Showing posts with label existentialism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label existentialism. Show all posts

Thursday, September 16, 2021

Wow! Britney Spears! | John Rachel

Sure, there have been a few bumps in the road.
Like Afghanistan. But doesn’t Britney Spears
make you darn proud to be an American!

Hope fuels boundless optimism and lays the groundwork for deep and ruinous cynicism.

I’ve written quite a bit about hope. How not that long ago it created for a certain political candidate the greatest groundswell of Messianic hysteria in modern history. How it became the oxygen for a nation suffocating from the catastrophic mishandling of the 9/11 attacks, the wanton military aggression, the gagging incompetence of eight years rule by a cabal of war-crazed lunatics.

Hope! I call it Vitamin H.

Actually, I just made that up. Sounds good though.

“Take your vitamins, people! Don’t forget your Vitamin H.” If you get the recommended daily intake of Vitamin H, you’ll get through each day with a smile, find yourself buoyed with a general giddiness, approach every encounter, person and situation with a naive trust that’ll keep your blood pressure low and your gullibility off the charts.

Ignorance is bliss! Let’s party!

Hope is a ticket to Paradise.

Admittedly . . . so far it hasn’t done very much to prevent malaise, ennui, confusion, paranoia, short and long term memory loss, cognitive dissonance, alienation, disconnect, cerebral dyspepsia, disorientation, and hegemony of the lizard brain.

But we can keep on hoping!

Which brings me to the splendid tidings of this particular article. Yes, good people, if you were looking for a real boost, something to skyrocket your sagging expectations into the dreamy upper reaches of the gladosphere, you’ve come to the right place.

First, to appreciate the magnitude of this announcement, we need to review.

When peaceniks were all mopey about the destruction of Yugoslavia via a massive, illegal bombing campaign, we had this WONDERFUL SONG to turn those frowns upside down!

When young and old, rich and poor, were reeling from the dotcom stock market crash and subsequent meltdown of the economy, the Oxycontin back then was this appropriately titled MUSICAL INTUBATOR.

Granted, seeing the Twin Towers come down and the U.S. turned on its head in an orgy of fear and grief was a bummer. But it was only two weeks later THIS HEAVY BREATHER was released to remind people what was really important in life!

As a delightful soundtrack to the slaughter of thousands of innocent civilians and bombing Baghdad Iraq back to the Stone Age, who couldn’t help but feel the awesome “boom boom” of THIS DANCE FLOOR M.O.A.B. Bumping and grinding has never felt so patriotic!

So what’s the lesson here?

It comes down to this. When trying to process the next installment of doom and gloom by the pernicious 24/7 lethal drip of MSM drivel, when trying to sort out and deal with the Covid-19 pandemic, endless wars, a collapsing economy, oppression, genocide, critical race theory, wokeness, wealth inequality, corporate tyranny, technocracy, the Great Reset, cyber warfare, biological warfare, info warfare, masks, vaccines, fake news, deep fakes, the Deep State, bad TV, bad movies, and the screechy hyperventilating of our political class, for our own sanity — for our survival as a species — we must break with the old habits, open our minds, and turn our blurred gazes to a new source of enlightenment and hope!

Hear me now! When confronted with the spirit-killing sludge of endless crises, don’t look to Chris Hedges, Noam Chomsky, Ralph Nader, Robert Reich, Thom Hartmann, Rachel Maddow, Tucker Carlson, Jimmy Dore, or Joe Rogan. Don’t even listen to me, except of course for this one last incredibly brilliant piece that you’re reading right now. Because let’s face it. What we self-appointed mouthpieces — myself included — vomit up for mass consumption is a worthless pile of pitiful, mostly pessimistic, self-promoting blather.

No, dear friends and comrades: WE MUST TURN TO SOMEONE WHO CAN ACTUALLY SAVE US!

Someone who knows the real price of freedom. Someone with some skin in the game!

After years and years of struggle and legal battles, this courageous lady has finally escaped the court-ordered lockdown which imposed on her the random tyranny of a bunch of old white men, and kneecapped her brilliant career. We should all be very grateful that her nightmare is over. Britney Spears is free!

Remember . . . no man is an island. This is about us individually and as a nation.

Now we can get serious now about building back better.

And making America great again!

Yeah, you heard it here.

Britney is back!


[ This originated at the author's personal website . . . https://jdrachel.com ]



Wow! Britney Spears! | John Rachel





Saturday, July 28, 2018

Creativity: Two Existentialists Walk Into A Bar . . .



Professor Phyllis Dornberger – my PhD thesis adviser – and I certainly had our share of disagreements.  About everything.

I could have been intimidated.  I mean, here was a lady who read the dictionary on her lunch hour like it was People Magazine.

But I was confident and stood my ground, with naïve posturing that was equal parts youthful impudence and iconoclastic exuberance.

Dornberger was a logical positivist.  I'm an existential relativist.

It should have been no contest.

Indeed, it wasn’t.

Yes, in the end, she got the best of me.  The price for my impatience, my lack of self-control, my smug display of tactlessness, my colossal tactical faux pas in the requisite art of jockeying for advantage – which is really all philosophical discourse is about anyway – was asymmetrical in the extreme, with no room for negotiation, no room for remediation, no recourse or appeal.  Philosophers don’t mess around.  Especially logical positivists.

My comment was innocent enough.

But what floats frivolously in casual repartee bubbles like the caustic acid of vitriol and mockery on a
page – especially an intra-departmental memo.
What can I say in my defense?

Too much bubbly spirits is sometimes a good excuse.  But in this case, a roll of duct tape with the Kölsch pale ale would have helped to mitigate my infantile error in judgment.  Hindsight is so powerful but ultimately useless.

I now know . . .

I never should have called Professor Dornberger an insatiable proof sucker searching for the perfect syllogism, if only she could figure out how to deep throat a syllo.

Yes, this was the shameful closing scene of my career as a philosopher . . .





[ This originated at the author's personal website . . . http://jdrachel.com ]





Creativity: Two Existentialists Walk Into A Bar . . .