Dakryn's Batshit Theory of the Week

Yeah, excellent character. The grim reaper. An entity that embraces life and death by the flip of a coin; elements of causal determinism, chance and pure nihilism.

Sheriff Ed Tom Bell is the character I think most can relate to. Still searching for meaning in absurdity.
 
The Atlantic: All the infrastructure a tyrant would need, courtesy of Bush and Obama

Yet Americans think they're special. If you doubt that, ask yourself what the average American would say if they heard about China pulling call records on millions of innocent Chinese people.

"Those authoritarian Communists."

We go easier on our own.

America has stepped back from the brink in the past when wars ended. But we've never had a "war" go on this long -- and there's no end in sight. It's time for the people to pressure their elected representatives, so that, through Congress, we can dismantle the infrastructure Bush and Obama have built. In less than four years, an unknown person will start presiding over the national-security state. He or she will be an ambitious power seeker who will guiltlessly misrepresent his or her character to appeal to different voters, lie countless times on the campaign trail, and break numerous promises while in office. That's a best-case scenario that happens every time!

For once, let's preempt that threat.
 
http://www.thecommentator.com/article/3735/ludwig_von_mises_and_the_current_economic_crisis

Senior Economist for the Italian Parliament:

We are realising today how accurate Mises was in his predictions. Mises had these issues clear in his mind and implicitly warned central bankers of the risk of losing money to its real meaning and of exposing the economy to the risk of currency devaluation. This, then, is nothing but the risk of moving from one crisis of sovereign debt to the current crisis, a prelude to a possible large-scale monetary perfect storm.
 
Watched No Country For Old Men last night. Coincidentally I've been reading Heidegger heavily and the parallels are amazing. Coen Bros are good, real good.

Yeah, excellent character. The grim reaper. An entity that embraces life and death by the flip of a coin; elements of causal determinism, chance and pure nihilism.

He's even more interesting in the book:

Chigurh said:
“You see the problem,” Chigurh says, “To separate the act from the thing. As if the parts of some moment in history might be interchangeable with the parts of some other moment."

I agree though with the Heidegger parallels. My undergraduate thesis was on McCarthy and Heidegger, (mainly Heidegger's essays "The Origin of the Work of Art" and "The Question Concerning Technology"). I now consider that essay heavily flawed, since I've revised my views on Heidegger and Nietzsche, the latter of whom I argued McCarthy was vying against. However, that was based on the naive position that Nietzsche was a nihilist (which I no longer believe), and that he had to be surpassed, which was Heidegger's view. While Nietzsche does present problems that need to be overcome, I think he provides at least the groundwork for doing so himself.

Mathiäs;10643836 said:
One of my favorite movies. Anton Chigurh is the probably the best villain ever.

As far as McCarthy film adaptations go, I would agree; but in McCarthy's novels, the Judge from Blood Meridian supersedes Chigurh in every way. Chigurh is incredibly intriguing, but the Judge is McCarthy's truly superb villainous literary creation.
 
I don't see how anyone attempting to be intellectually honest gets a nihilist feel from Nietzsche, unless maybe relative to the time. It's certainly a common error to believe someone believes in nothing when they disagree with your entire world view to a point you cannot comprehend.
 
I agree, and that's why I admitted that it was my undergraduate thesis. My position on Nietzsche at that point was intellectually bankrupt, and based on very unfair assumptions derived from certain readings of Heidegger (who understood Nietzsche far better than me, but whom I unfortunately did not fully understand :cool:).

Coincidentally, one of the biggest :facepalm: moments occurred this past spring in one of my seminars, when one student (a creative writing MFA) somehow got on the subject of Nietzsche and said flat out: "But Nietzsche's a nihilist." In response, our professor said: "I don't think Nietzsche's a nihilist." Shut. Down. Bitch.

Fortunately, it wasn't done in a way that precluded further discussion, but there isn't time in a class on ordinary language philosophy to explain why Nietzsche isn't a nihilist. That's a "come see me after class and we'll talk" discussion.
 
I think the easiest way to explain why he isn't is to point out that he most obviously cares too much to be labeled as such.

Edit: While I haven't read as much by or on Nietzsche as you, I do question whether he ever came close to formulating a legitimate framework for addressing the various flaws he saw. The Ubermensch doesn't count. May as well appeal to unicorns.
 
