What do Bolsonaro, Trump, Orbán, and Duterte have in common? Scapegoats need familiar faces - be it young gangsters in Brazil, illegal Mexican migrants in the US, the Jews and Gypsies in Hungary, or drug dealers in the Philippines. The "law and order" politics effectively displaces attention away from the real sources of socio-economic grievances. …
Author: Alexander Svitych
On Social Media, Self, and Buddhism
An excerpt from 21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari. ... In order to understand ourselves, a crucial step is to acknowledge that the ‘self’ is a fictional story that the intricate mechanisms of our mind constantly manufacture, update and rewrite… Just as the government builds up a national myth with flags, …
Modern Predicament
Published in 1932, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World sounds prophetic today. “V.P.S.?” “Violent Passion Surrogate. Regularly once a month. We flood the whole system with adrenin. It’s the complete physiological equivalent of fear and rage. All the tonic effects of murdering Desdemona and being murdered by Othello, without any of the inconveniences.” “But I like …
The Logic of Practice
As a complex theorist, Pierre Bourdieu was not an easy read for me. Nonetheless, it was very worthwhile from an intellectual point of view. His main concepts of habitus, practical sense, symbolic capital, and symbolic violence are so thick that I feel a dissertation won’t suffice to fully appreciate and internalize them. For the purpose …
Scholar Warrior
The Emperor of the Chinese Qing dynasty had a special guard squad that could execute any order. These guards were not banal killers. First, they took exams in painting, poetry, music, calligraphy, history, science and mathematics, medicine, and statecraft. Then there came fighting with swords, horse riding, archery, and martial arts. Those who passed the tests …
Structuration Theory / Modernity and Self-Identity
The thrust of Anthony Giddens' Structuration Theory is the notion of the duality of social structure. In contrast to functional and structural accounts, Giddens’ structuration theory posits that actors and society are mutually constituted. The same duality principle is manifested also in Modernity and Self-Identity, where the author reveals the dialectic relationship between self-identity and the …
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Prison Notebooks: Is Anti-Systemic Global Culture Possible?
One of the main topics in Antonio Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks is how change can be attained. Based within a specific historical and social context, Gramsci makes an important distinction between a war of maneuver and a war of position when analyzing the causes of the failure of the proletarian revolution in Italy. While the former …
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