Jochen wrote:
Please excuse me if I have accidentally set off an eternal loop of thought from which there is no escape (although what if consciousness is such an eternal, strange loop for which there is no solution?
At a certain level/dimension of abstraction, how could it be otherwise?
Perhaps Deacon's "absential"... or/and the remainder/residue in the long-division of fractional representation of an irrational number? Always some cud left to chew.Gilbert Ryle says in "The concept of mind" that the "self" belongs to the things which remain confusing no matter how you look at it: "Should I, or should I not, put my knowing self down on my list of the sorts of things that I can have knowledge of? If I say no, it seems to reduce my knowing self to a theoretically infertile mystery, yet if I say yes, it seems to reduce the fishing-net to one of the fishes which it itself catches")
I've read the diaries, thanks for this additional reference. It provides much-needed/appreciated parallax on how he processed his multi-year ordeal from the onset of open anti-semitism to the recovery after the allied invasion.I was trying similar to Victor Klemperer to understand the evil that haunts us. At the core evil is selfishness, but why are people so easily deceived by it? As you know Klemperer was a German linguist who tried to understand the Nazis by examining their language (in his LTI book) and their actions (in his diaries). He used the tool which he knew best, which was language.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LTI_%E2%80%93_Lingua_Tertii_Imperii
And this may be key to his appeal to the many whose own conception/perception of the big world is equally (if more naively and less consequentially) narcissistic? I do think that a fundamental risk/flaw to both Democracy and Capitalism is the narcissistic POV... something the West and much of the rest of the world (who follows/apes/mimics/envies) the bountiful concentrations that such egocentric pursuits can yield (temporarily)If there is a (wannabe) dictator at the top who is deceiving us, how he is doing it, is the deception somehow visible in his language, and what role do emotions play in the bigger picture as a mechanism of deception and control?Donald Trump for example seems to judge everything if it is good or bad for him personally. Everything is always about him. He seems to be unable to discuss things in an objective way, and his speeches are full of subjective descriptions, from simple judgements to heavy insults. Things around him are either terrific or terrible, tremendous or tedious, awesome or awful, great or ghastly, huge or tiny, etc.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/03/how-to-talk-trump/550934/
thanks for the reference.
As you you know Hitler was full of emotions in his speeches too. In his speeches he talked himself regularly into a rage. Demagogues almost embody negative emotions. The rage and hate towards the perceived opponent, and the shame of the own situation soon to be replaced by pride, as Arlie Russell Hochschild describes in her latest book "Stolen Pride: Loss, Shame, and the Rise of the Right"https://speakoutsocialists.org/book-review-stolen-pride-loss-shame-and-the-rise-of-the-right/
Great riff/perspective, Thanks!
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