Zizek on ecological ideology

Wow, this is fun.

a zizekian ramble on truth and ideology

This is a new kind of post where i have no idea what it is i want to say, other than that i need to say something. I just finished watching yet another brilliant Slavoj Zizek talk, so brilliant that i find myself uncomfortably close to deifying the man. I don’t know how to post [...]

The new Zionist myth?

Following up from a previous post, one of many interviews with a solider who participated in Operation Cast Lead:

What does it mean when the state itself sanctions this kind of cosmic-scale, theological rationale for destruction? Is this the 21st century? If so, maybe it’s time for some new mythologies, some new [...]

Joseph Cambpell really got it.

… the earlier google vids link is down. You can access a Quicktime version here.
From a description of the audio:
An exhilarating journey into the mind and spirit of a remarkable man, a legendary teacher, and a masterful storyteller, conducted by TV journalist Bill Moyers in the acclaimed PBS series….

2.The Message of the Myth
Campbell compares [...]

An Islamic History of Europe?

Why does history matter? It’s the sole provider of context, of meaning, to the otherwise unfathomably complex temporal world. The narratives that sit in your head are the prisms through which you view the world. Successful demagogues know this–so do (good) novelists and filmmakers.
I’ve made this point before, but i feel it’s worth making again: [...]

The Chickpea

The Chickpea
- by Mowlana Jalaluddin Muhammad Balkhi (Rumi)

A chickpea in a pot leaps from the flame,
out from the boiling water,
Crying, “Why do you set fire to me?
You chose me, bought me, brought me home for this?”
The cook hits it with her spoon into the pot.
“No! Boil nicely, don’t jump away from the one who makes [...]

BBC 4: Science and Islam

As both a child of the globalized era, and someone involved in education, i’m continually irked by the myopic (judeo)-christian-centred narratives on the history of global ‘progress’ presented to students here in the west (and probably elsewhere, although i can’t speak to that).
Here’s a doc by BBC 4 that tries to remedy this. It’s not [...]

Probability, the Law of Large Numbers and |truth|

Below is a thought-provoking, if half-baked, non-dualistic take on the central principle of probability theory.
The Law of Large Numbers by Ramesh Balsekar.
Ramesh Balsekar
Creating Order Out of Disorder:
The Theory of Probability – The Law of Large Numbers
One of the best kept secrets of the universe relates to the question of how the sub-atomic, micro-world of [...]

Sitting here, you and I | خنك آن دم كه نشستيم

A first attempt at translating the work of Mowlana Jalaluddin Mohammad Balkhi ‘Rumi’ (in memory of my late grandfather, who would not have understood, but who i loved, and who loved me, nonetheless):

خنك آن دم كه نشستيم در ايوان من و تو
به دو نقش و به دو صورت به يكى جان من و تو
رنگ باغ [...]

Darwin’s unfinished revolution | The Economist

Cambridge paleontologist Simon Conway-Morris has interesting ideas about the tendency of evolution to follow certain overarching pathways. In a recent talk while visiting here on campus, he went on to make some oblique, but fascinating, conjectures about the immanence of phenomena such as complexity and intelligence. The Economist discusses him here:
… Simon Conway-Morris, a [...]