/lit/ - Literature

What do you philosophy guys do all day? I mean, what value does a question like this add to your life, or anyone's?

>>22475284
Heidegger says that technology is a way of revealing the truth, but if it's corrupted to only trick you into buying things, then it's an arm of marketing and exactly the opposite of what Heidegger describes it to be. Because it's no longer technology but consumption.

You can see it with Instagram, how it changed from a way of revealing truth through art to a platform to sell consumer goods. It's a battle of dumbing down vs enlightening the population, and technology is being used for the former rather than the latter.

It's a master illusion because it looks like shiny progress but it's the opposite.

>technology is not technological

Deep.

>>22475344
Bataille would say that technology today is a useless luxury good, an excess that is consumed as a sort of sacrifice to exalt the virtues of wealth. It has no actual use to human development, and is actually both a consumer good and a means of control through deception.

>>22475367
...

>>22475375
Read The Accursed Share.

>>22475273
>>22475331
Heidegger would say consumerism is at root only technological relations. What is the effective cause for something's growth or popularity has nothing to do with its essence.

>>22475389
He wrote that it's a frame and a frame is not technological.

>>22475389
>>22475424
The frame is so strong that it conceals the truth.

>>22475273
Wagner already encompassed Heidegger's entire critique of technology in his Ring, right down to the ur-ideal of Greece. The essential difference being that in art, at the point of its experience, the question is solved. Philosophy can only point a direction and broach further questions, but art IS something already. So it naturally follows the artistic response to the technological enframing should precede the philosophical response, as a muscle reflex precedes cognition, or the scientific discovery of the reflex via cognition. Wagner portrays the future of our culture in his myths with as much certainly as Aeschylus portrayed his culture's past.

>The Poet's art has turned to politics: no one now can poetise, without politising. Yet the politician will never become a poet, precisely until he ceases to be a politician: but in a purely political world to be not a politician, is as good as to say one does not exist at all; whosoever at this instant steals away from politics (wer sich jetzt noch unter der Politik hinwegstielt), he only belies his own being. The Poet cannot come to light again, until we have no more Politics.
>Politics, however, are the secret of our history, and of the state of things therefrom arising. Napoleon put this clearly. He told Goethe that: the rôle of Fate in the ancient world is filled, since the empire of the Romans, by Politics. Let us lay to heart this saying of him who smarted in St Helena! In it is briefly summed the whole truth of what we have to comprehend before we can come to an understanding, also, about the Content and the Form of Drama.
>The Greek Fate is the inner Nature-necessity, from which the Greek—because he did not understand it—sought refuge in the arbitrary political State. Our Fate is the arbitrary political State, which to us shews itself as an outer necessity for the maintenance of Society; and from which we seek refuge in the Nature-necessity, because we have learnt to understand the latter, and have recognised it as the conditionment of our being and all its shapings.
- Opera and Drama

>Clever though be the many thoughts expressed by mouth or pen about the invention of money and its enormous value as a civiliser, against such praises should be set the curse to which it has always been doomed in song and legend. If gold here figures as the demon strangling manhood's innocence, our greatest poet shews at last the goblin's game of paper money. The Nibelung's fateful ring become a pocket-book, might well complete the eerie picture of the spectral world-controller. By the advocates of our Progressive Civilisation this rulership is indeed regarded as a spiritual, nay, a moral power; for vanished Faith is now replaced by "Credit," that fiction of our mutual honesty kept upright by the most elaborate safeguards against loss and trickery. What comes to pass beneath the benedictions of this Credit, we now are witnessing, and seem inclined to lay all blame upon the Jews.
- Know Thyself

>>22475647
>Fashion's invention is therefore mechanical. But the mechanical is herein distinguished from the artistic: that it fares from derivative to derivative, from means to means, to finally bring forth but one more mean, the Machine. Whereas the artistic strikes the very opposite path: throws means on means behind it, pierces through derivative after derivative, to arrive at last at the source of every derivation, of every mean, in Nature's self, and there to slake its need in understanding.
>Thus the Machine is the cold and heartless ally of luxury-craving men. Through the machine have they at last made even human reason their liege subject; for, led astray from Art's discovery, dishonoured and disowned, it consumes itself at last in mechanical refinements, in absorption into the Machine, instead of in absorption into Nature in the Art-work.
- The Artwork of the Future

>In no other way do the French show us that they are the dominant people in present day civilisation than by the fact that our imagination enters the realm of the absurd if we suppose for a moment that we can liberate ourselves from their fashion. We at once recognise that a ‘German fashion’ in opposition to French fashion would be ridiculous; and, since we naturally rebel against its domination, we finally see that we are the victims of a real curse from which only an absolutely fundamental rebirth can redeem us. Our entire nature would have to change in such a way that the very concept of fashion would have completely to lose its meaning for the way we shape even our external life.

