Episode

[@sina8883]

John Dewey anticipated such problems and dilemmas of postmodernism decades before it became a thing, and did a fantastic job of answering many of these questions: with emphasis on the method by which to go forward, not any final answers: the process of the scientific method, the process of democracy, the process of education, etc…. This way he avoids the nihilism of postmodernism. I think Dewey remains oddly underrated and under-represented in postmodern conversation.

[@tszabon]

Every new episode of Philosophize This is like a breeze of the fresh air. Thank you.

[@thereignofthezero225]

Of fresh as.... s

[@arielle0811]

agreed!!!

[@daniel97401]

I even enjoy philosophy without the work of thinking, reflecting, reading, or writing. Absorbing bits passively, listening to a podcast while doing something else. Philosophy without philisophy. Im reaching peak postmodernism over here 😢 Loved this one. I enjoy your work very much ❤

[@OrdnanceLab]

Great episode. I’m glad I’m not the only one who thinks Trump is the ultimate in nihilistic postmodernism.

[@thereignofthezero225]

Haha. Smh

[@KrisRandall]

I love your work so much. I think it is really valuable. Thank you for doing it. This one I loved in a different way however because it really held up a mirror and made me see the ideological prison of my own thinking. Again - thank you!

[@dr.luciddreamster9323]

❤Thank you. Zizek has carved out a niche for himself. The living embodiment of a ideological disclaimer. As an aside, I never met a fungus in need of defense. I recall what George Carlin said about earth day.😂 Questions for Zezik. whether philosophers be required to partake in entheogens? 🍄 Is it possible to have an experience of Reality beyond the syntax of our mother tongue? If a universal experience can lay outside all human explanation, does such a universal exist? Have humans been denied a birthright in the name of ideologyy? The forbidden fruit, a plant that bestows knowledge. Abrahamic ideology displaced a 10000 year Helenistic right of passage. Given the complexity of our brains, isnt it pecular, certain organisms contain a molecule, that unlocks specific nuero receptors, that perturb the gateways of our perception of reality? How would communicating with a fungus, capable of travelling interstallar space and existing for billions of years be explained ideologically?

[@TennesseeJed]

Holy cow I missed this for two hours! So glad to see it now!

[@TennesseeJed]

This is a really important episode! I am glad your child is out of the woods. I had to listen twice, and may listen again tomorrow.

[@asphaltpilgrim]

Well hey there Jed. Apropos of nothing: Every time I see your icon I think it's Putin for a second haha. There's something postmodernist about that too, in a way. Have a good one 😊👍

[@TennesseeJed]

@@asphaltpilgrim it is a gif I created years ago of George Washington winking to illustrate money is a mythical thing.

[@maxmurphyxyz]

based and philosophy pilled

[@finanyemane7407]

This is god sent, I am studying postmodernist.

[@cvm6854]

I’m not sure I understand what the issue is with decaffeinated coffee. I like the taste but don’t like the feeling of caffeine. What’s wrong with that? Or is it just a metaphor.

[@VoloBonja]

it's a false promise of hapiness without suffering. Of course it's a metaphor (about coffee), but spend some time analyzing your environment and you'll see "decaf" everywhere: have partner without falling in love (app will take care of hard part in relationship), have rights without any responsibilities, Meta once tried selling Metaverse, which is being among people without meeting people.

[@andrewbowen2837]

Is the statement "there are no universals," a universal?

[@oatmealeverymorning]

maybe 'there may be no universals'?

[@MrJK162]

Only a sith deals in absolutes.

[@andrewbowen2837]

@@MrJK162 which is an absolute, ironically enough

[@dr.luciddreamster9323]

"Reality is symbolic and filled with contradictions". Another absolute😂

[@ffffffffffffffff5840]

Exactly. If it is true that there are no universal truths, then there must be some

[@JuDGe3690]

Out of curiosity, have you read "History Without a Subject: The Postmodern Condition" by David Ashley (1997)? It's more sociological than philosophical, but fits right in with the topic of this episode (he's critical of postmodernism, coming from a late-Modernist perspective a la Habermas).

[@melissasmind2846]

Thank you. I enjoy my own company. Your show just helps with my insolation.

[@melissasmind2846]

Isolation by choice

[@Huarrnarg]

Thank you for doing this title. Laymen of philosophy (like me) have trouble finding thinkers on our current times

[@euphoricbabe2914]

Where have you been ? I hope you’re still making videos . I live for these

[@kevincfoss]

I am writing to encourage you to have a good think about the dismissive way that you briefly mentioned “implicit bias” followed by several points about human tendencies, concluding with the statement, “the only antidote, if there even is one, is for us to be aware of these things before they come up.”

