Cogitus Rex

A friend who aspires to intellectualism claims that music , "anthropologically" came before poetry and that writing came after music... What I find interesting in this view is that she has supported it with the claim that anthropology actually knows which came first. As an intellectual, a lover of ideas and a philosopher, I wonder how so many seemingly intelligent people can accept as "gospel" academic claims. There exist numerous reasons to doubt the claims made by social scientists, even reasons to doubt the findings of "the hard sciences". I don't say this as a knee-jerk skeptic, but rather because it is through such doubt, sometimes called "peer review", that epistemology advances. The claim that music is prior to human writing and poetry may seem true on the face of it, but if we consider that in nature animals communicate, have use of language (albeit proto-language) and engage in ritualized behaviors as a form of co

Would it be so bad if each sport event ended with a cathartic event? As it seems that the custom these days is to riot after a sporting event, why not just set up a gladiatorial contest en masse after each game?

The world cannot be saved, not in any spiritual or religious way. It doesn't need salvation, resting as always in absolute perfection, the world and it's wonders are beyond any human ideas. The world cannot be saved, but we shall, misguidedly proceed on a pilgrim's journey to redeem what gives us base. Like some retired, first grade teacher whose pedagogical insights fail when applied to adult life and the real world, no ritual, no march or riot will make what is any better. The world cannot be saved, in another sense still, by new age fancy, gender-based empowerment, or deconstructive stratagem. The world clings to all it contains, so nothing is better than anything else if it has been deemed fit to be. The world cannot be saved, not stored up or hamstered away, no investment for the future can invest anything with more value than the world already has. So let us not save the world, better to run from it.