Chomsky:Why did you bother living?

i ask myself that all the time, and im still mid-twenties

but i still prefere George Carlins take of enjoying the ride through the freakshow, while not having a stake in it.

i like comparing Chosmky and Carlin. they seem to be in about the same place, trying to walk in a very different direction. something like that.

well carlin position was self-contradictory in the sense that as much as he claimed to despise the focus on a specifical outcome, his work was still social commentary. commentary is fundamentally based on a certain kind of judgement, which automatically implies a kind of idealistic intention towards a state of affairs thats superior to the present constellation. commentary in this sense is meaningles without a certain wish for outcome.

without a recognition of the wish for an outcome his whole perspective wouldnt have evolved in the first place. even IF he did it just for the effect, just for entertainment, the whole proposition of 'pointing out' whats bad would be nevertheless unentertaining and meaningless if it wouldnt be in support of a fundamental human desire of improvement.

oh my, how articulate..

i agree with that very much. that's why it's withdrawel more then not caring. "not my problem".

like seeing two random people fight somewhere on the street in less reputable neighbourhoods. i'd like for them to stop fighting, or form an opinion of whos in the right and who's the bad guy in that situation, and still not have a stake in it. especially if they don't want me to have a stake in it in the first place.

yeah, thats how i see it.
we cant really claim to not care about the way things are if we laugh about the way things are. we can distance ourselves from outcome but we cant break our relation to it. if we had no relation to an outcome, we wouldnt even have a relation to the way things are. i belive carlins denial of the wish for an outcome was a criticism in itself.

yeah, i think so too.

if you think so, theres no real opposition between chomsky and carlin. they had some real equivalence in their distinction between wrong and right. im sure chomsky likes carlin.

well, Carlin said he admires people that don't give a fuck. that sound pretty different from Chomsky, who does give a fuck.

their criticisms have a very similar ring to them. uhmmm.... nah screw it, they are very similar.

"well, Carlin said he admires people that don't give a fuck."

yeah but as i said before, the denial of interest is something that causes thought about the way things are and therefor its not really not 'giving a fuck'. people who dont give a fuck dont even comment.

Looking at the comments here, I wonder how you all even managed to start up a computer, much less stumble upon an intellectual powerhouse like Noam Chomsky