{"id":366,"date":"2010-07-08T21:47:58","date_gmt":"2010-07-08T21:47:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/2010\/07\/08\/on_philosophy\/"},"modified":"2010-07-08T21:47:58","modified_gmt":"2010-07-08T21:47:58","slug":"on_philosophy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/2010\/07\/08\/on_philosophy\/","title":{"rendered":"On philosophy"},"content":{"rendered":"

At this point Festus interrupted Paul’s defense. “You are out of your mind, Paul!” he shouted. “Your great learning is driving you insane.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Acts 26:24, NIV<\/em><\/p>\n

\nTheodore Zeldin is a philosopher. As far as I can work out, this means he gets paid to say things that nobody in their right mind would even think. I say this because a week ago I read in that epitome of news reportage, the Evening Standard (now free from all good Tube stations), that Zeldin threw a dinner party on Saturday where there was no food, but rather a list of supposedly conversation-provoking questions<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\nThe plan was to get up to 200 people, paired with random strangers, to talk:<\/p>\n

People in this world of superficial communication find themselves isolated and lonely and have difficulty in talking about personal things that really matter to them.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\nWell, all right. But this is actually a thinly-veiled attack on two mainstays of conversation and human interaction today: Twitter and Facebook: an antidote to the superficial conversations of Facebook and Twitter<\/em>, to encourage people to open up to each other in more meaningful ways<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\nHe seems amazed or surprised that at one event he organized, “they started at 7pm and some people were still going at two the following morning.” Yeah. Whatever. I used to talk through the night when I was at college, too. <\/p>\n

\nZeldin apparently has never been on Twitter or Facebook. The ability to have a non-superficial conversation does not depend on the medium, as any letter writer will tell you. More to the point, Twitter and Facebook facilitate<\/em> human interaction: I have met far more interesting people through these media than I would have otherwise (the last time being a couple of Tuesdays ago at a #UKScitweetup<\/a> event I organized). Some of my best friends, the very people I would open up to and discuss the secrets of the universe, I have met on Twitter or other parts of the internet. The failure to have ‘meaningful’ conversations is the fault of the people involved; indeed, a failure of vision<\/em> in realizing what is possible.<\/p>\n

\nIf this is the state of philosophy in the 21st century, then philosophers are in great danger of becoming irrelevant. It may already be too late.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At this point Festus interrupted Paul’s defense. “You are out of your mind, Paul!” he shouted. “Your great learning is driving you insane.” Acts 26:24, NIV Theodore Zeldin is a philosopher. As far as I can work out, this means … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,46,37],"tags":[49],"class_list":["post-366","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-internet","category-people","category-rants","tag-muppets"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=366"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}