CxD #264 Bookmark morality + Moloch😈 + 📚'23 #31: ⭐️⭐️⭐️½ Martin Heidegger: Between Good and Evil + Open Conversation Needed
1.
3.
There’s a concept/allegory that goes by the name Moloch, which refers to the ways people are caught in systems that guarantee their actions will be to their detriment in the long term. It is an extremely important aspect of systems thinking and the corruption of humane values.
This essay is worth your time reading—a comfy chair a warm soothing beverage required— because you will see the world in a new way, one which will raise your awareness of the ways in which we all contribute to the big problems, whether we like it or not. As well as potential solutions in dealing with these problems that don’t make them worse. Much is at stake with these questions on the advent of dealing with artificial and intelligent technology.
Moloch always and everywhere offers the same deal: throw what you love most into the flames, and I can grant you power.Link to the essay here.
Audio version of the essay:
CxD 📚'23 #31: ⭐️⭐️⭐️½ Martin Heidegger: Between Good and Evil
Jaspers: Can one as an impure soul, that is, as a soul that does not even feel its impurity and constantly try to force itself out of it, but one that thoughtlessly lives on in filth - can one who is indecent see what is purest?
Arendt: What you call impurity, I would call a lack of character, in the sense that he literally has none - not even a particularly bad one. And yet he lives in a depth and with a passion that one cannot easily forget. [1949]
"The finger that points at the moon is not the moon." The more that philosophy (even phenomenology) becomes elaborated, the further it is removed from the truth of lived experience. Philosophy begins in wonder. If there is anything to be learned from Heidegger, it is to learn to wonder again.
Humans sure are complex creatures, aren’t they? Who don’t get to pick and choose the circumstances they’re born into, and shaped by. Who might see farther and deeper into reality in many ways, and be near-blind in others. Who do the best they can with what they’re able to see and understand. This illuminating biography pairs exceptionally well with last week’s How to Read Heidegger and the documentary Being in the World.
6.
