I wrote a little while ago about how I felt I was maturing in the aesthetic, this growth is coming to a head now, everything around me has taken on a slightly different colour, a slightly different façade. For example, over the summer I have developed a broader range of things which I see as valuable, and […]
A fantastic example of simulacra.
Perhaps the most powerful and obvious example of simulacra in our lives is that of “make-up”, in the widest possible sense of the word. To change your body and appearance to look like someone else who in turn is a copy, and a distorted copy at that, of someone else. It’s difficult […]
Physical concepts are free creations of the human mind, and are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external world. In our endeavor to understand reality we are somewhat like a man trying to understand the mechanism of a closed watch. He sees the face and the moving hands, even hears its ticking, […]
Over the past week or two I have been feeling my whole world is changing around me. I get this experience rarely, once every few years maybe, where my whole being takes a shift and everything looks different; It's almost as if I fly round in an orbit of my life and start looking at it […]
It's that time of year again which always brings radical changes in my life. Over the next few days I'll be leaving my summer job and moving back to university; it's like changing over to a different life, everything around me moves and changes. It's odd the way things can lose their palpability so quickly; in […]
I have been away in Wales for the past week or so, hence the even later than usual update. One of the things that struck me while I was there was the “beach/surf culture”, and this made me think about “culture” in general. Or perhaps more specifically, being part of a “group”, either physically as […]
I am currently reading an excellent book by the Argentinian author Jorge Luis Borges called Labyrinths. It’s a collection of some of his short stories and fictional essays. When I say short, I mean very short, most of them are less than ten pages, some of them are only a few lines. Many of them […]
Night, So radically different to the day.
For most people, “life” is what happens during the day, at work, at school etc, meeting people, talking, feeling the world around you… So what does that make night?
I personally seem to spend a large chunk of my time “living” at night, I love the quiet, the relative solitude, […]
I think it is easy to forget what memories, reality, science and “fact” really are. Just because you can remember something doesn’t mean it’s true, just because experimental theory points to something doesn’t mean it’s true. There is no such thing as absolute certainty, almost any hypothesis is ultimately as viable as any other. I […]
A mind all logic is like a knife all blade. ~ Rabindranath Tagore
Logic: The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding. ~ Ambrose Bierce
“Logic is a careful, serious, systematic method of coming to the wrong conclusion with absolute confidence.” ~ Unknown
Logic restricts your reality, if […]
“Labels seem to give satisfaction. We accept the category to which we are supposed to belong as a satisfying explanation of life. We are worshippers of words and labels; we never seem to go beyond the symbol, to comprehend the worth of the symbol. By calling ourselves this or that, we ensure ourselves against further […]
Is it better to keep photographs? Or just rely on your memories?
I think there is a place for both, a place for photographs, to jog your memory, and get a clear picture of “times gone by”, but, I think there is another dimension to the past that is only held in your mind, that might […]
My number one (maybe) Philosophy:
Note: This isn’t a “command”, it is merely my own philosophy.
Know why you do things, everything you do, you should know why. If you are not able to present a reason, that you personally see as valid, for why you do something, why do you do it?
So many people do things […]
A Simulacra, in it’s most pure form is a “copy of a copy”. However, it is slightly more than that, often a simulacrum would be a copy that has changed so much from it’s original that it can no longer be said to be a copy. Or, a copy of something that no longer exists, […]