Things I've Underlined 2.0

A personal study of the Liberal Arts. For Great Justice.

[cogitati-blog]

To say I cannot accept the world as it is and to continue living is the greatest strength there is and what we all depend upon.

[tabulasar]

Semiotics is fundamentally the study of sign-systems. A sign-system has two parts: the signifier (the thing we see), and the signified (what we think of when we see it). Non-white skin is part of a sign-system, where one’s skin-colour is the signifier and what is signified is wildness, savagery, and animalism. Non-whiteness, in the minds of white people, signifies what is lacking: a lack of enlightenment; of respectability; of culture. It signifies danger: danger to white values; to white norms; the danger of a square peg refusing to fit into a round hole. Mostly, it signifies other: them, not us.

The Semiotics of Race, or: Walks on the Wild Side x Aaminah Khan x Black Girl Dangerous (via sociolab)

I wonder what this would look like through a Peircian lens.

[savedbythe-bellhooks]

[cogitati-blog]

I need to work on this one

[cogitati-blog]

[cogitati-blog]

That's racist -- jingoist -- whatever.

Archer

[thingsiveunderlined-blog]

A great idea in the background of a dim consciousness is like a phantom ocean beating upon the shores of human life in successive waves of specialization. A whole succession of such waves are slowly doing their work of sapping the base of some cliff of habit.

Alfred North Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas (via thingsiveunderlined)

[cogitati-blog]

We face an immanent change in the structure of our workforce not unlike that of the industrial revolution. Many jobs, even in the current professional sector, will soon be automized. In the face of such wide sweeping social change, it seems wise to look to the past. What have we faced before that was similar, and how have we succeeded and failed in those situations? How can we recontextualize our view of the industrial revolution to make it more relevant to the challenges we face today?

[cogitati-blog]

I want to play a game called Ideology where the player supplies alternative philosophical methods and findings for Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle and gets to see what happens.

[cogitati-blog]

The threat of war, social or economic turmoil, or of an enemy within are classic devices that have been used to suppress clear judgment and provide emotional focus and outlets for a population's anxieties. The threats may be real or contrived, but this is not the point here: they make people vulnerable to poor reasoning and to manipulation of their perception and judgment.

Philip J Regal, The Anatomy of Judgment

[cogitati-blog]

unwritten papers in my mind

irrationality: it's not what you think

the indoctrination of judgement

[cogitati-blog]

Words carry a lot of instructions for thinking and feeling, for dividing the world up into categories and for reacting to them, and are not simply uncomplicated objective descriptions. They tell us what to value.

Philip J Regal, The Anatomy of Judgement

[cogitati-blog]

Orwell has a character say that during the industrial age, people realized that machines could reduce the total amount of labor needed and increase the wealth available to the point that most could enjoy a comfortable life of some work and substantial leisure. The wealthy could not tolerate this because it would expose them as unnecessary. Therefore, the excess wealth must be destroyed rather than shared.

[cogitati-blog]

I think no one can deny that the seed of violence remains within each of us. We must recognize that, because that violence is capable of consuming us.

Star Trek TNG, Season 5 Ep 12

[cogitati-blog]

The founding principle of classical physics is that a real, objective world exists, a world the scientist can understand in limitless detail. Quantum theory takes away this certainty, asserting that scientists cannot hope to discover the “real” world in infinite detail, not because there is any limit to their intellectual ingenuity or technical expertise, nor even because there are laws of physics preventing the attainment of perfect knowledge. The basis of quantum theory is more revolutionary yet: it asserts that perfect objective knowledge of the world cannot be had because there is no objective world.

David Lindley, The End of Physics

[cogitati-blog]

Truth establishes itself as best it can and its only merit lies in being what it is.

Sainte-Beuve, Oeuvres, as quoted by Benedetta Craveri in Madame du Deffand trans Teresa Waugh

[cogitati-blog]

[approachingsignificance]

You never realize how much of your background is sewn into the lining of your clothes.

Tom Wolfe (via socio-logic)