6 ideas
| 22370 | Big central government only exists as a focus for anger - not to act [Fisher] |
| Full Idea: The specter of big government is there to be blamed precisely for its failure to act as a centralising power, the anger directed at it much like the fury Thomas Hardy supposedly spat at God for not existing. | |
| From: Mark Fisher (Capitalist Realism [2009], 8) | |
| A reaction: The point is that the power resides with the leaders of capitalism, and central government is largely a side-show. Sounds somewhat true, and the politicians are largely unaware of their role. |
| 22368 | It is hard to imagine the end of capitalism [Fisher] |
| Full Idea: It is easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of capitalism. | |
| From: Mark Fisher (Capitalist Realism [2009], 1) | |
| A reaction: His book addresses the question of whether complacently accepting capitalism is the right attitude. I read it because I am complacently resigned to living with capitalism. If we started again, would capitalism be a rational choice? |
| 22369 | Are students consumers or products of education? [Fisher] |
| Full Idea: Are students the consumers of education, or its product? | |
| From: Mark Fisher (Capitalist Realism [2009], 6) | |
| A reaction: As a teacher I have been increasingly obliged to treat pupils as customers, meaning that my main task is to keep them happy. Admittedly, pupils who are interested are usually happy pupils, but as a main objective happiness seems wrong. |
| 13304 | Learned men gain more in one day than others do in a lifetime [Posidonius] |
| Full Idea: In a single day there lies open to men of learning more than there ever does to the unenlightened in the longest of lifetimes. | |
| From: Posidonius (fragments/reports [c.95 BCE]), quoted by Seneca the Younger - Letters from a Stoic 078 | |
| A reaction: These remarks endorsing the infinite superiority of the educated to the uneducated seem to have been popular in late antiquity. It tends to be the religions which discourage great learning, especially in their emphasis on a single book. |
| 8409 | Probabilistic causal concepts are widely used in everyday life and in science [Salmon] |
| Full Idea: Probabilistic causal concepts are used in innumerable contexts of everyday life and science. ...In causes of cancer, road accidents, or food poisoning, for example. | |
| From: Wesley Salmon (Probabilistic Causality [1980], p.137) | |
| A reaction: [Second half compresses his examples] This strikes me as rather a weak point. No one ever thought that a particular road accident was actually caused by the high probability of it at a particular location. Causes are in the mechanisms. |
| 20820 | Time is an interval of motion, or the measure of speed [Posidonius, by Stobaeus] |
| Full Idea: Posidonius defined time thus: it is an interval of motion, or the measure of speed and slowness. | |
| From: report of Posidonius (fragments/reports [c.95 BCE]) by John Stobaeus - Anthology 1.08.42 | |
| A reaction: Hm. Can we define motion or speed without alluding to time? Looks like we have to define them as a conjoined pair, which means we cannot fully understand either of them. |