03 DEC 2025 by ideonexus
The Moynihan Report Characterizes Black Culture as Commun...
Doro is an ideal consumer who is both part of a “race,” “nation,” or “empire” (those terms being as confused and intertwined for Doro as they were for Burroughs) and its predator. This depiction of Doro highlights the ways in which a hyper-extended consumerism and an exceptionalist definition of nation both necessarily bring with them a permanent underclass—without which the empire would collapse—both feeding and being destroyed by those in the dominant position, and who thems...Folksonomies: science fiction critical theory
Folksonomies: science fiction critical theory
1 03 DEC 2025 by ideonexus
The System of Oppression is Still in Place at the End of ...
o, directly opposing Rebekah Simpkins’ assertion that “By removing the control, Neo sets the prisoners free,” the first film ends with those controls still in place.45 At the end of The Matrix, after all, Neo does not awaken everyone to “the real,” but instead exploits the continued functioning of the Matrix, leaving the illusion intact so that he can fly. As Žižek writes, “all these ‘miracles’ are possible only if we remain WITHIN the VR sustained by the Matrix …: our ‘...Folksonomies: science fiction critical theory
Folksonomies: science fiction critical theory
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notes
notesThe Matrix makes many, very clear references to Black oppression. All of the antagonists are white men wearing business suits. Morphius tells one, "You all look the same to me." Later, Morphius is bound and gagged in a historically-evocative fashion.
At the same time, Neo is a white savior. In the end of each film, the oppressors remain in power. The Matrix is never dissolved and its victims remain trapped. The system of oppression remains in place.
03 DEC 2025 by ideonexus
SF Fantasies are in a Mutually Complicating Relationship ...
This general paradigm is offered as a theoretical ground for the specific focus and readings of the rest of this book, which analyses in detail the issues of gender, race, and their representation in American SF. For, while the “cognitive” element of SF may not hold in all or even most cases, still SF, as a specular mode, reminds us that its fantasies are in a mutually complicating relationship with material reality. The categories of gender and race, their mutable histories, and the meta...Folksonomies: science fiction critical theory
Folksonomies: science fiction critical theory
1 notes
notes01 DEC 2025 by ideonexus
People Attack Increased Options Because They Feel Like Th...
The key to understanding the world today is in this comic right here.
this Boomer comic has been making the rounds on Facebook for at least a decade,
and it portrays a brave, older Marine in a coffee shop where the barista says,
“can I interest you in a soy latte?”
he says, no.
“just coffee, black.”
“caramel Macchiato?”
“just coffee,
black.”
“iced peppermint mocha?”
“just coffee, black”
“frappe?”
now, the first thing you'll notice is that this scenario has never oc... 1 notes
notes07 OCT 2025 by ideonexus
Locke's Philosophical Criticism Destroyed the Institution...
We must note two aspects of Locke’s method of analysis. One is that it was primarily a method of criticism, a method which by means of analysis subjected to critical scrutiny the many complex ideas which prevail in a society, and which because of their abstruse nature, cause confusion and misunderstanding. Locke proposed that all such ideas be analyzed into their simple components and examined critically so that the degree of their validity might be determined. The other aspect for us to no... 1 notes
notes25 SEP 2025 by ideonexus
Technology is Ideology
...what is happening in America is not the design of an articulated ideology. No Mein Kamp for Communist Manifesto announced its coming. It comes as the unintended consequence of a dramatic change in our modes of public conversation. But it is an ideology nonetheless, for it imposes a way of life, a set of relations among people and ideas, about which there has been no consensus, no discussion and no opposition. Only compliance. Public consciousness has not yet assimilated the point that tech... 1 notes
notes25 SEP 2025 by ideonexus
Huxley and Orwell's Portrayed Very Different Dystopias
Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley's vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.
What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What ... 1 notes
notes20 SEP 2025 by ideonexus
Criticism of "The dawn of post-literate society"
I enjoy reading as much as anyone, but I find these kinds of posts to be very short-sighted.
First off, civilization precedes mass reading by millennia. To attribute the Enlightenment and modern industrial civilization to reading, and any counter-movement against the Enlightenment as anti-reading, is to fundamentally misunderstand most of history.
E.g., Romanticism was an explicitly anti-Enlightenment movement and arguably had more interest in poetry and literature than the forces it was rea...Folksonomies: criticism
Folksonomies: criticism
20 SEP 2025 by ideonexus
Written Word Enabled Philosophy, Screen Content Unravels It
The classicist Eric Havelock argued that the arrival of literacy in ancient Greece was the catalyst for the birth of philosophy. Once people had a means of pinning ideas down on the page to interrogate them, refine them and build on them, a whole new revolutionary way of analytic and abstract thinking was born — one that would go on to shape our entire civilisation3. With the birth of writing received ways of thinking could be challenged and improved. This was our species’ cognitive liber...While I find this essay goes a bit into alarmism in places, I do appreciate how it communicates the importance of long-form reading in the intellectual and social advancement of civilization. I appreciate the idea that the written word is a cognitive prosthesis that can enhance our intellectual capabilities beyond what was capable during the era of oral traditions. Screens have demonstrated the same potential, but the flood of highly addictive screen-content junk-food seems so much more destructive than the pulp novels of the past.
20 SEP 2025 by ideonexus
The Screen Revolution is Breaking the Thread of Literacy
If the reading revolution represented the greatest transfer of knowledge to ordinary men and women in history, the screen revolution represents the greatest theft of knowledge from ordinary people in history.
Our universities are at the front line of this crisis. They are now teaching their first truly “post-literate” cohorts of students, who have grown up almost entirely in the world of short-form video, computer games, addictive algorithms (and, increasingly, AI).
Because ubiquitous m... 1 notes
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