Lightest Dark

In my late teens I spent several summer holidays at Gansbaai (South Africa). My boyfriend's family owned a house on the shore. Cape Town was just swell all year round but Gansbaai was pure magic. I'd sneak out at night and sit on the shells, toes touching the salty foam, watching the two lighthouses each at opposite ends of the shore. 

Those summer holidays were a mix of sex, games and philosophy. My boyfriend was a bit of a genius academically speaking. On the physical spectrum less impressive though still very handsome. We talked shop (Marx, Plato, Ayn Rand, Nietzsche...), Explored the half sunken caves (baby octopus, abalone shells) and each other 😏. We debated viciously as we kissed passionately...

Fast forward to 2023...the age of exchange. You give your mind in exchange for social currency. You don't criticise, you don't question...you accept and keep accepting until you boil over. The clean-up is messy. 

Reality can be questioned but only from within the framework of another person's version of reality. Gone are the days of Critique of Pure Reason (Emmanuel Kant). We now embrace The Absurd. I always thought this was an art form 🤔. 

What bothers me immensely, as an amateur philosopher, is the acceptance of ignorance. More specifically me accepting other people's ignorance of the subject matter they argue about. Today, it is no longer relevant to have any actual academic background in a subject matter. All that matters is how one feels about the subject matter.

Well folks, I would like to reintroduce an old concept called credibility. Ask yourself the following questions next time you pick an intellectual fight:

"What did you study officially?"

"What have you read officially?"

"To whom have you listened officially?"

Then comes the unofficial stuff:

"What have you experienced personally?"

Only once you get through that mental toll gate, can we talk shop.

Here are my answers:

BA Psychology (specialized in counselling) - 5 years of undergraduate study including but not limited to the following subjects: research methodology and statistics, criminology, cults and religious studies, psychopathology and mental disorders, marriage counselling, child development studies, sexuality, sociology, community studies, foreign languages, social work, and geography. All combined with one and a half years of theatre studies. 

I've read various works by, amongst others, the following authors: Kafka, Kant, Plato, Aristotle, Noica, Eliade, Nietzsche, Freud, Jung, De Beauvoir, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Solzhenitsyn, Rand, Gorky, Marx, Shakespeare...well...you get the point 🥱.

What have I listened to recently in terms of politics, history and philosophy? Here I'll go more modern: Obama, Harari, Giridharadas, channels like TYT (The Young Turks) - Liberal, Wion (Independent Indian news channel), Triggernometry - Conservative, Daily Wire - Ultra Conservative, Daily Show - Ultra Liberal, Le Preceptor (French education channel)...amongst many others.

Personal experience section:

9 years of ultra censorship communist rule and abject poverty - 17 years of racial and linguist multiculturalism, discrimination and violence - 4 years of post-communist orthodox conservatism - 12 years of liberal, intrinsic linguistic and cultural division.

Three countries, two continents and very different social and political milieus.

And to get to my actual 👉

1. Communism is a flawed political system albeit an attractive philosophical one. No, you can't fix it by changing who implements it! Plato's idea was good but finding those philosopher leaders as well as their watchdogs is utopian at best. 
2. Capitalism is intrinsically natural albeit unattractive as a philosophy. Yes you can mitigate the downfall by spicing it up with a bit of softcore socialism.
3. Mental disorders exist and they are both under diagnosed and over diagnosed at the same time. The problem is the framework and the political agendas driving that framework.
4. Feminism's great flaw is in the implementation of its principles as well as in the assumption of its flawlessness as an ideology. I'll let you think 🤔 on that conundrum.
5. Racism is a reality which needs law as its fundamental, defensive weapon of choice.
6. Sexuality is The Dark Side of the Moon 🌚, as Pink Floyd would put it. And that's all there is to say about that, as Candace Owens would put it.

And in the famous epilogue of the Looney Toons:

That's All Folks!

(PS...folks is a very inclusive word! 😉 No need to add dots and stuff 😎)