[@markoslavicek]

In a interview with Zizek, please ask him about the other authors you're reffering to. It would be interesting to hear if he agrees with your presentation of him. Excellent work 👌🏻

[@jerrypeters1157]

This makes me wonder if our current postmodern reality is a collection of pseudo-experiences. Also, i'm wondering if the concept of Ought is tripping up everyone who tries to escape universals. I'm trying to gain a sense of meaning and belonging in our individualistic, consumerist world of impermanent, pseudo-experiences, but i seriously suck at it.

[@markfiedler9415]

First of all, thank you for sharing once again, I love the work you do. Second... is all that was really said at the end of all that something like: 'we should all just be more self reflective of our own blind spots as we engage with a lifelong struggle with attaining a deeper degree of wisdom/insight/etc.' If that statement is a fair synopsis, then it doesn't sound like your overview of Zizek on this point has at all differentiated him from the postmodernists in essence, only in kind. Meaning that he still holds postmodernist assumptions about truth being a fundamentally enigmatic phenomena... he just thinks that we need to do more to spot the ways we fall short of bearing that in mind... so Zizek might as well meditate with his fingers on his knees and put on a C0eXiS+ bumper sticker. If I missed something important in this which distinguishes him further I would appreciate hearing a response. Thank you again.

[@philosophizethispodcast]

I'll try to clear this up next episode. Thanks for the thoughtful response!

[@josedavidgarcesceballos7]

This ideas about identity sound so contrasting with those of Hans Georg Moeller, that I think it would be awesome to have a good comparison. Cheers.

[@outspeaker1229]

The problem of Universals throws a wrench into the post-modern train of thought.

[@vivekkaushik9508]

Am I a 'slow' person if I like listening to this at 0.75x? I used to listen such podcasts at 2x but after months of depression I feel like things are too fast.

[@philosophizethispodcast]

Not at all. My wife and daughter listen at 4x with the volume down.

[@dr.luciddreamster9323]

@@philosophizethispodcast I am grateful they tolerate you.❤🤣

[@melissasmind2846]

Glad to hear about the baby.

[@Walid-wd9ft]

where can i read about this postmodernist subject thingy

[@Vladimir-Struja]

love your linkedin profile

[@robertwilson-lq1lr]

Because of you I found out I was mispronouncing both this guy's last name and also Cioran. By the way, I'd like to ask Z his thoughts on Cioran, his almost countryman. He'd probably just spit. Cioran, if he could, would probably do worst. He would have despised this guy.

[@Sephiroth3000]

Mr. West, do you have a disdain for meditation in general or just the "transcendental cringe?"

[@noahbrown4388]

I’m starting to understand Zizek.. maybe. So, when you have an ideology, you can’t have an ideology without an ideology? 🤔

[@nightoftheworld]

Aka-there is no neutral position, the absolute is alienated even from itself, we’re all in the shit together.

[@noahbrown4388]

@@nightoftheworld Maybe there's something deeper to Zizek's philosophy that I don't get, but isn't that kinda implied in reality i.e. common knowledge? (That we all have conflicting viewpoints, morals and goals)

[@christinemartin63]

Holy mackerel! Leave it to Zizek to trash wisdom, too. (I sit down with elderly people and ask them for advice because life experience is different from abstractions. I go to philosophers for words of wisdom because they're supposedly well read and have thought deeply about existential questions. But ... ya' know ... I'm not so sure any more 🤔😕.)

[@dr.luciddreamster9323]

'Leave it to Zizek to trash wisdom' Yes Zizek is quite animated on this point. Being philosophy translates as the love of wisdom and Zizek sees falling in love as reason and logic being overwhelmed by insane emotions, he is offended. True wisdom cannot be obtained from a book or another person. Wisdom is derived from personal lived experience. I am reminded of the book, 'If you meet the Buhdda on the road, kill him.'

[@korpen2858]

​@@dr.luciddreamster9323Greatly adviced not to kill any Buddhas in the Theravada tradition.

[@dr.luciddreamster9323]

@@korpen2858 Appeal to authority is a logical fallacy.

[@korpen2858]

@@dr.luciddreamster9323 Are you not appealing to the Zen authority by committing said act?

[@dr.luciddreamster9323]

@@korpen2858 No I am appealing to the individual not delegating authority outside oneself when it comes to the nature of wisdom. To repeat. Wisdom is not gained from a book, a sage, a tradition, or AI.

