24 December 2021

Unthinking a thought?

Is it at all possible to unthink a thought once it has been thought?

Isn't the unthinking of a well-thought thought unthinkable?

Who is to judge whether a thought has been well thought, if not the thoughtful?

In these democratic times, however, it seems that 'people' are the adjudicators of well-thought thoughts.

For 'people' an ill-thought thought is one inaccessible to average understanding, whereas 'people' insist on easy, barrier-free accessibility for average understanding. The modern media are there to enforce and fulfil this 'democratic' demand of 'people', to render thoughts palatable.

Where does this leave the radically thought, unheard-of thought of a thinker?

It leaves it there in the openness of historical time for, once thought, it can no longer be unthought.

Further reading: Challenges for Today’s Thinking.

22 December 2021

Sustainability and Extinction

The media are awash with news about the global movement to rein in CO2-induced global warming. The aim is to bring about, at the last minute, a sea change in the direction of sustainability, of keeping the temperature rise within sustainable limits. The use of the Earth's finite resources is to be managed in an economical, recycling way to enable the sustainable reproduction of human beings along with all the species of plants and animals on which human beings depend and deem valuable for their continued survival. The end goal? The message hammered in daily through the progressive media: The survival of human beings as a species is at stake! Extinction looms on the futural horizon! 

(Conservatives deny that there's a problem at all. Why? Because their highest value, that they will defend bloodily to the death with all means possible, is thingified value. As long as they own their thingified possessions securely and generate income in the gainful game, they remain content with the status quo.)

You mean our only option is to achieve our survival AS a species of animal??! Can't we do better than that?? (Mind you, I'm not advocating a trans-human version of humanity on an algorithmized silicon basis as some A.I. propagandists enthuse.)

Are we stuck with understanding ourselves AS a species of animal in some kind of evolutionary continuity with so-called lower species of animal? Are we content to continue understanding ourselves as a kind of whats among all the other whats inhabiting the planet? And then striving to master all kinds of movement scientifically, suitably, sustainably to ensure our survival as an animal species?

Haven't we painted ourselves, our mind, into a corner, the corner of whatness, from where it seems inconceivable that we could ever even begin to think and recast our selves within the ambience of whoness?

Hasn't modern philosophy failed us utterly and become along the way — since the triumph of empiricism, positivism and pragmatism — an obsequious, toadying lick-spittle to the sciences? It has well earned its status of despicable irrelevance, remaining responsible only for ethical clean-up jobs after the fact.

Is the emergence of neurophilosophy as probably the most recent branch of philosophy a sure sign of Western philosophy's irremediable capitulation to the modern sciences, both natural and social?

In view of the never-ending end of philosophy, we humans need to learn to rethink from scratch.

Just thought I'd let you know.

Further reading: Challenges for Today’s Thinking.