Author: johnshlee

Q3. E1. techniques of insolence

Quote of the day

Error lies in excessive honesty. A man who lies is ashamed, for each lie teaches him the degradation of a world which, forcing him to lie in order to live, promptly sings the praises of loyalty and truthfulness.

The lie, once a liberal means of communication, has today become one of the techniques of insolence enabling each individual to spread around him the glacial atmosphere in whose shelter he can thrive.

Minima Moralia, Theodor Adorno, p. 30

Essay

“Misinformation is deadly, disinformation is deadly, propaganda is always deadly,” someone wrote in Quora in response to Youtube deleting videos about Covid-19 being hoax.

Covid-19 conspiracy theories. To doubt, search ration, and compare opinions. It can be draining. Even debilitating. In them are grains of truth and updating insights in the concurrent state of public intellect.

Perhaps a good knife grinder to prepare for a more colossal and nourishing knowledge to wrestle with and be inculcated by.

Nothing new under the sun. History and philosophy tells us patterns of power.

Diminishing to be distracted by flies in the market. Talk to people and get the veggies. No one can know everything. The substance consists in the faith of others and creative production.

Prerogative comes in different shapes, forms, materials and weights. Money and state authority are among inferior ones befitting Gaoler bound to a prison.

Q2. detritus by barbarous culture

Quote of the day

In the intellectual conscience possessed of it, the social moment is no less present than the moral super-ego. Such conscience grows out of a conception of the good society and its citizens. If this conception dims… all the detritus dumped in the individual by barbarous culture – half-learning, slackness, heavy familiarity, coarseness – comes to light.

Minima Moralia, Theodor Adorno, p.29

Q1. bustle endangers concentration

Quote of the day

Since there are no longer, for the intellectual, any given categories, even cultural, and bustle endangers concentration with a thousand claims, the effort of producing something in some measure worthwhile is now so great as to be beyond almost everybody.

Minima Moralia, Theodor Adorno, p.29