[@corriemooney9812]

The contradiction here (which is common IRL) where a value-judgement is used within postmodernism, renders it no longer postmodernism.

[@corriemooney9812]

I say this because you can't usually argue against them with facts, you need to use postmodernism itself.

[@peterpan5906]

❤

[@anewwaveanewbeginning3606]

What about daoism?

[@briand1322]

I wish Zizek spoke more clearly, it can be distracting listening to him for too long. Too lazy to read him, so thanks for video like this.

[@dj.giftedchild]

Free work when you're a slave of this kind of system?

[@Brucejpw]

I feel better now that you have made me feel uncomfortable.

[@craigwillms61]

1:25 nothing is obvious with Zizek. He does absolutely nothing for me. I don't understand all oohhhs and ahhhs about the 'wisdom" of Zizek, I feel no more informed after listening to him (unlike the rest of you guys apparently)

[@torinmccabe]

You are an academic right? How can you say that liberals just talk about racial tolerance rather than economic and material changes when huge changes have been made in regards to schooling (academics) to try and reduce the racial gaps. I can understand academics wanting to hide THEIR failure to reduce the academic achievement gaps (it must be systemic racism and not the teachers or students fault).

[@internetazzhole7592]

Zizek sounds like a postmodernist, (which is common for failed director movie brains) Anytime somebody creates some sort of hierarchy he wants to break it up using the term "fake." Like he is a greek god of Authenticity. Saying that "Caffeine is a thing that makes coffee coffee" is wrong. Coffee is a type of flavor- that is why there is coffee flavored ice cream Coffee for some people is a process of making something. Coffee for some people can be a morning ritual. Coffee can just be flavored water like tea. Coffee can be an excuse to having sugar water. If coffee is just caffeine , why put in any effort into making coffee and just eat a caffeine pill and be done with it. Saying that coffee IS caffeine is erasing the many human realities that exist around both coffee and caffeine Like removing the humanity from philosophy. (Taking this from Jeffery M Perl's Literary Modernism, who pulls a lot a lot from Frank Kermode) And all that stuff where postmodernist are confusing or hypocritical- that is what Postmodernists want. For a postmodernist - Coherency is Slavery - they want change constant change for the sake of change. - they are anti-canon, anti-history, and anti-consensus. (For the "American" political side of it, all the talk about individual reasonably should be read up in American Nations by Colin Woodard because that is the that's Appalachian culture/ Deep south/ Tidewater cultures at play.) At the current point we have these three camps of reality. Porto-Postmodernist / Postmodernists / the school of William Carlos Williams Second: People who have an absolutist view of reality, but once they are come into contact with The Eliot school they have a melt down and become Postmodernists. Third: Paleo-modernists/ "Modernists"/ The Eliot School. The history of post modernism is Walt Whitman, Gertrude Stein, William Carlos Williams, Duchamp, Virginia Woolf, Schoenberg, At first they were mad that Eliot and his school because Eliot was being accepted into the canon they were being excluded from. So they went after classical culture, and armed with the world wars and a youth that saw classical culture propaganda for getting them into the wars they rejected classical culture. But really western culture was split in to realism and symbolism and what the Eliot school did was combine the two opposites Eliot did this by inventing college, with the wasteland. Eliot was a philosopher. He studied, William James, Josiah Royce, R. G. Collinwood, Harold Joachim (F H Bradly's student), and Henry Bergson but he didn't like how philosophers use language. he said philosophers kept on making up realities and he said philosophy was a just a genre like the short story, and he kept on do his philosophy as literary criticism Eliot's School: Nietzsche > Freud> Symbolism - Yeats + Realism Henry James> Eliot, James Joyce, Ezra Pound, Stravinsky, Picasso, Paul Valery. Eliot's Philosophy is really easy. you ask a person for a fact and then ask from what position they are stating that fact from. And that is reality. My Example I give this example because I want to inflict maximum pain on anybody who reads this. Does God exist? - biggest question in philosophy. This is how Eliot would answer it. Person one says, 'yes' Person two says, 'no' -from what perspective do you give these facts Person one says, "I am a christian.' Person two says, "I am an atheist' So reality is, "a christian believes there is a god. And an atheistic believes there is no god.' It's boring but everybody agrees with it. It is a thick description of reality. There is no human independent reality. Culture is reality. Reality is constructed in conversations between antagonists. Truth is fiction with a long pedigree The test of reality is health. If a person does from their belief in reality then that belief wasn't real. But post modernists see all this as an unclean contradiction. Thus the absolutist go crazy, and become postmodernists. Ta - Da. But if you made it to this point, then you wanna party. Check this out: the first commandment "tho shall have no other gods above" shouldn't exist if there was only one god. But the original writers of the torah believed many gods existed, but they didn't have a covenant with them. Describing reality is fun. Thank you for enjoy my revenge on Plato.

