[b]Jean Baudrillard
Our sentimentality toward animals is a sure sign of the disdain in which we hold them. Sentimentality is nothing but the infinitely degraded form of bestiality, the racist commiseration.[/b]
Or, sure, maybe not.
Even the Middle Ages, which condemned and punished animals in due form, was in this way much closer to them than we are. They held them to be guilty: which was a way of honoring them. We take them for nothing, and it is on this basis that we are “human” with them.
Or, sure, maybe not.
Something escapes us, and we are escaping from ourselves, or losing ourselves, as part of an irreversible process; we have now passed some point of no return, the point where the contradictoriness of things ended, and we find ourselves, still alive, in a universe of non-contradiction, of enthusiasm, of ecstasy - of stupor in the face of a process which, for all its irreversibility, is bereft of meaning.
Let’s decide if this is a good thing or a bad thing. After we all agree on what it means.
Driving is a spectacular form of amnesia. Everything is to be discovered, everything to be obliterated.
And not just on the golf course, he quipped.
The transition from signs that dissimulate something to signs that dissimulate that there is nothing marks a decisive turning point.
Actually, I’m not at all sure about dasein here.
Imagine the amazing good fortune of the generation that gets to see the end of the world. This is as marvelous as being there at the beginning. How could one not wish for that with all one’s heart? How could one not lend one’s feeble resources to bringing it about?
Hell, he thought, all it would take is “the big one” to come hurtling down from the heavens.