called Starbucks Internet?
Master Rather.

slut What would you call it then?
Master I dunno, being extremely sad ? "Dowager philosophy" probably appeals more to their sensibilities, soon they'll all be knighted and they can retire to mourn their loss somewhere, pe o stinca neagra, intr-un vechi castel....

slut What exactly did they lose? Was something lost?
Master Yes something was lost. Consider : "The simulacrum is never what hides the truth - it is truth that hides the fact that there is none. The simulacrum is true."

slut It's not like Baudrillard killed it.
Master They're not mourning a murder, they're just mourning a loss. Like all loss, it's a loss of illusion, it has nothing to do with anyone or anything else.

slut What was the illusion?
Master Something like this : Mary Jane is a seventeen year old straw-blonde suburban princess, living at about the same time, mid 80s say. She believes her dad is smart and her mother pretty, she believes she'll find her true love and have a happy family and she'll also have a career and support her husband in his, and he won't cheat on her nor will they ever divorce because that's something that happens to other people nor will they ever be in a car crash because they drive carefully and the government jails everyone else. The most there can be hope for, event-wise, is cancer, and everyone knows cancer has the decency to limit itself to retirement homes.

slut Like her?
Master That'll work fine, sure. Now one day, a van full of... what do you prefer, Mexicans ? black people ? Muslims ? Whatever, she's walking home from whatever practice, the van pulls over and they fuck the living daylights out of her. And she fucking loves it, because seriously, what's not to love, a lot of unexpected cock up 17yo snatch, as naturally correct a fit as mountain spring water. Then there's a night, and a day, and in that day if she Mom ? she's the running kind and if she Butterfield 8 she's the mourning kind.

slut You went with 18-1 rather than 18+1 just to bother people, didn't you?
Master It's just a number. You expect truth in numbers or something ?

slut So you are basically saying that analytic philosophy does not exist as such, but the analytic philosophers, as a group, simply make very poor postmodernists and that's all there is to it. Like say the people who go to the Opera with their wives but spend the whole time in the smoking lounge chit-chatting among themselves -- they're still at the Opera, they just don't know what to do there. Maybe poke fun at how "that chorus line could never win a REAL war with that other chorus line in that armor" or whatever.
Master Maybe watching girls' tennis on the TV screens or something, also. But yes. A REAL war, you know...

slut Did it ever exist?
Master Yeah, right. Looky : at some point watching TV was a central, respectable family activity. "TV" didn't existiv, but the behaviours surrounding it made it look almost as if it had. Alchemy also never existed, but for a while the only way to talk to the smart people living while you did was to at least mimic a cursory interest. They're fashions, though I suspect the preferred word's "paradigms".


slut What if there's exactly no way to communicate anything I'm interested in within the constraints of whatever language worms use ?
Master Then you mourn.

slut What if I don't care about worms to any degree anyway?
Master Then you carry on doing whatever it is you're doing. The wives at the Opera also don't care what smartass nonsense the beer bellied morons are exchanging among themselves.

slut What if they really want to care?
Master I guess they'll sooner or later manage to make themselves unhappy.

slut Caring is the basis of unhappiness?
Master Caring borne of wanting to care, definitely.

slut What if I don't believe truth doesn't exist?
Master You believe it does ?

slut No, I just don't believe it doesn't.
Master So what's the problem ?

slut Shouldn't I do something about it?
Master Should you do something because of what you believe ? Why not believe something because of what you're doing ?

slut That seems wrong. Actually, it seems exactly backwards.
Master There's exactly two kinds of people, the kind of people who does because of what they believe, and the kind that believes because of what it does. Your personal ethical choices make you welcome among one or the other, is all.

slut Shouldn't we kill the others?
Master What, "we don't like your kind around here" ?

slut Exactly.
Master Meh. The groups aren't predicated on any life in being, they exist independently of whether "people" even has any meaning to it. If you exterminated all cheats, thieves, morons, Florence Keefes etcetera you'd therefore have built what, "a perfect world", one that'll last just as long as two babies are born ?

slut Then what, segregation?
Master Seems a sufficient solution. Put a shingle above your business, "we don't tolerate that other kind on these premises" and be done with it.

slut So basically... truth is in no way a hard requirement for ethics?
Master Indeed.

slut Then the whole "postmodern intellectual revolution" is barely a turn of the worm, about as important in any general sense as a shift in bedroom mores, from fucking missionary style to fucking doggy style?
Master Yes. The other group keeps hoping "the future" will deliver on its hopes of equality. When Einstein came out with some advances in physics, you couldn't traverse the Opera fumoir for all the din of "omaigerd did you hear everything's relative ?!?!?!". Nowadays truth ended up where it had to, once the whole medieval thought tree starting in God began unravelling. What the fuck universal truth you gonna have without a prime mover to underpin it ?! The charlatan cave's brimming in excited ebullution, "oh, finally, we can get out, thinking because of doing will finally be able to walk with its head held up high on main street!". I tell you I don't see it, I don't need truth to crack their skulls wide open anymore than I need anything else.

slut Thank you, Master.