I think the easiest way to explain why he isn't is to point out that he most obviously cares too much to be labeled as such.

Edit: While I haven't read as much by or on Nietzsche as you, I do question whether he ever came close to formulating a legitimate framework for addressing the various flaws he saw. The Ubermensch doesn't count. May as well appeal to unicorns.

I interpreted the Ubermensch as the ultimate exemplification of the will to power, but not necessarily something that Nietzsche saw as physically realizable, at least not immediately. In Zarathustra, for example, the closest that Zarathustra can get to finding the overman is a group of higher men. Then, after a brief period a triumphant feelings, though the overman is never realized, Zarathustra is where he is at the beginning of the book: On the mountain, watching the sunrise, and about to go "under," to the herd of civilization once again, and the story ends. On your point, I'm not really sure that he did either. His will to power, perhaps, could be the answer to inquiry, but his eternal recurrence seems to run contrary to that. Though one can constantly attempt to better themselves, people are still who they are and will never become ideal. And Nietzsche wasn't amoral. Quite the opposite, really.
 
I don't think Jimmy was suggesting that any of us attribute to Nietzsche an absence of moral values. I agree with him that nihilism is easily misinterpreted by most people as amorality.
 
Source(s): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Nietzsche#Morality

"To be ashamed of one's immorality: that is a step on the staircase at whose end one is also ashamed of one's morality."

"In Daybreak Nietzsche begins his "Campaign against Morality".[29] He calls himself an "immoralist" and harshly criticizes the prominent moral schemes of his day: Christianity, Kantianism, and Utilitarianism. However, Nietzsche did not want to destroy morality, but rather to initiate a re-evaluation of the values of the Judeo-Christian world. He indicates his desire to bring about a new, more naturalistic source of value in the vital impulses of life itself.

In both these projects, Nietzsche's genealogical account of the development of master-slave morality occupies a central place. Nietzsche presents master-morality as the original system of morality—perhaps best associated with Homeric Greece. Here, value arises as a contrast between good and bad: wealth, strength, health, and power (the sort of traits found in an Homeric hero) count as good; while bad is associated with the poor, weak, sick, and pathetic (the sort of traits conventionally associated with slaves in ancient times).

Slave-morality, in contrast, can only come about as a reaction to master-morality. Nietzsche associates slave-morality with the Jewish and Christian traditions. Here, value emerges from the contrast between good and evil: good associated with charity, piety, restraint, meekness, and subservience; evil seen in the cruel, selfish, wealthy, indulgent, and aggressive. Nietzsche sees slave-morality as an ingenious ploy among the slaves and the weak (such as the Jews and Christians dominated by Rome) to overturn the values of their masters and to gain power for themselves: justifying their situation, and at the same time fixing themselves in a slave-like life.

Nietzsche sees the slave-morality as a social illness that has overtaken Europe — a derivative and resentful value which can only work by condemning others as evil. In Nietzsche's eyes, Christianity exists in a hypocritical state wherein people preach love and kindness but find their joy in condemning and punishing others for pursuing that which morality does not allow them to act upon publicly. Nietzsche calls for the strong in the world to break their self-imposed chains and assert their own power, health, and vitality upon the world"
 
Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality is definitely an amoralist text, but I don't think Nietzsche himself was amoral. Genealogy of Morality traces a history of morality in a proto-Foucauldian fashion (Foucault was, in fact, heavily influenced by Nietzsche), and so subtracts any previously believed essence from moral codes. Nietzsche basically historicizes morality, exploring changing moral shapes from the ancient to Medieval worlds.

Edit: While I haven't read as much by or on Nietzsche as you, I do question whether he ever came close to formulating a legitimate framework for addressing the various flaws he saw. The Ubermensch doesn't count. May as well appeal to unicorns.

The Ubermensch is less of a practical prediction and more of a thought experiment, as I understand it...

I think there's a subtle distinction between being and becoming in Nietzsche's philosophy that allows him to overcome the pitfalls of nihilism. Nihilism presents the problem of valuelessness, or truth-less-ness. Nietzsche arrives at the conclusion (through proto-historicist argumentation) that Truth, previously believed to be eternal and constitutive of cultural ethos, is in fact constituted by a culture and dependent on historical circumstances. This results in the nihilistic tendency to say "Then there is no ultimate truth!"

