Author: jonwuka
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Traffic, Flow, Code, and Boundary
Flow and code are not complete. When thinking about language, it’s easy to see code as just being a way to understand flow and to make it understood. However, this construction is missing one element: the interpreter or, in another sense, the destination. In the case of language, the presence of the interpreter is assumed.…
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Palestine, Resistance, and Ressentiment
When trying to make sense of the 2023 Hamas attack on Israel, few among the supporters of Israel concede that Hamas had anything in mind but trying to kill Jews. The goals of the Palestinian people are always attributed to a hatred of Jews. Why is this?
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Capitalism Is a Lie
Capitalism is a lie, and when I say this I am speaking in a very specific sense. I do not mean that capitalism is built on exploitation, which of course it is. I do not mean that it falsely tells people they can have things which the system will prevent them from having, which it…
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Against Ressentiment
Few concepts which Nietzsche developed have been less controversial than ressentiment. I view this as a problem. It’s not unusual to find that ressentiment (and its cousin bad conscience) are at the core of Nietzsche’s thought. It’s also not unusual to observe that Nietzsche was stridently elitist and aristocratic. It’s interesting, then, that people never…
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Thoughts on Fascist Antisemitism
I briefly wanted to reflect on the political utility of minorities for fascists; this is expanding on a point I made in Against Ur-Fascism. I happened to be watching a video where one YouTube historian (What Why How) was criticizing another for their defense of the nazis. Specifically, what caught my attention was not anything…
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Juice: Will to Power and al-Kindi’s Stellar Rays
The concept of Juice is meant to help model how all interpersonal interactions work on an individual level: how does one person persuade another, for instance. Traditional philosophy doesn’t seem to deal with interactions at this particular level; it deals in ideals and generalities. For this reason, traditional philosophy did not give me the tools…
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Aphorism 7 – The Good King
When discussing Nietzsche and ressentiment, those who want to save Nietzsche often make the point that ressentiment is a key part of the idea of justice. In response, I would like to tell a story about The Good King. There once was a good king. One day, a man came to him and said that…
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Aphorism 6 – Morality
To oppose Chomsky’s view of moral systems, though, I do not believe moral systems (or any mental construct) are like biological organs, I believe they are like bone tools. Do we need them (or something better) to navigate the world, to get ourselves sustenance, to protect ourselves? Absolutely. But these are things that we have…
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Aphorism 5 – Technological Determinism
I place the term technological determinism most directly opposite “economic determinism”, though I wouldn’t say one excludes the other. To begin with, “technology” to me is not only the mechanical, motorized, or electronic technology that we usually think of, but also of philosophical technologies such as new concepts, different ways of reading, new mediums, etc.,…