A philorock song about the Western mind's dementia:
For those who cannot swallow the status quo and are aware (and wary) of the multiple false alternatives on offer in response to a world in crisis. A crisis is a situation demanding a decision, but we Westerners want to have our cake and eat it too. In German the equivalent is, 'Wasch mich, aber mach' mich nicht naß' (Wash me, but don't make me wet).
A major symptom of dementia is forgetfulness.
The adequate response to our Western loss of mind and its seemingly immovable complacency is to do a da capo back to the roots of philosophical thinking with Plato and Aristotle in order to revise and recast their fateful interpretations of key elementary phenomena. Our dementia resides in our being unable to see any alternative to these fateful castings, or any point in attempting them, and so we just go on thinking in the same ruts, even while the depredations of the Medium of valorization are reaching ever new heights and its latest technological accomplice, the cyberworld of algorithms bent on monetization, has been unleashed upon us.
As the famous pithy line from Wagner says:
"Die Wunde schließt der Speer nur, der sie schlug."
"Only the spear that opened the wound can close it."
Further reading: On Human Temporality: Recasting Whoness Da Capo De Gruyter, Berlin 2024.
