A Summary of Walter Benjamin

1. Everything is perfectly reproducible but the act of reproduction devalues things.
2. Reproduction exchanges uniqueness and permanence for plurality and transience.
3. We change our tastes accordingly to enjoy transient things uncritically.
4. As a result we rapidly lose our ability to exercise value judgements - particularly when watching TV or films.
5. The end result is that we lose our critical faculties altogether. We begin to value everything uncritically.
6. Consumer society then satisfies the demand for worthless commodities.
7. As we consume these commodities, becomes overwhelmingly superficial.

From Marcus Honeysett's Meltdown

Temper - G.C Lorimer

"When you are in the right, you can afford to keep your temper, and when you are in the wrong you cannot afford to lose it"

-G.C Lorimer

The Seven Deadly (Online) Sins???

No other Sovereign than Fact - Joseph Mazzini

If there be not a Supreme Mind reigning over all human minds, who can save us from the tyranny of our fellow men, whenever they find themselves stronger than we? If there be not a holy and inviolable law, not created by men, what rule have we by which to judge whether an act is just or unjust? In the name of whom, in the name of what, shall we protest against oppression and inequality? Without God there is no other sovereign than Fact; Fact before which the materialists ever bow themselves, whether its name be Revolution or Buonaparte.

-  Joseph Mazzini, 19th Century Italian Liberal, The Duties of Man

Guide to Understanding the Introverted!

From Schroeder Veidt…

Dying Lion Sure Doesn't Feel As Though He's Completing Some Great Cosmic Circle

THE SERENGETI—According to a male lion currently dying on the Serengeti Plain, his agonizing demise certainly doesn't seem as though it's part of some transcendent cosmic circle of life, but rather as if he’s slowly and painfully bleeding to death.

The expiring lion, who dragged his weakened body onto an isolated patch of grassland Monday after being mortally wounded by a poacher, confirmed to reporters that he is not experiencing a tranquil, satisfying sense of harmony with the universe, but is instead mainly feeling intense physical torment brought on by a fatal wound to the abdomen.

"I could be wrong, and maybe this is all an enchanting and noble chapter in life's great cosmic narrative, but right now it pretty much just feels like I'm dying alone on the ground in a puddle of my own blood," said the 500-pound big cat, releasing a deep moan as violent spasms seized his body. "Shouldn't I be feeling a stirring sensation of kinship with all living creatures or something? Yeah, I'm not getting any of that."

"Plus, I was illegally shot by a poacher. How does that fit into this ancient, majestic cycle in which all of nature is connected as a unified being?" the lion added.

 

Observing his surroundings, the moribund lion reported that he has seen no brilliant gleaming light shining down from the heavens that makes him realize he's part of a sacred tradition as old as life itself, nor has a hush seemed to fall over the land in a reverent acknowledgment of his passing...

..."I guess I thought there'd be a choir of chanting, melodic voices, and that all the animals of the African valley would gather on a distant ridge to respectfully view my last moments and recognize our essential interconnectedness," said the lion, drawing his last labored breaths. "But there's nobody else around at all, except those vultures."

- From the Onion. The rest at the link