Mamihlapinatapai

“Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I came to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and man’s enemies will be the members of his household.” – Matthew 10:34-9

I am writing this post as I desperately search through the BBC world news website to find a recent article (perhaps 1 week, max 2) on the ensuing peace talks of a two state solution between Israel and Palestine in the Paris summit and how Israel refuses to attend the talks. How can the keyword Palestine not link to the article? How is it easier to find something written years ago and not find something that literally happened NOW? It is precisely such reasons that so much confusion and violence can continue to be perpetuated without end. Perhaps, one might not even know what the significance of Palestine and its role is in the general unrest in the Middle East. Palestine is only one of the giant pink elephants that Western goggles fails to see. Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s Heretic perfectly captures this paradoxical nature of our current political times. In trying to open up discussion on the topic of Islam’s need for a reformation, Ali inadvertently creates further confusion and extreme viewpoints which further obscures the systematic violence enacted on a global scale. In removing social and historical context of modern history from her arguments, Ali’s proposition, regardless of how sound and rational it maybe, becomes distorted, contradictory, hypocritical even perverse to the point which one can consider her view points to be racist and islamophobic.

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“An die Nachgeborenen” (To Those Born Later)

NEW YORK, NY - JULY 06: Donald Trump attends the 2015 Hank's Yanks Golf Classic at Trump Golf Links Ferry Point on July 6, 2015 in New York City. (Photo by Andrew H. Walker/Getty Images)

“Heaven and earth are not humanistic–they regard myriad beings as straw dogs; sages are not humanistic–they regard people as straw dogs” – Sun-Tzu

What is sad is not that a man like Trump is running for president in 2016, what is truly sad about it is that people have forgotten what this means. Think about it, think hard. Remember it. How can you actually be surprised? Within the last 100 years of our American century where were you, what were you doing? It is unfortunate that history, especially American history, agrees with Trump and it is this rapture that we see our very own hypocrisy embodied in a single point of pointlessness. Over the last 100 years, America has been a racist, fascist, fundamentalist, corrupt, violent, bigot who’s only interest is to serve a small group of Anglo-elites to further their own personal agendas at any and all costs: Trump is and has always been the true face of America. He embodies the contradiction and hypocrisy of both the Left and the Right of the double standards in which western civilization has privilege itself to. Continue reading →

Je ne connaîtrai pas la peur, car la peur tue l’esprit.

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“Fear is a mind-killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past me I will turn to see fear’s path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.” – Dune, Frank Herbert

In light of the tragedy that happened in France one comes face to face with the unbearable Real. I write not in condolence, there is no meaning in tragedy, but it is precisely this void of meaning that confronts us is why I write now.

The term ideology has been used so many times in order to explain the radicalization of fundamental religious movements throughout present current events has been misused. It is at this misconception that I want to address, especially with what happened in France and what is happening now in general, why this point is important to clarify. To reiterate Zizek, we had and are and will always be, living in ideological times. These radical groups are not, as the media has portrayed, being driven by dangerous ideology, or what I am getting at is, it is not quite as simple as what is stated. One can even say, these radical groups only became radicalized simply because they do not have enough dangerous ideological ideas to sustain them from the unbearable Real of their daily lives. Continue reading →

In Search for Causality (part 1)

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Jesus isn’t saving us from the Devil. He’s saving us from God. – J. Karlin

Preamble

This begins with an in depth analysis of the film Antichrist 2009 by Lars von Trier. The question that was being addressed was where the antichrist can be found in the film, in other words, where is the devil and how was it portrayed? In order to answer that, a thorough analysis of the “devil” must be made. This point is crucial to understand the futility of representing the very aspect of the unrepresentable or irrepresentable. A quest that is fully within the devil’s domain so speak, yet extremely rewarding as it unravels and confronts the very inverse of irrepresentability with complete representation, the impossibility of a thing fully signified. That is to say the very search for the irrepresentable is the same search for the transcendental signified, it is from the point of the irrepresentable that the transcendental signified can be imagined, conceived; to be deceived that there is a movement towards something that has been signified. This leap is not as inconceivable as it first appears if one is willing to follow the very movements of representation within the film and the current paradoxes of modern philosophy. Continue reading →

What is at Stake?

With the recent Rob Ford scandal that has plagued the politics of Toronto one still lacks the perspective of what is at stake when a crack smoking clown can become the mayor of one of North America’s largest capital centers. Even the most intelligent commentaries on the situation fail to acknowledge the systematic failures in place to have allowed this to happen. What this clown has done was simply act as the displacement to what is truly at stake here: that the premise of the Western Democracy has to be re-evaluated. Continue reading →