Posts by David Cauchi
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If you're going to bag the police for starting the 'whole terrorist thing', then the question is, did they use that phrase or dump it in the media.
Silly me. It was the media all along who invoked the Terrorist Suppression Act to get the search warrants for the police to start this whole charade in the first place.
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I haven't picked through it closely enough to see if he's right to say that it was the media/public that ran with the terror ball, rather than the police having anything to do with it.
The goddamn police were all over this like a rash. I mean, come on. Ignore the media, just look at what the police did. It started with dawn raids and locking down a town and involved harassing some pensioner, among other farcical activities.
There will be nothing to any of this, like a whole lot of people have said all along. Just a bunch of people caught up in a beat up.
It's kind of heartening how's it's all such a joke.
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And if all the technology in the world vanished . . . just what would you be sketching those designs with?
The same things cave painters 40,000 years ago used: twigs and sticks chewed at one end and used to apply coloured mud on to a surface, whether stone or bark or skin.
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Your're not one for the small statement. But are you saying that art is a necssary precusor to science or that both happen concurrently since they rely on the same cognitive and physical skill base?
The invention of art was what drove the development of the cognitive and physical skill base on which all subsequent technological progress is based.
Being able to physically materialise abstract thought in symbolic form enabled writing and maths, without which science is impossible. That doesn't make all subsequent symbolic representations - whether maths equations or this thread or diagrams on the back of an envelope or whatever - art, but it does make them dependent on art.
That's why
Here's a useful thought experiment - which would have a bigger impact on your life: all the art in the world vanishing, or all the technology?
is a false dichotomy. If all the art in the world vanished, there wouldn't be much in the way of technology. Imagine not even being able to sketch a design to show someone else.
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That was a pretty rapid default to name-calling ...
Yeah, I was pissed. Sorry.
To the guy who wants my stuff: you're more than welcome to try. Don't worry. I won't call the cops.
As for 'charmingly naive', where do I start! Maybe with the claim that art is 'nice but incidental'. We wouldn't have science and technology etc without art. The main way we distinguish when our ancestors became fully human is when they started making art (I have a theory about this, but I won't bore you with it now).
The comment about William Gibson made my point for me, though. Art history is the physical record of the communication of ideas between people. Even a cursory look should tell you how powerful it is. Art has formed our world.
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Look. honestly, it's all about how you live your life. It's about meaning and integrity.
Bollocks to your political revolution. Bollocks to your Establishment posturing (I'm talking to you, RB).
What matters is ideas. And art is the medium for ideas that affect society for now and evermore.
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Ha ha, if everything belonged to everybody, there'd be nothing to steal.
That ignores that fact that people like owning things and stopping them doing that will take an awful lot of very nasty coercion. To that I imagine you would reply "but people only want to own things because capitalist society brainwashes them".
Ha ha, ridiculous. Look at your assumptions.
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I prefer it when people spontaneously organise themselves in ways that suit them, and I want a society where that happens as much as possible. But some people are spoilers and need curbing. That curbing function IS the state, with or without a formal constitution. You can't live in a world free of compromise and paradox if it's got actual people in it.
You're halfway there, mate.
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I should probably point out that I conceive of anarchism as a moral, rather than political, philosophy.
I'd go into the implications of this, but I'm afraid my after-work drinks didn't fizzle out and I too have an opening to go to.
In the meantime, it's a bit flagrant, but here's some stuff I've prepared earlier.
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We need to pay more than just lip service to peoples right to challenge or even (shock horror!) transform the society we live in. Not that I am advocating violence, just suggesting we sneer at radical passionately involved people at our peril.
There is no incompatability between supporting someone's right to attempt to transform society and laughing (or sneering) at their excesses.
Would it also contain pockets of, say, armed robbers or simple thieves?
Ha ha, if everything belonged to everybody, there'd be nothing to steal.