  1. Understand this perpetually pluriformious yet universally ubiquitous question properly. "What can you do," right ?

    Does it inquire what you, he who reads now, could do ? Does it inquire what I, who wrote this once, could have done then ? Or could do now ? Is it metaphorically proposing an equality between such an us, contradictory as that would be to auctorial pronouncements of the same source in other places, that were never contradicted but left standing ?

    Am I therefore purporting to suggest I and you are one by saying "you" when I mean "I", and therefore proposing that those problems here encountered or supposedly discussed are objective, and thereby liable to be encountered by "anyone" sufficiently qualified in whatever manner objectivism requires for them to be able to encounter them ? (Because obviously the blind man won't meaningfully encounter the red pole, but this "aside", somehow a magical ability to "this aside" is available, don't ask me how, I didn't design this object system, nor did I ever sign off on it -- but apparently (supposedly ?) it has undocumented universal procedures for all classes.)

    Yet as the question repeats, is it... is it an earworm, that piece of music that just won't quit ? It does have a certain melodic quality, but if it IS indeed a worm (as the term of art) then what specifically is not the worm ? The "words on the very paper" do not exist, it's pixels all the way down, none of this was ever written in any other form than what you call "postmodern". Trilema, unique amongst the artefacts of its period, has no modern counterpart.

    Or is it perhaps a stage ? Does the inquiry "what can you do" reflect a stage of the inquiring of what you can do ? Well... which is it, the inquiring of what you can do or the inquiring of what can you do ? A stage it may be, but a stage of what ? Is it, this question, of dubious unclear form and apparently inaccessible substance, is it then endurant or perdurant ?

    And leaving that aside for a second (right ?), why is it the case I'm asking you, both "of all people" -- and not at all ? Shouldn't I be able to tell ? Am I merely playing around pretending I can't tell, like an imaginary Shylock (o look, reference -- now... what's referred ?!) asking "tell me what wands the skilful shepherd peel'd ?" instead of saying plainly, "the skilful shepherd peel'd me certain wands," (is this plainly ? how is "certain" plain ?) or am I in fact signifying thereby, and if so what, and should you disagree with you, who will you go to settle the dispute provided I'm not interested (and could I be ?).

    My how the punctuation signs multiply, is this an affectation on my part ? Am I pretending or merely playing around or is my hand forced by lack of option for as long as I'm not willing to hallucinate myself some ?

    Do you like being asked questions ? How about answering them ? Because I suspect the true mark of an "analytical philospher" is merely "he who enjoys answering questions more than being asked them". Now what was this, clever as it might've come accross, was it useful or useless ? "Rational" or otherwise, to quote perhaps the maximal extension of that tradition, buried in '95 before the indignity.

    O look! The links are back, the signs diminishing to their zenith, who knew the one thing holding back the flood was the crystalline discipline of Trilema referentiality! Who knew without articles linking other articles by the dozen you'd be "s(t)uck" in French ?! Wait, wait... and which you is that ? []

  2. The name for something from inside, what rando orcs prefer to call themselves. []
  3. The name of something among they alien to it. []
  4. Think about it, the acronym stands for "tele-vision". You're watching a... [whatever] VISION ? How the fuck do you watch a vision, and what the fuck sense does this make anyway ?

    It was a behaviour rather than a thing since day one, it even says so right on the fucking box. You don't care about any of that and for your own reasons, sure, fine, but phenomena don't become objects through phenomenological means (the converse of this problem, whereby objects don't become phenomena, is traditionally called Zeno's paradox). []


11 Responses

  1. I searched for the quote. Enjoy what English scholarship has to offer.
    (Obviously your passing reference to God makes the intended meaning plain, but Dick remains puzzled. Hypertime Dick.)

  2. Mircea Popescu`s avatar
    Mircea Popescu 
    Monday, 25 February 2019

    And no doubt also Harry.

    The problem with intelligence is that it's impossible to be smart among idiots, and trying never works out well.

  3. In more post-lols, post-business!

  4. Mircea Popescu`s avatar
    Mircea Popescu 
    Tuesday, 26 February 2019

    Pretty great.

    Dedicated the past four years to...

  5. Pespsype`s avatar
    Sunday, 7 March 2021


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