>Given the constant need for novelty (since fashion itself can never produce anything really new) an alternation of extremes is placed at the disposal of fashion as the only way out: it is actually this tendency onto which our creative artists, oddly advised, finally latch in order to produce once more noble art forms (though not of course of their own invention). The classical style and rococo, gothic and renaissance, now alternate; factories deliver Laocoön groups, Chinese porcelain, copies of Raphael and Murillo, Etruscan vases, medieval tapestries; also furniture à la Pompadour, plaster figures à la Louis XIV; the architect incorporates the whole into the Florentine style and crowns it with an Ariadne group.
>‘Modern art’ now also becomes a new principle for the aesthetician: its originality consists of its total lack of originality and its immeasurable advantage lies in its realisation of all styles of art, which have now become familiar to all and sundry and usable by every one according to arbitrary taste.
- Beethoven

It is not difficult to see how Parisian culture is for Wagner the antecedent of a globalised 'culture' of production and cultural sterility.

>>22475273
I’m not one to say it, but I think all Plato’s cave arguments are self-fulfilling prophecies.

>>22475284
>philosophy guy

professional philosophers are either 180IQ mega genius to will make you read a book that lets you spot the bill that will earn you property

>>22475284
>>22475284
Why the fuck are you even on a literature board (literature being a field that broadly includes philosophy and theology)? Why don’t you just nigh-constantly dose yourself with a trifecta of depressants/tranquilizers/benzos, opiates, stimulants, gabapentinoids, alcohol, caffeine, nicotine, kratom and/or weed in sophisticated cycles to minimize tolerance to each and keep yourself in a constant state of intoxication? (E.g. stimulants occasionally then opioids/alcohol/benzos/gabapentinoids/pot to wind down).

Become a drug dealer yourself, too, and/or, better yet, even get some more (yet conventionally “immoral”, frowned upon, or illegal) ways to make simple quick money. Scheme people, rob people, mug people, cheat people, dress up like you’re homeless and perfect the look — go unshaven, skip showers, skip brushing your teeth — and panhandle in some urban center, say in NYC by Grand Central, or some city university where the naive young white students give you some of your money from their part-time jobs or from their daddies and monies…

Hell, you can even become a male prostitute yourself (you can use the drugs to get over the disgust, assuming you’re a hetero male)… let old faggots with money stick their cock in your mouth and asshole. Get into crazy fetishes too to get even more money from well-off or just desperate perverts … say, them shitting on you, or you shitting on them, them pissing on you, or you pissing on them, drinking the piss and eating the shit, one of you or the other doing it, or maybe even both, them whipping you, spitting on you, SPH (small penis humiliation), spanking you, kicking you in the balls, or you doing it to them — be either, be both, offer fetish services online through apps and sites like Craigslist, Grindr, and FetLife.

You don’t actually have to have any of the fetishes or be gay, the cyclic alternating cocktail of kratom/gabapentin/Xanax/Adderall/meth/Oxycodone/codeine/alcohol/weed/DXM etc. can keep you zonked off of your gourd enough to not care, throw some Viagra or Cialis in there too to keep your dick up when needed, as a fair amount of these drugs mentions will make keeping it up tough.

You can also do fasting/feasting cycles to maximize your pleasure and minimize the health effects/keep to a reasonable weight … stimulants, nicotine and caffeine of course will also keep the appetite low, then when crashing, you can use some combo Seroquel (perhaps one of the most potent appetite stimulants), weed, and alcohol to get your appetite up and shove 6 Wendy’s Double Baconaters with cheese bacon fries and an XXL Coke on the side down your disgusting gourd.

Use potently aphrodisiac drugs and stimulants to get your libido up in your free time, smoke meth and jerk off for 12 hours, or better yet hire some hooker or stripper to live out your fantasies with you while you’re geeked on adderall, focalin, meth and/or Benzedrex.

>>22475284
Fuck Thailandese and/or Brazilian ladyboy hookers with massive cocks and massive fake breasts, fuck it, go wild … let your mind get so fucked up on drugs and all the disgusting fetishes you’ve desensitized yourself too by this point by being a drug-addicted gay hooker for crazy amounts of money that it pleasantly surprises and amazes you.

