benny

It's a waste of time and energy to deport terrorists or immigrants who support terrorism. National security cannot be maintained by people unable to withstand terror from the inside (i.e. in their foro interno).

Ivan Illich, Deschooling Society, Harrow Books, 1972: Learning is the human activity which least needs manipulation by others. (p.56) School is not only the New World Religion. It is also the world's fastest-growing labor market. (p.66) The alternative to school would be a network which gave each man the same opportunity to share his current concern. (p.28 ) Schools pervert the natural inclination to grow and to learn. (p.87) Schools are socially addictive. Social addiction, or escalation, consists in the tendency to prescribe increased treatment if smaller quantities have not yielded the desired results. (p.80) School is a system of regressive taxation: the value of a man's schooling is a fonction of the number of years he has completed and of the costliness of the schools he has attended. (p.88 ) It must not start with the question, “What should someone learn?” but with the question, “What kinds of things and people might learners want to be in contact with in order to learn?” (p.111) A good educational system should have three purposes; it should provide all who want to learn with access to available resources at any time in their lives; empower all who want to share what they know to find those who want to learn it from them; and, finally, furnish all who want to present an issue to the public with the opportunity to make their challenge known. (p.108) It is difficult to abandon the idea that we have an obligation to the young, especially to the poor, an obligation to process them, whether by love or by fear, into a society which needs disciplined specialization as much from its producers as from its consumers. (p.97)

Fundamentally, terror takes its roots in this symbolic gap between saying and hearing (and seeing). Violence doesn't become so out of hand in the natural world because animals (non-humans) don't face this gap.

Review - The Parallax View by Slavoj Zizek MIT Press, 2006 Review by Adam Hutchinson Jun 25th 2007 Philosopher and cultural critic Slavoj Zizek has been called the Elvis of contemporary intellectuals more than once. After all, not only can he boast a publication and speaking record that should make him the envy of every academic in the Western world, but he has recently been the star of an eponymous titled documentary (2005's Zizek!) and laid down several commentary tracks on the DVD release of Alfonso Cuaron's Children of Men (2006). Indeed, while Zizek's name certainly holds a prominent place in the philosophy section at your local bookstore, it is not limited to it. With regard to Zizek's newest and perhaps most ambitious work The Parallax View though, we might be best served to drop the rock star metaphor and talk about jazz instead. The Parallax View is series of brief riffs on a staggering range of topics without the benefit of an obvious structure (much like good jazz). From the fascist potential of modern art to the Hegelian turn in the brain sciences The Parallax View proceeds with only a common thematic to guide it: that is, Zizek wishes to demonstrate how there is a fundamental short circuit or point of disjunction in the make-up of reality -- the parallax gap. A parallax gap for Zizek is a "confrontation of two closely linked perspectives between which no neutral common ground is possible." (4), or what we might call the minimal difference between two incommensurable points-of-view. For instance, one of the problems that has sustained constant interest in philosophy of mind as well as the various scientific approaches to understanding the mind is the notion of the explanatory gap. A neuroscientist may be able to offer an exhaustive account of what happens in my mind (what areas of the brain light up with activity etc) when I eat a piece of delicious cake. I cannot help but think though, that she is missing the point. What the neuroscientist misses in her account of my experience of eating is precisely the experience itself: the first-person phenomenal sensation of actually eating the cake. When it comes down to offering the "best" description of how the mind works I can either buy the objective map the neuroscientist presents me with or the subjective qualitative account that I immediately experience, but it seems impossible to assert the primacy of one without dismissing the other. That is, for Zizek there is no way for the two perspectives to meet in any fashion that still preserves what remains essential to both. In short, the parallax gap. The Parallax View then is an attempt to show that such an "explanatory gap" is not exclusive to problems of mind, but is simply a constitutive element of reality itself -- that our experiences are filled with "blindspots" between some elements. However, Zizek's goal is not to show how such gaps can be resolved -- of how we can bring a neurological map together with a qualitative experience without conflict -- but to explain how such gaps must themselves become a part of any attempt to theorize experience. This includes, of course, our experience as persons in love, as readers of books, and even as political subjects. The parallax gap, Zizek insists, touches on every level of our being. If the idea of such a gap sounds somewhat obscure but nevertheless vaguely intriguing then I have done my job of explaining it in a way that befits Zizek. As I mentioned above, the parallax gap functions as more of a thematic glue than as a central organizing principle. While Zizek takes pains to at least briefly highlight the parallax gap in each of the various discussions, the book itself does not systematically build from gap to gap, but instead zigs and zags from parallax to parallax. While such an approach gives each section of the book a certain freshness (where is the gap going to pop up?) it also represents its greatest weakness. While each section is very interesting on its own, there is little connection between the different discussions. The whole book then comes off as a series of notes, as if Zizek was just jotting down different parallax gaps as he thought of them and never went back to provide any kind of flow among the different chapters. Moreover, while some sections emphasize and put their particular parallax gap at the center of discussion, others simply mention their gap and move on to other tangential topics that, while almost always fascinating, really detract from the unity of the book. In fact, the only reason I fail to offer a section-by-section account (besides the obvious fact it would make this review far too long) is that it would simply read more like a random bar conversation than a progressive argument. For instance, Zizek moves quickly through comments on the Freudian Death Drive to the parallax of Jesus as God and man, to an analysis of the late Johnny Cash song "When the Man Comes Around" (with all of the lyrics helpfully included) all in the space of three pages. Zizek has described The Parallax View as his magnum opus and to be fair the book is not lacking in intellectual scope (he theorizes everything from the notion of morality in Henry James to the place of the Jew in contemporary Europe). The problem is that in the end Zizek fails to tie all of his insights together, to build off of his various discussions to anything that resembles an ending. It feels as if the final chapter of the book is more or less arbitrary -- he could have closed it with any of the sections and it would have given us just as much satisfaction. This is the problem in attempting to describe the structure of The Parallax View, other than a few references to previous discussions it seems as if each section is self-contained and overall arrangement is rather arbitrary. While this allows the reader to jump around at their leisure, it also prevents Zizek from building any momentum from section to section, chapter to chapter The Parallax View then reads more like a series of very interesting notes than a complete work of philosophy. While this may make for good jazz, it sometimes makes for very frustrating reading. Despite the obvious structural flaws of The Parallax View it is still a worthwhile and oftentimes fascinating peek into contemporary cultural theory (perhaps its jumbled structure is a mirroring of present day Anglo-American culture). Zizek combines the insights of 19th century German philosopher G.W.F. Hegel with 20th century French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan in many brilliant and oftentimes unexpected ways. While neither Hegel nor Lacan is exactly an easy read, Zizek manages to make their ideas quite accessible through a near endless series of pop culture examples. This is an accomplishment in itself and anyone wishing to familiarize themselves with either thinker can find a wealth of helpful philosophical hints in The Parallax View. Even though there are many obvious shortcomings to Zizek's approach in The Parallax View it is still a thoroughly worthwhile read. While we may not get the kind of satisfying closure that we might have hoped, Zizek still makes a valuable contribution to contemporary philosophy -- even if his most fascinating insights remain only slightly connected to one another. I recommend this book not only for those that might be interested in Zizek as a philosopher and exponent of psychoanalytic theory, but also for those who are simply interested in Zizek as a kind of pop culture phenomenon. A reader can simply dive into The Parallax View at any point and find something interesting or at least outrageous. If you find yourself unable to understand a Hegelian or Lacanian theory just keep reading, Zizek will either provide you with a wealth of examples or simply change the subject. Zizek is among our most valuable contemporary theorists and The Parallax View, despite its shortcomings, is a much-welcomed intervention into the philosophical scene. http://metapsychology.mentalhelp.net/poc/v...ook&id=3699

