What happens if you subvert the myth and protest, maybe by using art? ibid.
The Myth of signs … humans have this amazing ability to create and follow conventions … ‘the sign is a visual signal of authority.’ ibid.
To Barthes, it’s the sheer scale of the repetition of things. ibid.
The Myth of Wi-Fi: To Accept. Obey. Move on. Here’s a signifier Barthes would never have seen but he might have recognised its mythic power to enchant the masses: Wi-Fi, a myth symbolised everywhere by a fan of black bars. The internet has come to signify our empowerment, how quickly we can reach information – the latest slug of news, create a meme or social media rumour. Yet there’s a deeper meaning: this connectivity runs two ways … Your emails and apps are tracking you … The myth of the internet is meshed with the myth of money. ibid.
Michelangel’s beautiful sculpture of David … [exits shop with statuette] David: this quintessential figure of Florentine masculinity is everywhere now … David is an industry in his own right. ibid.
Images of everything from margarine to marriage were carefully confected myths, persuading women to be perfect beings. ibid.
The Virgin Mary was never depicted in her own lifetime yet her image is recognised pretty much everywhere … An image of perfection, symbol of virginity, innocence and immortality, gold-flecked and unobtainable. ibid.
The Myth of Guns in Movies: Is it true there are no bad guns, only bad people? I mean, take the Tommy Gun. Wielded by gangsters, a symbol of criminal violence; by Winston Churchill, a symbol of the bulldog defiance. ibid.
The Myth of Race: The biggest, most pernicious, dangerous of modern myths – race … Racial difference and hierarchies of race have been used to justify exploitation. We now know that less than 1% of 1% of the human genome differs between people who are categorised as belonging to different races. Race is a myth – but one that has appalling, real-world consequences. ibid.
Philosophy has an image problem. Philosophers are thought to be mystics, religious figures, bullshit artists – anything divorced from reality … Why is philosophy held in such contempt by many physicists? … one part of the answer probably lies in the split between the two major branches of modern Western philosophy, Analytic and Continental philosophy.
Continental philosophers tend to be much more suspicious of scientific claims about knowledge and truth than are their analytic colleagues.
Yet the distinction between the two kinds of philosophy is not apparent from a distance — most scientists have never heard of the analytic-Continental divide.
So, given that most of the highly visible philosophers in the public sphere today are Continental, and given the attitude that some (not all) Continental philosophers have toward science, it’s not terribly surprising that scientists often have disdain for all philosophers, and sometimes even think that they can do philosophy better than the philosophers can. Adam Becker, What is Real?
At this point we reach the supreme irony of how ideology functions today: it appears precisely as its own opposite, a radical critique of ideological utopias. The predominant ideology today is not a positive vision of some utopian future but a cynical resignation, an acceptance of how ‘the world really is’, accompanied by a warning that, if we want to change it (too much), only totalitarian horror can ensue. Slavoj Zizek, The Relevance of the Communist Manifesto, 2019
THE MEANING OF LIFE
Plato pursues the platitude of good
Aristotle urges we do what we should
The Cynics reject wealth, fame and power
The Hedonists are a party-going shower
Epicureans want a life pain free
Stoics are patient and sigh c’est la vie
Enlightenment teaches natural rights
Liberal wimps practise politics light
Bentham’s ‘greatest happiness principle’ —
Utilitarianism is the title.
Kant can’t abide the unprincipled fool
Nihilists think God is dead as a rule
Pragmatists struggle through practical strife
Existentialists create their own Life
Absurdists expect a disharmony
Secular humanists claim we are free
Logical positivism doesn’t ask
For Postmodernists scrutiny’s the task
Pantheists nurture the environment
Confucius is an ordinary gent
Buddhists are hippies and seek Nirvana
Mohists give free love in their pyjamas
Legalists hanker the kernel of knowledge
Christians on Sunday like to trim their hedge
Catholics prefer love au natural
The Mormons snatch a harem of gals
The Jewish God adores a wild killing spree
The Baha’i faith seeks human harmony
Zoroastrianism divides right from wrong
Quakers are silent, never sing a song
Islamists worship Allahu Akbar
Hinduists seek Karma and Sansara
Janists are veggies, never hurt a fly
Sikhs wear headscarves but never wear a tie
Taoists maintain natural truth in tune
Shintoists watch Sumo from April to June
Don’t let the bastards tell you what to do —
Ask a computer you’ll get 42.
Never be hoodwinked, never bend the knee —
And most important — $ never give money. [esias ryder, 2012]
You notice things others don’t. You question what others blindly accept. And slowly, people begin to drift away. Psyphos podcast: Schopenhauer: Smart = Alone: Why Society Rejects the Trully Intelligent, Youtube 2025
Deep down you feel a stranger among your own kind. ibid.
What if society just is not built for people like you? ibid.
The more deeply you think, you more alienated you become. ibid.
Your loneliness might be the highest proof of your mind. ibid.
It’s social exile. Because when you can see through the game, you stop playing it. ibid.
Schopenhauer: He believed that life at core was suffering, and that the more conscious you are, the more you feel it. ibid.
A man can be himself only so long as he is alone. ibid.
You see the world for what it is: A dance of illusions powered by unconscious craving. ibid.
You are not broken. You are just awake. ibid.
Because their minds crave depth, muance, ideas, not gossip, repetition or emotional noise. ibid.
This sensitivity is not a super-power, it is a burden. ibid.
Solitude is not just an escape, it’s a reclamation of your mind, of your time, of your energy. ibid.
[Michel de Montaigne]: ‘The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to yourself.’ Psyphoria podcasts: The Art of Not Caring: When You Embrace Uncertainty, Life Becomes Easier, Youtube 2025
Have you ever stopped to think about how much of your anguish comes from your obsession with control? … Internal control: the suffocating need for certainties, to know what will happen tomorrow. ibid.
No more certainties, but a new relationship with what cannot be controlled. ibid.
Montaigne was not an ordinary philosopher … He wrote from within his own skin. ibid.
Montaigne embraced the opposite: he did not know. ibid.
In a time when everyone shouts, he whispers. ibid.
Anxiety is the fear of the unpredictable. ibid.
It’s the desire for life to be different from what it is. ibid.
[Carl Jung]: ‘Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.’ Psyphoria podcasts: You Must Let Go: Who to Let Go From Someone Who Hurts You
You say that you want to forget, to move on. But tell me, why do you still think about that person every day? ibid.
You miss what you projected on to them: the illusion of love. ibid.
Often what we call love is just our shadow clinging to someone. ibid.
As long as you continue to seek outside what is missing inside, you will be enternally imprisoned by the gaze of the other. ibid.
The unconscious search for validation and the price paid for betraying oneself. ibid.
If deep down you feel like you are living a lie, you will continue to feel empty. ibid.
The role of the shadow in repeating toxic patterns. ibid.
Carl Jung defined the shadow as ‘everything you do not want to be, but are’. ibid.
Burying is not eliminating. ibid.
You will have to face everything you have avoided. ibid.