Tag Archives | Philosophy

You May Be a Member of a Secret Society and Not Even Know It

By on January 2, 2013 in News 88

I spent my holidays reading a lot of esoteric literature. After polishing off Louis Bergier’s The Morning of the Magicians, I moved on to a cache of Rosicrucian literature in my collection, and then a book on Jungian symbolism. To top it all off, I started reading Manly P. Hall’s The Secret Teachings of All Ages.
Fantasy and Fantastic Reality

This isn’t a new habit for me, mind you: I’ve always enjoyed reading philosophical, magical and mystical texts. I’ve half-joked with friends that I’m some kind of amphibian: I need to spend a least part of my day submerged in the fantastic. This isn’t necessarily a healthy way to live, but to quote Shirley Jackson, “No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream.”

There are rewards, too, though: Learning to safely entertain multiple contradictory ideas is one of them; developing a sense for symbolism and correspondences is another.… Read the rest

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The End To The Era Of Biological Robots

By on December 23, 2012 in News 9

Via Skeptiko, a fascinating interview with neuroscientist Dr. Mario Beauregard, who argues that, like the transition from classical to quantum physics, a revolution is coming in the way science will no longer perceive humans as being merely “biological robots”:

What we call the “modern scientific worldview”… is based on classical physics and this view is based on a number of fundamental assumptions like materialism, determinism, reductionism. So applied to mind and brain it means that, for instance, everything in the universe is only matter and energy that form the brain as a physical object, too, and the mind can be reduced strictly to electrical and chemical processes in the brain.

It means also that everything is determined from a material or physical point of view, so we don’t have any freedom. We’re like biological robots, totally determined by our neurons and our genes and so on. And so we’re reduced to material objects and we are determined by material processes.

… Read the rest

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Why Privacy Matters Even if You Have Nothing to Hide

By on December 19, 2012 in News 7

Via the Chronicle of Higher Education, law professor Daniel J. Solove reveals all:

The nothing-to-hide argument is everywhere. In Britain, for example, the government has installed millions of public-surveillance cameras in cities and towns, which are watched by officials via closed-circuit television. In a campaign slogan for the program, the government declares: “If you’ve got nothing to hide, you’ve got nothing to fear.”

But the problem with the nothing-to-hide argument is the underlying assumption that privacy is about hiding bad things. By accepting this assumption, we concede far too much ground and invite an unproductive discussion about information that people would very likely want to hide. As the computer-security specialist Schneier aptly notes, the nothing-to-hide argument stems from a faulty “premise that privacy is about hiding a wrong.” Surveillance, for example, can inhibit such lawful activities as free speech, free association, and other First Amendment rights essential for democracy.

One such harm, for example, which I call aggregation, emerges from the fusion of small bits of seemingly innocuous data.

… Read the rest

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The Aarhus Interpretation

By on December 14, 2012 in News 16

Via Opinion & Kommentar:

The Aarhus Interpretation : A lecture given at The Danish Neuroscience Center (DNC) on may 28TH 2010 by author and philosopher Erwin Neutzsky-Wulff:

It has been said that those who know least about the sea are the fish. The same may perhaps be said about scientists.

Working on the tenth floor of a building doesn’t necessarily mean that you have any idea what is going on in the basement or how or when it was constructed. Of course, when it’s burning, you may take a sudden interest in the location of the fire-escapes.

Also, if you’re a window-cleaner, you may be more aware of what floor you’re on. In science, the window-cleaners are those who work on the frontiers of science.

In a way, they’re always half in and half out of the building. They are also more likely to fall off or to discover a crack in the concrete.… Read the rest

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On The Death Of Monotheism

By on December 14, 2012 in News 10

Via Soul Spelunker, a celebration of the polytheistic outlook:

In his greatest work, Thus Spake Zarathustra, Friedrich Nietzsche proclaimed that “God is dead” … the proclamation of God’s death paves the way for a new epoch of freedom. If centrality suggests control, acentrality suggests theological and psychological liberty.

Humans have always been polytheistic in nature. The word, polytheism, is a way to explain the plurality of living Beings that compose each and every person. Make no mistake, they are real Persons. Monotheism, on the other hand, is the promotion of a single, central figure at the center of the human Microcosm, which we call the Ego. The overinflated Ego is the Minotaur at the center of the maze of existence that consumes all others that challenge his authority. It is a male character because monotheism is very much a patriarchal phenomenon.

Polytheism is just as much a social phenomenon as it is a theological phenomenon.

… Read the rest

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A Biopunk Manifesto

By on December 7, 2012 in News 9

From last year’s Outlaw Biology? Conference at UCLA, hacker Meredith Patterson on a manifesto for the biopunk movement:

The prevalence of citizen science has fallen. Who are the twentieth-century equivalents of Benjamin Franklin, Edward Jenner, Marie Curie or Thomas Edison? Perhaps Steve Wozniak, Bill Hewlett, Dave Packard [etc.] — but the scope of their work is far narrower than that of the natural philosophers who preceded them. Citizen science has suffered from a troubling decline in diversity, and it is this diversity that biohackers seek to reclaim.

We reject the popular perception that science is only done in million-dollar university, government, or corporate labs; we assert that the right of freedom of inquiry, to do research and pursue understanding under one’s own direction, is as fundamental a right as that of free speech or freedom of religion.

A Biopunk Manifesto by Meredith Patterson from SMA on Vimeo.

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Introducing Alan Watts?

By on December 5, 2012 in News 11


It’s unlikely this will be an introduction for most Disnfonaughts but as the community grows it’s worth welcoming newcomers with a few of the basics. Trust me when I say he’ll be useful to you if you’re unaware of his work[1].

Open Culture has highlighted the arrival of the complete 1959 series of television shows which helped to make his name in the US.

If you’re familliar with his work you’ll have skipped this, prepared yourself a good fat tasty portion of Zen and already be watching the master weave some ‘classic’ spells.

Open culture writes:

The British-born interpreter and popularizer of East Asian Buddhist thought generated most of his media in the San Francisco of the 1950s and 1960s, and his televised lectures, produced for local public station KQED, must have offered many a San Franciscan their very first glimpse of Zen. Now that episodes of his series Eastern Wisdom and Modern Life have made it to YouTube (season one, season two), you can see for yourself that Watts’ then-cutting-edge delivery of this ancient wisdom remains entertaining, informative, and striking in its clarity. Begin with the introductory episode above, “Man and Nature,” in which Watts calmly lays out his observations of the ill effects of Westerners’ having grown to distrust their human instincts.

FULL STORY HERE.

[1] Early rumours surrounding The Discordian Holy text “Principia Discordia” placed him as its author. This speaks to the clout he had in the US spiritual counter culture.

Nick Margerrison

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The Supernatural World

By on November 22, 2012 in News 18

Preface to The Supernatural World by Danish author and philosopher Erwin Neutzsky-Wulff:

Dear reader!

Are you fascinated by the supernatural? By the idea, that there may be a deeper meaning to existence?

That demons – or just beings from other worlds or dimensions – actually exist? Or do you simply wonder why some people seem to believe in, or even in some form experience, the supernatural?

If not, then you probably belong to a very small minority. In all likelihood it will not have escaped your attention, that there are entire retail chains, that exist to provide you with anything from gemstones with healing properties to inverted crosses – anything according to taste.

What is it all about? And what has auras and reincarnation got to do with the religion we were taught at Sunday school?

Are people who communicate with spirits insane, do they have real contact, or maybe both?

… Read the rest

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