The Thai hooker sticks her unwashed, damp, sweaty asshole on (you)r wide open mouth and shits down it … There are two more turds, smaller ones, and when (you) have eaten these, residual shit to lick out of her anus. (You) pray that she'll let you drop the cape she’s wearing over (you)rself, to be allowed, in the silk-lined darkness, to stay a while longer with (you)r submissive tongue straining upward into her asshole. But she moves away. The fur evaporates from (you)r hands. She orders (you) to masturbate for her.

Another dark turd appears out the crevice, out of the absolute darkness between her white buttocks . . . (you) lean forward to surround the hot turd with (you)r lips, sucking on it tenderly, licking along its lower side . . . The stink of shit floods (you)r nose, gathering (you), surrounding. . . The turd slides into (you)r mouth, down to (you)r gullet. (You) gag, but bravely clamp (you)r teeth shut. (You)’re so fucked up at this point you actually enjoy it.

Vote for Biden for a second term, assuming you’re another stupid fucking American. With all the money you make from drug dealing, whether in person or online through the Dark Web or both (it’s also probably not as hard as you’d think to just get a VPN, learn to use Tor, learn the basics of PGP encryption, and have a common cryptocurrency wallet or multiple, at minimum a Bitcoin wallet, then get on the Dark Web and learn to both buy and sell drugs from there, thereby simply shipping and/or receiving them in the mail, nationally or internationally), from fraudulently panhandling while posing as a homeless and impoverished person, and, most notably, from being a gay drug-addicted prostitute and fetishist male dominatrix/slave advertising through the aforementioned sites, you can even travel …

Travel to some impoverished overcrowded shithole cities in the U.S. (parts of Harlem, Chicago, San Francisco), or perhaps even better yet, travel to the urban centers of shithole second- and third-world countries, some place where they won’t hardly care about the homeless … then you just have to get a sense of where the homeless are, and the streets and times where people will be scared to walk after it gets dark enough, or even in the daytime …

>>22475284
Kill them. Kill homeless people. Kill a bum. Do it in a horrific way. Do it American-Psycho style. A sneak attack, sucker-punch style, cowardly way … the knock-out game, in which you punch unsuspecting people really hard in the backs of their heads … this should get them incapacitated and on the ground, but hopefully still conscious. Then you need to subdue them and have them in some type of hold or sitting on top of them (it helps if you have some weight, some muscle, are tall enough, and some training in fighting/boxing/martial arts)… you can break fingers, wrists, elbows, shoulders or legs — it hurts tremendously. Or dislocate their jaws so you can fit your massive cock in their throats. Grab their testicles and squeeze them as hard as you can, as if you were a woman who was a black belt in karate and worked out at the gym recently and a man was trying to rape you (replay the scenario in your head, get a sexual thrill out of imagining this power dynamic — you castrating your rapist). Bring pliers and pull out their fucking teeth. Gouge out their eyeballs. Stick needles in their fucking penis, including down the tip of your penis into their urethra. Afterwards, chop up their bodies and hide them in a dumpster. Then instantly leave the country or city you were in back to where you were. Do this rarely, as a treat, rarely but certainly — enjoy the most fucked up pleasure possible for a human to enjoy.

Why don’t you just fucking do that instead of coming here like a drooling subhuman Down Syndrome microcephalic asking

>HURRRRRR!!!! WHY PEOPPE XARE ABOUT PHILDOGPT??? LOllnnnn

>>22475331
>You can see it with Instagram, how it changed from a way of revealing truth through art
It always was a vulgar platform for women posing for photos.
>truth!
>art!

>>22475729
Either or what? Nice run on sentence.

>>22475273
Read Ellul.

>>22475367
>Bataille would say that technology today is a useless luxury good, an excess that is consumed as a sort of sacrifice to exalt the virtues of wealth. It has no actual use to human development
He would be wrong then. Technology has always and continues to serve the magickal process of physically manifesting the will of those in power into the world. If you want to better understand the spiritual intentions of those in power, then I suggest you read Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Jaak Panksepp — they aren't who is in power, but their work reflects how those in power today think.

Why can’t we just accept that science was a huge mistake?

>>22476875
>He would be wrong then. Technology has always and continues to serve the magickal process of physically manifesting the will of those in power into the world. If you want to better understand the spiritual intentions of those in power, then I suggest you read Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Jaak Panksepp — they aren't who is in power, but their work reflects how those in power today think.
QRD on mr flow state guy and whoever the Finnic dude is?

>>22477023
Play is the peak psychological state of mammals and there is an evolutionary reason for this. It is the state from which the most creative, industrious, scientific, and loving historical minds operate from.

