seen from Bulgaria
seen from China
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Germany
seen from United States
seen from Malaysia
seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
seen from China
seen from Taiwan
seen from Malaysia
seen from China
seen from Malaysia
seen from Mexico
seen from United States
seen from United States
Moral choice is free, and therefore unforeseeable. The child does not contain the man he will become. Yet, it is always on the basis of what he has been that a man decides upon what he wants to be. [...] The drama of original choice is that it goes on moment by moment for an entire lifetime, that it occurs without reason, before any reason, that freedom is there as if it were present only in the form of contingency.
Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity
To challenge and to cope with this paradoxical state of things, we need a paradoxical way of thinking; since the world drifts into delirium, we must adopt a delirious point of view. We must no longer assume any principle of truth, of causality, or any discursive norm. Instead, we must grant both the poetic singularity of events and the radical uncertainty of events. It is not easy. We usually think that holding to the protocols of experimentation and verification is the most difficult thing. But in fact the most difficult thing is to renounce the truth and the possibility of verification, to remain as long as possible on the enigmatic, ambivalent, and reversible side of thought.
Jean Baudrillard, The Vital Illusion
The machine is silent and nefarious. It operates in myriad ways, often without notice or detection. It requires no one to control it, guide it, or feed it. It does all of these things for itself. It does them today, it will do them tomorrow, and it will keep doing them for as long as time itself. The operations of the machine are entirely automatic. They follow from each other just as night follows day.
You cannot stop the machine. You can demand that it explain itself, but your question will not be heard. The machine is not something that listens. You can break the machine's parts, but they will be replaced. The machine is not something that fails. You can stand in front of the machine and dare it to kill you and it will kill you. The machine is not something that feels. Any individual effort to oppose the machine will not succeed. The machine is used to handling dissenters and it will carry on regardless of protests or attacks.
But the machine does have a weakness. It is built out of parts that can be changed. In fact, its entire structure is created and contingent. Everything that makes up the machine could be other than it is. Changing the parts will not cause the machine to stop, but it will function differently.
Read more...
Just watched Local58 and still re-elaborating
I found that Contingency is considered the scariest episode by most and yet I can't relate. I don't find this scary as much as intriguing as a historical and social what-if. If this was real, it wouldn't be the first historical example of a suicide induced for matters of patriotism and honor.
I agree the mass level of this hypotetical induced suicide is disturbing but it also... makes sense. Nations have organized horrific actions against their own people creating perfectly neat systems especially in the most recent times. Again it doesn't come as new.
I'm sure it's mainly due to my perspective as both a non-American and a gen Z who didn't experience anything about the Cold War. The scary factor of this video is based on breaking the trust between the US citizens and government, especially during a time where it was fundamental because out there there was a big enemy to fight.
Instead I relate a lot with the trust between you and your GPS being betrayed in the worst moment and Fastest Available Route is the scariest episode to me. And again it's linked to personal experience, even if it's not direct.
As a child I was once in a car with my dad and some friends of his driving in the mountains at late night. I was already upset because my mom wasn't there and I was kept awake at 3 AM, but being in complete darkness, seeing no other cars around and only trees surrounding us everywhere and not being in control of the situation was driving me wild.
At least the driver in the video is being absurdly mindless and unquestioning, which helps me detach a little, because in that situation I'm pretty sure that I would stop listening much before hearing shit like "turn off your headlights" in the middle of an unnamed road in the forest.
Wouldn't I?
Would I really question the GPS while driving alone at night in a path I don't know? Even when it talks about a non-existent traffic ahead at 3 am? Hearing "Rerouting, make a U-turn" for 2 hours must be a torture. Would I really be listening to my bells ringing when the GPS starts missing words or changing the verbal tense? Who knows how blindly I will trust something else, when I don't know the path myself?
The GPS could have been a real life driver and you the passenger. And these are the same questions I could apply to the beginning of a relationship when you don't know the other person well enough yet and they drive you off somewhere. Will you get home safely? Will you get home at all?
first meeting
There are no necessary truths holding reality together.
Philosophy students learn about "necessary beings"—entities that must exist, that ground all of reality. Theologians claim God exists necessarily. Metaphysicians argue that certain truths have to be true in all possible worlds.
It's all wishful thinking dressed up in technical language.
Consider nothingness. Not empty space—actual nothingness. No matter, no energy, no space, no time, no laws of physics. In that state, there are no rules. Nothing enforces "ex nihilo nihil fit"—from nothing, nothing comes. That principle only describes how our universe operates. It's not a metaphysical constraint on whether universes can exist at all.
So there's no logical problem with something springing into existence uncaused. The universe doesn't need a reason to exist. Causation is a pattern we observe within reality, not a requirement governing reality itself.
When someone asks "why is there something rather than nothing," they're smuggling in assumptions. They're treating this as a question with an answer, implying there's some framework outside reality that could explain reality. But there is no outside. "Something vs. nothing" exhausts all possibilities. You can't step beyond that to ask why one obtained instead of the other.
Reality just is. It's not necessary. It's not caused. It bottoms out at brute facts—things that obtain without explanation. The demand for something deeper is a psychological need, not a logical requirement.
The comfort people derive from necessity arguments is transparent. An uncaused universe means no ultimate purpose, no cosmic plan, no guarantee things make sense. So they invent frameworks where God necessarily exists, where meaning is built into the fabric of reality, where their existence serves some grand design.
But comfort isn't truth. The universe doesn't care about your need for existential reassurance.
This matters because these necessity arguments don't stay in philosophy seminars. They become justifications for moral hierarchies, political structures, who deserves rights and who doesn't. When people claim their beliefs reflect necessary truths rather than contingent preferences, they're claiming authority they don't have.
Your caveman software craves certainty, purpose, cosmic order. It evolved in an environment where believing the chief speaks for the gods promoted group cohesion. That software is still running. It's generating the same outputs—just now with more elaborate rationalizations.
Reality has no foundation beneath it. No necessary being holds it in place. That's not a problem to solve. It's just how things are.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Have you read Contingency (Supernatural)?
Yes, I am/was in the fandom
Yes, but I’m not in the fandom
No, but I’m in the fandom
No, I’m not in the fandom
Summary: Two months after Dean is dragged to Hell, he crawls out of his own grave with a mysterious handprint branded to his shoulder. A strange being named Castiel claims that he pulled Dean early to stop the literal Apocalypse. Now Dean must figure out a way to derail the divine destinies of him and his brother. They must find a way to stop Lilith without killing her, while all of Heaven and Hell want Dean back in the basement so The Plan can continue. The only one in his corner is Castiel, but can this stupidly handsome stranger be trusted? After all, no one else but Dean can even see or hear him... [AKA A S4 AU retelling with healthy brotherly bonding, tons of TFW feels, a very sweet slow burn, and Cas in a waistcoat!]
Author: Cheerful_Shinigami
Note from submitter: It's great. Cas is already in Hell for *reasons* and convinced Dean to be his vessel so they can save the world. If you love snarky Cas, then this is the fic for you!
