BLOGGER



Youngest kid of six with an inferiority and black sheep complex, but determined that God saves not just his soul to heaven but the remainder of his manic-depressive life, so others won't say he became a Christian and remained a jerk.


MAIN THEMES

On identity
i won't be transparent before i'm opaque. and you'll get to know me starting from the small things: who my favourite bands are. what kind of movies i like. who are my heroes.

On Christianity
I’m convinced that when confronted with sincere, real love, the Jesus factor will become obvious. But let’s not plant the cross before we carry it. I’m not trying to con you.

On dreams
Some dreams are meant to be achieved. I know that. But maybe other dreams are meant to drive us, privately. Never known to anyone but ourselves.


OTHER THEMES

On melancholy
It is a sadness that, when choosing between crying and sighing, will choose sighing. I'd almost say that melancholy is being sad about sadness itself.

On memory and nostalgia
It saddens me when life moves forward and people decide that certain things are worth forgetting.

On language
I've learnt that the word irregardless is filed as a non-standard word in the English language. That's a lexicographer's way of saying it's not a real word.

On politics
Crowds are fickle things. So when we stand in the thousands and cry against the present government, do we know who we're actually crying for?

On society
People always want the best for themselves. But I want to sometimes take second or third or fourth best, just so that the loser down the road doesn't always have to come in last. It must feel like shit to always come in last.

On growing old
Leasehold property make me feel sad. It doesn't matter how old the family photos are that you put on your wall. It's your family but it's not really your wall.

On philosophy
I ask you, if God loves everyone, and if God is also incapable of loving evil, how can there be such a thing as an evil man?

On a daily basis
One line quips, like this.


CHAT





Monday, February 28, 2005
MARX, KUHN & CHRIST - INTRODUCTION

cheerio.

you might notice that i haven't been posting anything of notable a) christian, b) intelligent value of late. this does not mean that i've turned pagan and/or stupid. i've just been finding it hard to put some of my thoughts into intelligible words. but i've been reading a fair bit and perhaps such input is a more fruitful enterprise than blind and undirected output.

in one of my readings, i came across this beautiful word, a word so beautiful it warrants not merely a slot in my Word of the Day column, but a study/post of it - and its workings - as a proper blog. the word i'm raving about is cognitariat. of course, you can see that it is related to the word proletariat, a word most common in the writings of the first of my two favourite philosophers, Mr. Karl Marx. the initiated will probably already "get" what "cognitariat" is, or rather, who the "cognitariat" are. but i'll leave that for another day, when i'll blog extensively and exclusively on the matter.

for now, let me divert the topic ever so remotely, and talk about the second of my two favourite philosophers, Mr. Thomas S Kuhn. not nearly as well known as Marx (and it is indeed odd for them to be mentioned in relation to one another, for reasons that will soon become obvious), Kuhn philosophised about scientific progress, arguing that scientific knowledge and practice happens within paradigms; and one converts between such paradigms when the old one fails to address mounting problems. his seminal paper, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions has shaped not only the way i see science, or even the world, but especially - in some ways - christianity. for that reason, my approach to christianity among other faiths is distinctly Kuhnian. he has, along with Marx, been my philosophic hero.

intriguingly, there is a commonality between the thoughts of these two honourable men. Marx talked extensively about proletarian revolution, and Kuhn, scientific revolution. while each talks about revolution in different ways, both saw revolution as the response required to propel the progress of history into the consequent epoch. likewise, both men also commonly see their respective fields, economy and science, as progressing in a linear direction heading towards inevitable destinations.

of course, as it has to be, they also share what are to me (a christian) glaring flaws. the inadequacies of Marx have been well-documented: if the failure of every communist government is in itself lacking as evidence (and i dare say it is), then at least his work has failed to account for the information explosion - and hence, power explosion - that was to happen only a hundred odd years into the future. but as a christian, this is not my concern. my concern is, of course, with his brushing off of God, calling His creator an opiate that dulls the masses from realising their oppression. quite rightly so, the church at Marx's time may not have been the most enlightening nor happening place to be. but with the benefit of a 21st century hindsight (and a 21st century church), we now bravely know that it is the truth of God's word that opens the eyes of the downtrodden and sets them free (and ultimately free!) from the oppression of factory owners and/or the devil.

Kuhn's problem - which i will not go extensively into, since a) most of us are not familiar yet with Kuhn, b) i wanna deal with Kuhn's problems when i blog about him properly - is that he opens the door remotely ajar to relativism. of course, Kuhn denounces it, but in my effort to apply Kuhn to my christianity (an effort no one told me to pursue), there comes a point where Kuhn ends and Ong (that is, i) takes over.

i have, as you can see, overshot myself. this is only meant to be an introduction to the blogs that are to follow, blogs about my two favourite philosophers, blogs about christianity, marxism and kuhnism (the latter of which is a term i've likely just coined from thin air). if you have never heard me speak about christianity, other faiths and the cruel world, this series of blogs should do the job.

cheers. i look forward to writing them.

Labels: ,



Genusfrog [ 5:18 am ]

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home