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Iopha

a substitute for an inarticulate sound

Created on 2002-05-11 08:32:21 (#556084), last updated 2009-06-18

7,253 comments received, 6,941 comments posted

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880 Journal Entries, 14 Tags, 23 Memories, 0 Virtual Gifts, 6 Userpics

Basic Info

Name:	Nic M.
Birthdate:	1979-04-06
Location:	Montréal, Québec, Canada
Website:	The GoatHalo Projekt

Bio

For the record, I've recently completed my M.A. in philosophy at Concordia University, Montréal, and am currently studying at the University of Western Ontario for my PhD. You may find some of my papers on my UWO Website. My research interests include Ludwig Wittgenstein, virtue ethics, political philosophy and philosophy of mind.

I'm also a part-time musician and full-time existential angst machine. The horror! The horror! Such is my life. Also, I support DOGMA 2004.

Even a superstitious man has certain inalienable rights. He has a right to harbor and indulge his imbecilities as long as he pleases, provided only he does not try to inflict them upon other men by force. He has a right to argue for them as eloquently as he can, in season and out of season. He has a right to teach them to his children. But certainly he has no right to be protected against the free criticism of those who do not hold them. He has no right to demand that they be treated as sacred. He has no right to preach them without challenge.

-H.L. Mencken

Every smallest step in the field of free thinking, and of the personally formed life, has ever been fought for at the cost of spiritual and physical tortures. Change has required its innumerable martyrs. Nothing has been bought more dearly than that little bit of human reason and sense of freedom that is now the basis of our pride.

-Friedrich Nietzsche

Indeed if great enmities are ever to be really settled, we think it will be, not by the system of revenge and military success, and by forcing an opponent to swear to a treaty to his disadvantage, but when the more fortunate combatant waives these privileges, to be guided by gentler feelings, conquers his rival in generosity, and accords peace on more moderate conditions than he expected. From that moment, instead of the debt of revenge that violence must entail, his adversary owes a debt of generosity to be paid in kind and is inclined by honor to stand to this agreement.

-Thucydides

The problem is that any facile idiot with a bit of power can avoid giving an honest reply by putting on an important air and protesting that criticism is easy.

-John Ralston Saul

From deep inside the Islamic countries there comes a very profound question with regard to the false universalism of the West, or what I call the imperalism of the universal [...] If it is true that one form of universalism is no more than a nationalism which invokes the universal (human rights, etc) in order to impose itself, then it becomes less easy to write off all fundamentalist reaction against as reactionary. Scientific rationalism—the rational of the mathematical models which inspire the policy of the IMF or the World Bank, that of the law firms, great juridical multinationals which impose the traditions of American law on the whole planet, that of rational-action theories, etc—is both the expression and justification of a Western arrogance, which leads people to act as if they had the monopoly of reason and could set themselves up as world policemen, in other words as self-appointed holders of the monopoly of legitimate violence, capable of applying the force of arms in the service of universal justice. Terrorist violence, through the irrationalism of the despair which is almost always at its root, refers back to the inert violence of the powers which invoke reason. Economic coercion is often dressed up in juridical reasons. Imperialism drapes itself in the legitimacy of international bodies. And, through the very hypocrisy of the rationalizations intended to mask its double standards, it tends to provoke or justify, among the Arab, South American, or African peoples, a very profound revolt against the reason which cannot be separated from the abuses of power which are armed or justified by reason (economic, scientific, or any other). These 'irrationalisms' are partly the product of our rationalism, imperalist, invasive and conquering; or mediocre, narrow, defensive, regressive and repressive, depending on the place and time. One is still defending reason when one fights those who mask their abuses of power under the appearances of reason or who use the weapons of reason to justify or consolidate an arbitrary empire.

-Pierre Bourdieu

By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.

-Richard Dawkins

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Interests (108):

'pataphysics, activism, alacrity, alienation, amniotic fluid, analytic philosophy, anarchism, aristotle, atheism, bad haircuts, battlestar galactica, being sober, big words, boffing, books, class warfare, cognitive science, comic tragedy, death, deathbed romance, digital recording, dogma 2004, drinkables, drum machines, economics, explosions, facial hair, failure, fetal position, fight club, file-sharing, fire, flattering lies, found causes, fruity loops, frustration, futility, game theory, girls, globalization, goathalo, gonads, guitar, hating gym class, home recording, hope, hypocrisy, indubitability, industrial, instinct's bitch, issues, kripke, ljdrama, london ontario, longing, lost causes, makesmewantodie, metal, midi, minimalism, misrepresentation, moronic debates about 'goth', mortality, ms-dos, muses, music, music production, music samples, neo-marxism, nietzsche, not kant, not me, nubility, numbness, philosophy, plato, poetics, politics, pretentious user icons, problematics, pvc weapons, reification, repressing insane urges, resistance, sampling, self-flagellation, sentience, sequencers, series a, sexual tension, shiny things, shouting, sparring, stomping, strange chip flavours, strife, surviving, the smashing pumpkins, tragic comedy, trip hop, under-blanket safety, university of western ontario, virtue ethics, volatile chemicals, windows 98, wittgenstein, you, ทำดีได้ดี ทำชั่วได้ชั่ว

Schools:

École Primaire Harwood - Vaudreuil-Dorion, QC, Canada (1986 - 1989)
Collège Bourget - Rigaud, QC, Canada (1990 - 1991)
École Secondaire de la Cité-Des-Jeunes - Vaudreuil-Dorion, QC, Canada (1992 - 1995)
John Abbott College - Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue, QC, Canada (1996 - 2000)
Concordia University - Montréal, QC, Canada (2000 - 2005)
University of Western Ontario - London, ON, Canada (2006 - present)

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