[@dr.luciddreamster9323]

In defense of VR porn, saves alot of time and effort, cuz life is short. When it comes to getting real sex, the juice ain't worth the squeeze. Amirite😂 The virtual revolution and evolution continues. As for the new VR experiences, a greater universal reality can be experienced by many more. Virtual tours, 360 immersion, flying drone, is like a magic carpet ride over the biggest cities worldwide. Underwater habitats now virtually accessible, as well as diverse environments around and above the globe. I have a greater sense of connection to all of existence. Ironically, through a virtual means. A representation, but without abstract symbols, words. The plasticity of self identity, through the lens of virtual reality is open ended. As incomplete as Zizek's model of ideology, and explanation of our possible Realities.

[@someonewhocares5924]

no caffiene in your coffee is one thing but no love or creation in your sex can only lead to ending humanity

[@BinaryDood]

It's not engaging all your senses in the same way sex is. The rapid dopamine overflow you'll experience by the high repetition of such an alienated task is sure to numb you do to it. At some point you'll be forgetting the basic associations needed to be made in order for the images displayed at you to make sense in any meaningful way. Such excess always end up working aganist you. This is such tired wisdom throughout the ages that I wonder how people think stuff like continuous automated content for yourself will do any good. You'll end up desiring no thing but desire itself. Novelty in such contexts can be poisonous.

[@dr.luciddreamster9323]

@@BinaryDood ❤Thank you for your response. I agree the biological response of physical interaction is more complex. Is it all or nothing mate? Real or virtual sex. Cant the space between zero and one can be divided to infinity Mah binary dood? Points are well taken tor those yet to fulfill nature's programming, the drives, to survive, long enough, to procreate. We evolved minds for this alone? Despite our tech outpacing our ability to adapt there is no escape from entropy. Nature is pitiless. As for meaningful fulfillment and seize the day, and so on, Can we be certain we are not a mind in a simulation? Is it a higher probability than evolution through natural selection mathemagically speaking? It's a mystery to me.🤣 Set aside quantum loop time, and a multiverse inside a black hole. Science is off the hook. Isnt virtual reality made of language?. Words like our God, our destiny, our country? The imagination, is not bound by the limits of the physical laws on the body in spacetime. Doesnt the edge of the universe exists within the mind? The medium is the message. The visual and auditory senses, surpass linear linguistic abstractions. The new digital virtual reality animates books, equations become visions, and insights expand the horizon, a 1000 years into the future. Once I thought no movie could be better than a book in providing a rich slice of reality and meaningful change in perception. Most of the world being illiterate in philosophy, total access to profundity is now on offer to many more. Now an immersive movie, a flying magic carpet ride to whereabouts unknown.

[@craigwillms61]

"the juice ain't worth the squeeze" Umm, then you're doing it wrong there, fella.

[@dr.luciddreamster9323]

@@craigwillms61 Are you a dating coach?

[@creativephilo]

Love your show, but this is one of the worst takes on postmodernism I've ever heard. No postmodernist is donning a Coexistence bumpersticker because anyone sympathetic to PM knows it is a reductionist plea for a universal. PMs don't do self-help, meditation, identity politics or such things because these acts reduce the mind to universals. Postmodernism is about creative interpretation. That's it in a nutshell. It's why it's best practiced in the arts and poetry. PM is not seeking simple solutions, it's unearthing the historical contexts of presumed simple solutions--by pointing out differences! Arg, so frustrating to miss the point so badly. Your critiques are all salient, except that you keep using that word "postmodernism" where it doesn't belong. The only decent critique you levied at PM is that there isn't much constructive action in it. Very fair. A sad day for PT! I'm not sure if this is Zizek or you doing a poor reading of him. I know Zizek's work, I haven't found this kind of banal reductionism with him, so I wonder. Anyway, I appreciate what you do and look forward to a better next episode.

[@christinemartin63]

Zizek? The Seinfeld of "philosophers": lecture after lecture, book after book about ... nothing. In the meantime, the money rolls in, listeners ooh and ah, and the con continues 🙄.

[@VoloBonja]

Book after book... nothing. Have you read his book "Less than nothing"? Long story short, it's less than nothing from Zizek, you just don't want to engage with it, so you see nothing