The Prison Notebooks
Philosophy. I took a philosophy class once here in Davis. It was about the philosophy behind minds, brains, and computers. How our brains are like super computers, but unlike computers, we are hindered by emotions and morals and personality. Computers nowadays far surpass human capabilities to acquire knowledge and perform mechanical tasks. Computers were made by humans, at least initially, because now they're made by other computers...anyway. Thanks to humans, they exist. This idea is similar to Gramsci's claim that philosophy is dependent on historical context; there has to have been something before. Our thoughts and our actions are influenced by our environment, our environment was shaped by its history. As I have said before: no history, no self; know history, know self.
History inevitably affects us all, whether we like it or not. It's not like we can travel back in time and change history (yet), and if we were, who's to say that it hasn't already been done? Even hundreds of times over? It's a terrifying thought, honestly, and I guess this connects to Foucault's "Truth and Power" in terms of where power lies and depending on this source, it can dictate the future, control history.
I think what is important about history, is that it moves us to change what history created; to change circumstances and situations.
Truth and Power
Truths become the truth because of the power behind the creation of those truths? What we deem to be true in this world, is true only because we were told that it is.
Tackling hegemony: control by consent.
Truth holds power, but power does not necessarily hold truth.
Hegemony should not be connected to or associated with truth, because truth has power and we don't want that.
It's hard not to think about everything as a big lie after learning these concepts. It's hard thinking about what I think is true...and whether it's true or not?
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