But truth relies on eternal being; that is, a truth is something constant and perpetual (as Nietzsche understands it). Being is permanence, and truths are thus permanent; but Nietzsche has undermined the idea of permanent truths. Thinking through this problem, Nietzsche distinguishes between being and becoming, and argues that the world (and everything in it) is in a state of constant becoming; thus, nothing has any being at all. In Nietzsche's philosophy, truths cease to exist, but this doesn't preclude individuals from holding-something-as-true. This latter action is validated as an act of becoming; action and existence never reach the status of an eternal truth, but develop through stages of becoming. Holding-something-as-true, even if the object of its attention isn't a truth, is legitimate for Nietzsche because it is the consequence of action and becoming.
 
And now for something completely different:

America FUCK YEAH

http://jonathanturley.org/2013/06/1...can-be-used-against-defendant-to-prove-guilt/

In a major loss for individual rights vis-a-vis the police, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that prosecutors could use a person’s silence against them in court if it comes before he’s told of his right to remain silent. The prosecutors used the silence of Genovevo Salinas to convict him of a 1992 murder. Because this was a non-custodial interview, the Court ruled that the prosecutors could use his silence even though citizens are allowed to refuse to speak with police. It is of little surprise that the pro-police powers decision was written by Samuel Alito who consistently rules in favor of expanding police powers.

The case began on the morning of December 18, 1992 when two brothers were shot and killed in their Houston home. A neighbor told police that someone fled in a dark-colored car. Police recovered six shotgun shell casings at the scene. Police inteviewed Salinas who was a guest at a party that the victims hosted the night before they were killed. He owned a dark blue car. While this was a noncustodial interview and Salinas answered questions by the police, he stopped answering when a police officer asked whether his shotgun “would match the shells recovered at the scene of the murder.” The record states that, rather than answering “petitioner ‘[l]ooked down at the floor, shuffled his feet, bit his bottom lip, cl[e]nched hishands in his lap, [and] began to tighten up.’” Notably, there was insufficient evidence to charge him with the crime. However, a statement later by another man (who said that Salinas admitted to the killings) led to the charge.

Salinas did not testify at trial, so prosecutors used his silence against him.

In 1976, in Doyle v. Ohio, the Court held that the prosecution may not comment on a suspect’s silence when he was under arrest and had been given Miranda warning. Here Salinas was using his right to remain silent that belongs to every citizen. However, because the police did not move to arrest him, the prosecutors are allowed to achieve the prejudicial impact addressed in Doyle.

The prosecutors also served to undermine the right not to take the stand. In Griffin v. California, the Court ruled that prosecutors could not comment on an individual’s decision not to take the stand and testify. Yet, here the prosecutors succeeded in magnifying the impact of this failure to testify by directing the attention of the jury to his decision to remain silent in the pre-custodial interview.

Of course, now the police need only to ask questions before putting some into custody to use their silence against them. What is particularly troublesome is how subjective this evidence is. To use the silence and demeanor of a suspect on this question is highly prejudicial and equally unreliable. Yet, now the refusal to answer questions (which is your right) can now be used against you.

In his dissent, Justice Breyer stressed the danger:

the need to categorize Salinas’ silence as based on the Fifth Amendment is supported here by the presence, in full force, of the predicament I discussed earlier, namely that of not forcing Salinas to choose between incrimination through speech and incrimination through silence. That need is also supported by the absence of any special reason that the police had to know, with certainty, whether Salinas was, in fact, relying on the Fifth Amendment—such as whether to doubt that there really was a risk of self-incrimination, see Hoffman v. United States, 341 U. S. 479, 486 (1951), or whether to grant immunity, see Kastigar, 406 U. S., at 448. Given these circumstances, Salinas’ silence was “sufficient to put the [government] on notice of an apparent claim of theprivilege.” Quinn, supra, at 164. That being so, for reasons similar to those given in Griffin, the Fifth Amendment bars the evidence of silence admitted against Salinas and mentioned by the prosecutor.

Unfortunately, my prediction that Alito would show an overwhelming bias in favor of police powers has been realized. This ruling will likely open up an entire area of new prosecutorial arguments using silence as evidence of guilt. It is a major blow to the rights of citizens — and a telling addition to the troubling judicial legacy of Alito.