To add to them, I'd also recommend reading mythologist Joseph Campbell and anthropologist Victor Turner, whose works together show us the sheer breadth and malleability of the human psyche, and Jean Baudrillard, who identified the global cultural shift towards virtual reality.

We are entering the cyberpunk millennium, an age where parents can customize their children like creating a character in an RPG via gene editing. In this age, war will be waged virtually, and much work will be deferred onto robots. It will be the most creative age of human history so far. Technology is making this possible.

>>22477086
What's the spiritual intentions of those in power though?

>>22477444
The same as it's always been, an increase in power through expanding our artistic palette and means of communication.

>>22477496
But why do they want more power? What do they want to do with it?

>>22477508
All organisms want more power, because power is life. Put simply, they want to live richer and fuller lives.

>>22477527
Do they need power to live richer and fuller lives? I thought happiness peaked at an upper-middle class income. At some point, you're not using power to enrich your life, but seeking power to preserve your power.

>>22477541
>Do they need power to live richer and fuller lives?
Absolutely.

>>22477545
You're just saying now, that even though the evidence is to the contrary.

>>22477554
>evidence is to the contrary
Ah, okay. Care to explain why we didn't stay in the tribal era as a species then?

>>22477555
checked.

You keep arguing in black or white terms, i.e. either control everything and be super rich, or control nothing and be impoverished. All I argued that there's point where "enough is enough", at least for the point of living a fuller life. Hence:
>I thought happiness peaked at an upper-middle class income. At some point, you're not using power to enrich your life, but seeking power to preserve your power.

>>22477560
>either control everything and be super rich, or control nothing and be impoverished.
I never mentioned any of this. I'm talking about power in the evolutionary sense. Unicellular organisms became multicellular because of the evolutionary imperative to grow and obtain more power. This process will never reach a limit. Technology is how our species grows and obtains more power since the advent of civilization. It expands our artistic palette and means of communication, the two primary methods of growth in civilization.

>>22477573
>Unicellular organisms became multicellular because of the evolutionary imperative to grow and obtain more power. This process will never reach a limit. Technology is how our species grows and obtains more power since the advent of civilization. It expands our artistic palette and means of communication, the two primary methods of growth in civilization.
This only works if you see human beings as mechanistic beings with no capacity for choice. And even if we were determined beings, aren't we rational beings? Wouldn't we rationally come to realize that "the richest and fullest lives" are the ones with moderate wealth, given the evidence? Or are you arguing something different now, that humans seek power because they seek power, not because power is actually fulfilling in any meaningful way?

>>22477584
>Wouldn't we rationally come to realize that "the richest and fullest lives" are the ones with moderate wealth, given the evidence?
Why are you fixated on wealth, presumably economic wealth? Seems pathological to me, since it bears no relation to what I'm writing.

>>22477590
Wealth is highly correlated with power. You're being dishonest by saying it bears no relation. Again, where's the "for the sake of which" here? Power for the sake of power is empty. At some point, you're going to want to splooge and use it for something, right?

>>22477616
>Wealth is highly correlated with power. You're being dishonest
Rather, you're limiting the scope of power to that of its economic form, most likely subconsciously. The process and rules I'm talking about are evolutionary and cosmic in scale, and the authors I gave you to read are just some of the minds who can clarify this for you.

>Power for the sake of power is empty. At some point, you're going to want to splooge and use it for something, right?
The use of power does not drain it. It alchemizes it into another form.

>>22477634
>Rather, you're limiting the scope of power to that of its economic form, most likely subconsciously.
I can concede that there's more to power than wealth. But if wealth consistently brings more power, but there's a limit in how much happiness additional wealth brings, then that suggests that there is a limit to how much happiness more power brings.
>The process and rules I'm talking about are evolutionary and cosmic in scale
And yet why couldn't it be other than the case? It sounds like you're very sure of something when even the elites are dealing with what amounts to an existential crisis, merely going through the motions without much inspiration to drive them.
>The use of power does not drain it. It alchemizes it into another form.
Like what?

>>22475647
>>22475694
Thanks.

>>22475700
Perhaps.

>>22476875
>>22477023
>>22477086
You idiots..

>>22477717
>then that suggests that there is a limit to how much happiness more power brings.
No. It suggests there's a limit to how much happiness more ECONOMIC power brings.

>And yet why couldn't it be other than the case?
"Why is the universe not a different universe?" Is there a point to such a question? But Leibniz actually answered it anyway:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_of_all_possible_worlds

>Like what?
Imagine a wealthy individual founding his own art studio or investing in a scientific research project for the purpose of finding a cure to an illness he possesses.

