Žižek

Non-Paywalled — https://docs.google.com/document/d/1R-hL0Igt-b3Sj24YRlsPpGS7Eu8Bo1cuDRvTCsPso-g/edit?usp=sharing

Trump does business like war, and war like business.

Do we need new words to indicate positive peace vs negative peace?

"Kafka himself pointed out how the ultimate secret of the Law is that it does not exist—another case of what Lacan called the inexistence of the big Other. This inexistence, of course, does not simply reduce the Law to an empty imaginary chimera; it rather makes it into an impossible Real, a void which nonetheless functions, exerts influence, causes effects, curves the symbolic space."
–Slavoj Žižek

The system works, but not because of a hidden logic. It works because of the void. The endless deferral, the lack of a final answer, is the engine of the system. The lack of a final guarantee is what keeps the subjects frantically trying to find one. The void causes anxiety, paranoia, obsession, and submission. It shapes our behavior. We obey the law not because we understand its origin, but because we are terrified of the senseless, arbitrary power that its absence implies.

Just as a massive object like a black hole curves spacetime, the void of the Real (the inexistence of the Big Other) warps the entire symbolic universe around it. All our laws, beliefs, and social structures are bent and distorted by the fact that they have no authentic foundation. We are constantly trying to cover over this hole with meaning, but the hole's gravitational pull is what determines the shape of our efforts.

We are all, in a sense, living our lives in relation to a "Big Other" that we assume exists, not realizing that its power over us stems from its very inexistence.

Jacques Lacan is a notoriously obscure thinker. This video focuses on his attempt to bring philosophy (specifically, German Idealism) into psychoanalysis.

No registration version — https://archive.ph/y5iBd

What truly died on the cross?

in itself, to itself, of itself, for itself

Archive.today — https://archive.ph/2iU9r

DAVID LYNCH IS DEAD, BUT HIS ETHICS IS MORE ALIVE THAN EVER

I am McLovin it

Al doesn't just assist our decisions, it structures what we think we want. The danger isn't machines, but our fantasy of freedom within a framework we didn't choose.

What is the role of philosophy today?
(Warning: there are a few pretty bad takes regarding things like IQ and what not, but I found a few other provocations somewhat redeeming imho)

Ideology is the symbolic structuring the imaginary (both the constitution of the Other and its occlusion) as well as intervening in the real (we actually landed Perseverance on Mars). The Real shows up in contradictions between and within ideologies, and in the astronaut's traumatic realization that his world, both mediated and produced, is shaped by the signifier. So not all hope is lost as there is still freedom in the real and always will be. There is still a chance that we might dodge the bullet.

tl;dr The astronaut discovers his world is a signifier-produced reality, and in that traumatic Real there's still one off-switch: always has been, always will be...maybe

much more can be achieved or revealed, if we don’t do things for the sake of ritual (a thing we must do according to status quo). Its a sort of stretching of the bounds or going beyond the horizons of ontology

Don't forget it!

Don't be afraid to bend the rules and the meta-rules!

9 hours and so on and so on😆

Europe looks like Schrödinger’s cat, simultaneously at peace and at war.

Substack link — https://open.substack.com/pub/slavoj/p/quantum-tunnelling-in-and-around?r=359rv7