Pessimism and human History
Posted: March 20th, 2006, 1:21 am
Th. Adorno (paraphrase):
'There is no universal history going from savagery to humanitarianism; but there is one going from the slingshot to the megaton bomb.'
against Kant's idea of universal history as an optimistic account of the teleology of human destiny, justifying human nature by its future attainment of a state of cosmopolitan peace, prosperity.
Bush gives the gift of nukes to India. Pakistan watches in jealousy. diplomacy is a warm gun.
the bomb is holy. -- Corso (or was it Ginsberg?)
We're all gonna die.
Who will speak at the funeral of the Last Man? what poetic elegies will be piped from what computerized sound machine?
our waste, our artifacts will be the legacy of mankind. space capsules floating in a devoided void.
Nirvana is a death fantasy. Heaven a childish daydream. Only hell is real; hell is the Real, in a social-psychoanalytic sense. All sense is nonsense. Nonsense is a better type of sense. [Originally: a better typo sense.]
We are all going to die.
What will you do, in the mean time/s?
'There is no universal history going from savagery to humanitarianism; but there is one going from the slingshot to the megaton bomb.'
against Kant's idea of universal history as an optimistic account of the teleology of human destiny, justifying human nature by its future attainment of a state of cosmopolitan peace, prosperity.
Bush gives the gift of nukes to India. Pakistan watches in jealousy. diplomacy is a warm gun.
the bomb is holy. -- Corso (or was it Ginsberg?)
We're all gonna die.
Who will speak at the funeral of the Last Man? what poetic elegies will be piped from what computerized sound machine?
our waste, our artifacts will be the legacy of mankind. space capsules floating in a devoided void.
Nirvana is a death fantasy. Heaven a childish daydream. Only hell is real; hell is the Real, in a social-psychoanalytic sense. All sense is nonsense. Nonsense is a better type of sense. [Originally: a better typo sense.]
We are all going to die.
What will you do, in the mean time/s?