"It’s almost as if you have to spend your whole life disengaging from your life, disengaging from the supposed reality of your living. I think that’s what Spinoza and Socrates meant about life is the study of dying, that you leave these convictions of certitude about the whole business. I certainly feel lots of that now, …
Tag: History
Oh Noah, where art thou?
" “It's in Genesis,” he told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour in an interview that aired Tuesday. “Noah is saving the animals; he's not out there saving innocent babies, he's saving the animals, he's saving creation.” “It was very clear to us that there was an environmental message. To pull that message out of it, we think, would …
Life Against Death – Part II
A consideration of the aim and purpose of artificial intelligence (AI), provides a fitting introduction to this followup post on Norman O. Brown's book, Life Against Death. AI seeks to build a model of human intelligence for the purpose of: 1) The thrill and power of creating, fathering and possessing a better than human machine, a …
Life Against Death
My first exposure to the ideas of Norman O. Brown's was his book Love's Body which I read back in late 90's. This classic book remains on my top shelf of insightful and provocative reads. It's trippy - condensing the entire history of humankind into a Freudian-based mythology in which he sees that the "only contrary to Patriarchy …
The Unveiling
Perhaps we moderns no longer see ourselves as living under the influence of myths or belief systems. Whatever their source, they no longer serve us because any belief we subscribe to does not necessarily come to us through the culture of our familiars. More than any other period in history, we have become fractionalized as …
Theoria 