Black is a sociopath who was caught obstructing justice by a much more lifeless eye (a surveillance camera) than his two own eyes. Given this element of proof, his only chance of winning his trial would have been by pleading mental alienation. The only (useful) work Black has performed in his life was to carry himself the 13 banker's boxes to his car.

The Peter principle (In a Hierarchy Every Employee Tends to Rise to His Level of Incompetence) and Parkinson's law (Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion) apply to public as well as to private organizations.

S. Zizek, The Parallax View, MIT, 2006, p.239. http://books.google.ca/books?id=je702bo2Pl...4#PRA2-PA239,M1

Minimally, capitalism is about private ownership of production means and socialism is about a wide pooling of some resources.

Here something inspiring: On May 9, the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) will be at 20 locations throughout the city to accept guns in exchange for 100-dollar and 200-dollar gift cards. http://www.dailynews.com/crime/ci_12111592

Science cannot operate the transition from the elementary particle-level to the level of living organisms without the concept of intentional design.

Relatively to armament, Ignatieff is a lot crazier than Harper because he explicitly believes that using armament for humanitarian purposes is the best thing humans can hope for on the World scene.

It is impossible to find an objective meaning to the word "better" in the question "Is Capitalism better than socialism?"

"Sop" is a well chosen word.

If you want to know how come the best road to communism is capitalism and not socialism here a very good reference: http://www.bepress.com/bis/vol1/iss1/

Controlling your climax matters more when you own a gun.

We don't scrap something for not being perfect. It's not for nothing waivers have been invented.

The monopoly on violence is the definition of the state expounded by Max Weber in Politics as a Vocation, and has been predominant in philosophy of law and political philosophy in the twentieth century. It defined a single entity, the state, exercising authority or violence over a given territory as territory was also deemed by Weber a characteristic of state. Importantly, such a monopoly, must occur via a process of legitimation, wherein a claim is laid on the state's use of violence as legitimate.

This thread is all about waste.

Poor Bach! The U.S. government claims Lord Black, former chairman and CEO of Hollinger International Inc., orchestrated a scheme to pocket about US$60-million in improper and unauthorized non-compete payments when the Chicago-based publishing company sold assets in Canada and the United States from 1998 to 2002. Non-compete "payments" were paid to Black even though the buyers did not request non-compete agreements, much less realize that some of their purchase prices had been set aside as non-compete payments. Peter Newman was quite right when he said that the biggest stupidity Conrad Black made was to reject the settlement proposed to him by Hollinger's board. The board members were composed of people, like Henry Kissinger, whom Black had himself chosen not because they were willing to defend shareholders' interests but because Black was sharing their autocratic style.

TV is big business though.

Adam Smith is a well known authority on classical (liberal) political economy.

Like eyeball knows, the basics of communication on the Internet is clicking. http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displ...1&aid=99585

After his prison term, Black should go finished his life in the London sector called Crossharbour. Crossharbour is also the location where Paul Reichmann has built Canary Wharft.

I think no one really understand Smith if he doesn't understand that for him, The Theory of Moral Sentiments was a much more important book than The Wealth of Nations.

For the laws of nature, as justice, equity, modesty, mercy, and, in sum, doing to others as we would be done to, of themselves, without the terror of some power to cause them to be observed, are contrary to our natural passions, that carry us to partiality, pride, revenge, and the like. And covenants, without the sword, are but words and of no strength to secure a man at all (Thomas Hobbes, The Leviathan).