Hypercomplexity. It is hypercomplexity we are in need of in both ontological and epistemological terms—that is to say, in terms of our descriptions of what things are and of how we should study them. For we have lacked it for too many centuries, since Aristotle (and later Boethius, followed in this by the medieval Christian…
Category: Modernity
On Nishitani’s Notion of Nothingness (Sūnyatā) // S&C
Nishitani on Nothingness // Sofya What Keiji Nishitani intends to think in his famous essay Shūkyō to wa Nanika (What is Religion?), originally published in 1961 and translated into English in 1982 as Religion and Nothingness, is beautiful in a way. Firstly, he proposes that all life and non-life form oneself’s being. Nishitani quotes Miso Kokushi:…
Little Stories from Malawi // S&C
We had a chance to visit Malawi in July 2019. We travelled there to learn about the environmental-justice initiatives put forward in various villages by the Lilongwe-based NGO Youth for Sustainable Development (YSD) over the past eight years—practices that have effectively enabled such villages to recover their pre-colonial agricultural practices and thereby strengthened their economic…
Technology & the Future // Carlos
Is modern technology inevitable? Does it represent an objective improvement of earlier forms of technology? Do different types of technology all fall under the same category? There are distinct types of technology, not only particular technologies falling under one and the same concept. Take an indigenous bow and a missile, for example. Putting them under…
Cosmic Labour Force // Carlos
Among other things, capitalism is a mode of economic production based on dissymmetrical relations of production that allow the exploitation of the majority by a minority through the extraction of work force from our minds and bodies. But who is susceptible of becoming work force under capitalism? Almost everything – not just you and me….
Capitalism’s Five Pillars // Sofya
Its immense complexity notwithstanding, it can be said that capitalism stands on five major pillars on which I would like to briefly write here. These pillars are: private property, human exceptionalism, rationality, progress, and hard work(❖). Private property In order for it to exist, capitalism must, in the first place, appropriate land. Colonists in North-America…
When the World is Nothing but Dust // Sofya
A Question of Mentality Mentality is what makes people see, accept, and think some things conceivable, but not others. It is the basis of people’s thought, something they do not question—the condition of possibility of their ideas and actions. What is modern mentality? It is, among other things, what allows deforestation and the extinction of…