In my previous post I wrote about the question raised by Bernard Stiegler on the pervasive stupidity characterising global societies today, and the failure of universities to live up to their historical task under present circumstances. The latter amount to what Stiegler calls “hyperindustrial” society, that is, a society in which it is not only […]
General
Posted inEnvironment, Equality, General
Of black people, empty bottles and a body on the beach
I don’t quite see empty plastic bottles in the same way I used to. Two developments brought this about. The first being an initiative to create small businesses recycling empty soft-drink bottles. One that I called “Hanging Hope” and please go ahead, copy it, or tell someone else about it and give him/her a potential […]
Posted inGeneral, Media, Tech
The ‘stupidifation’ of our societies and failure of universities
It may come as quite a shock to learn that, contrary to what we are constantly told through the media, we actually live in the age of the systematic “stupidification” and infantilisation of society. What, I can hear most readers say with exasperation and indignation — we live in the age of information, of “knowledge […]
Posted inEquality, General, Lifestyle
White privilege: The more things change…
I gaped at the size of the property. I stood with the owner, Peter, on a side balcony of their spacious, slightly dilapidated home. Down below, the tennis courts were dwarfed by the ring of woods surrounding its fence. Some were sagging from the cascade of trees pushing through wires or pressing down the horizontal, […]
Posted inBusiness, General, Tech
The aeronautics behind SAA’s unprofitability
Let me just say it straight up — neither President Jacob Zuma nor SAA board chairperson Dudu Myeni are to be blamed for the operational unprofitability of SAA. South Africans are currently rallying together in the #ZumaMustFall campaign, which was in part triggered by the removal of Nhlanhla Nene as finance minister, allegedly due to […]
Posted inGeneral
We live in a nihilistic age
There is no doubt that we live in a nihilistic age — probably, as far as pervasiveness goes, the most nihilistic age in history. Nihilism is the cultural condition, or the psychological state, where nothing is experienced as having any intrinsic or inalienable worth, or value — which has nothing to do with saying that […]
Posted inGeneral, News/Politics
Enough, already, with the ‘you stole our land’ argument
Last week, archaeologists unearthed a seal impression bearing the inscription “Belonging to Hezekiah [son of] Ahaz king of Judah” near Jerusalem’s Temple Mount. Hezekiah — Chiskiya HaMelech — is revered in Judaism as having been one of the most righteous of the Jewish monarchs. His father was considerably less righteous. Both, though, were Jewish kings […]
Posted inEnvironment, General
A song for the rootless
There is an urgent conversation going on among the leaves. The branches scurry, desperate to dock in bad weather. Twigs pelt about; the tall boles raise and swing their leaf-bright oars. Our garden, the veggie field and the small gorge beyond are scooped up, swirled about by the gusts and the downpour into a bag, […]
Posted inGeneral, Media, Tech
Idoru: Gibson’s astonishing glimpse of virtual reality’s future
William Gibson — creator of Neuromancer, among other gripping sci-fi novels — has arguably delved even further into the latent possibilities, or what Gilles Deleuze called virtualities, of the information revolution, in his quotidian dimension-surpassing novel, Idoru (Penguin 1996), one of the so-called Bridge trilogy. So much so that Peter Popham in the Independent commented […]
Posted inEquality, General
Unpacking ‘whiteness’
My last post “Whiteness is like herpes” did exactly what I thought it would. It resonated with a small number of fellow whites who correctly understood the analogy, and then provoked an angry reaction from many more whites who simply just proved my point, that “whiteness” (as an issue that is being spoken about internationally […]
Posted inEnvironment, General, Tech
Can fusion energy be achieved?
Lev Grossman (“Star Power”, in Time, November 2, p. 24-33) calls fusion the “holy grail” of “the quest for clean energy”, and with good reason — it is as elusive as the proverbial unicorn in your garden (with apologies to James Thurber). By this I mean that, although scientists and technologists know what has to […]
Posted inGeneral, Health, Lifestyle
On idiots and aliens
So, how many of you have ever been abducted by aliens? I first realised I might have been when I googled “aliens” after hearing that July 2 was World UFO Day. Up popped a story on Metro.co.uk headed “I was abducted by aliens — and they put a machine in my body” where a fellow […]