>>22477759
>No. It suggests there's a limit to how much happiness more ECONOMIC power brings.
So who's the happiest guy? Who's got that 200k per year income but is maxxed out in other elements of power? Anthony Fauci? A university professor?
>Imagine a wealthy individual founding his own art studio or investing in a scientific research project for the purpose of finding a cure to an illness he possesses.
That suggests that economic power brings more happiness when in most cases it does not.

>>22478107
>So who's the happiest guy?
God.

>That suggests that economic power brings more happiness
It certainly does to an extent, but then it must be alchemized into another form to continue doing so, like any form of power.

>>22478141
>God
What's his endgame? Does he like this accumulation of power and play?
>It certainly does to an extent, but then it must be alchemized into another form to continue doing so, like any form of power.
What's with this persistent speak of alchemy?

>>22475273
id say the way technology is used definitely is a cave because of things like tiktok and video games,tv series and such that can distract especially if you seek gnosis.

>>22475765
>>22475764
>>22475762
>words, words, words
I promise you, no one is reading that.

>>22478177
>Does he like this accumulation of power and play?
Yes, and the universe is evidence of it, sorry to say.

>>22478216
He also likes to send the powerplayers crashing down though.

>>22478218
And you'll enjoy it when it happens, won't you? You'll enjoy it because your power will increase in that moment, because you're no different.

>>22475273
Ligotti characterized it best in My Work Is Not Yet Done:

>The company that employed me strived only to serve up the cheapest fare that its customers would tolerate, churn it out as fast as possible, and charge as much as they could get away with. If it were possible to do so, the company would sell what all businesses of its kind dream about selling, creating that which all our efforts were tacitly supposed to achieve: the ultimate product-- Nothing. And for this product, they would command the ultimate price-- Everything.
>This market strategy would then go on until one day among the world-wide ruins of derelict factories and warehouses and office buildings, there stood only a single, shining, windowless structure with no entrance and no exit. Inside would be-- will be-- only a dense network of computers calculating profits. Outside will be tribes of savage vagrants with no comprehension of the nature or purpose of the shining, windowless structure. Perhaps they will worship it as a god. Perhaps they will try to destroy it...

>>22478221
>You'll enjoy it because your power will increase in that moment, because you're no different.
I mean, not really? I feel like my situation doesn't change watching DeSantis crash and burn in the GOP primaries. It has no bearing on my life and my problems. If anything, if too many powerplayers collapse, my life will become much worse, because society will get much worse from the chaos.

>>22478257
>It has no bearing on my life and my problems.
Bullshit. You wouldn't have said this otherwise. >>22478218

>>22478260
I mean... isn't it true? I'm just making an observation. Do you think everything is about power?

>>22478273
It doesn't matter that it's true. It's an untimely statement that complements your fixation on economic power.

>Do you think everything is about power?
Do you think unicellular organisms became multicellular organisms for something else?

>>22478283
You're getting weird. Economics is just a relatively easy to understand method of power. There's nothing more to it. And there's nothing untimely about pointing out a flaw in your reasoning, except maybe for your worldview.
>Do you think unicellular organisms became multicellular organisms for something else?
Others stayed being unicellular organisms and will continue to be unicellular organisms until the universe extinguishes life. What's your point?

>>22478301
>You're getting weird.
Your motive has been obvious from the beginning. You're not really interested in learning anything.

>And there's nothing untimely about pointing out a flaw in your reasoning
No flaw was pointed out.

>What's your point?
That power is indeed what everything is about. The organisms that didn't change found it more empowering not to change, while the organisms that changed found it more empowering to change. Unless you can provide me an alternative that makes sense.

>>22476875
> If you want to better understand the spiritual intentions of those in power, then I suggest you read Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Jaak Panksepp — they aren't who is in power, but their work reflects how those in power today think.
What are you talking about? Do you know where you are? If you better want to understand the spiritual intentions of those power, you better get your ass on down to reading Professor José Delgado, B.F. Skinner, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and Yuval Noah (“Humans Are Hackable Animals”) Harari.

>>22478197
I did, and I enjoyed the ramblings. Kys zoomNIGGER faggot roastie

>>22478317
>Your motive
What's my motive?
>No flaw was pointed out.
If the universe rewards power, then why does it also punish power too?
>muhhhh change muhhh not change
I guess you can explain just about anything through "muh" power (but none of it is causal).

>>22477086
Techno optimism in 2023?

hahahhaha