Date Archives → April 2014

In Search for Causality (part 1)

Min-Jungyeon-Jalousie-combo-final

Jesus isn’t saving us from the Devil. He’s saving us from God. – J. Karlin

Preamble

This begins with an in depth analysis of the film Antichrist 2009 by Lars von Trier. The question that was being addressed was where the antichrist can be found in the film, in other words, where is the devil and how was it portrayed? In order to answer that, a thorough analysis of the “devil” must be made. This point is crucial to understand the futility of representing the very aspect of the unrepresentable or irrepresentable. A quest that is fully within the devil’s domain so speak, yet extremely rewarding as it unravels and confronts the very inverse of irrepresentability with complete representation, the impossibility of a thing fully signified. That is to say the very search for the irrepresentable is the same search for the transcendental signified, it is from the point of  the irrepresentable that the transcendental signified can be imagined, conceived; to be deceived that there is a movement towards something that has been signified. This leap is not as inconceivable as it first appears if one is willing to follow the very movements of representation within the film and the current paradoxes of modern philosophy. Continue reading →

Fortification of the Mind and In Praise of Indifference

Ivan-Aivazovsky

Did you tackle that trouble that came your way
With a resolute heart and cheerful?
Or hide your face from the light of day
With a craven soul and fearful?
Oh, a trouble”s a ton, or a trouble”s an ounce,
Or a trouble is what you make it,
And it isn”t the fact that you”re hurt that counts,
But only how did you take it?

–Edmund Vance Cooke

Life is a constant struggle littered with adversity and suffering. Sadly, an unavoidable proviso of existence. Nothing comes free of cost, and hardships provide the potent bitterness that man must taste in order to fully enjoy the pleasures of life. Without turmoil or difficulty life would become increasingly tedious and saturated with the numbing contentedness of insipidity. A man who indulges in his every desire is ignorant of the pleasures he consumes (after all, the last chocolate in the box is devoid of taste and each subsequent piece diminished in flavour). Or as a consumer of perfumes soon finds–the scents overwhelm the olfactory senses, necessitating an opposing smell to reset the inundated nose–coffee beans typically used as a counteractive in this colourfully smelly example. Continue reading →