[apocalypstyx]

People's talk of complexity tends to remind me often of their (many believers I have seen) conceptualization of god, that is, he is only beyond them in such a way that is in itself within their horizon of understanding, just more so, as it were. That is to say, it they themselves who are the measure of god. And I see much the same thing happen in other fields. And it leaves me wondering, if we truly can explain everything to 12 year olds, why aren't twelve year olds...doing anything other than being 12 year olds? Perhaps we have to admit that in bestowing this "understanding" through the equivalent of and episode of Nova, we really do have to leave out so much, that to call it either understanding or communication in any serious sense is farcical and a lie promulgated to an audience that's just acting out evolved desires both to want to acquire and mating advantage possible and also to have some innate feature of attraction that is unacquirable by others, while those communicating get to act out their own desires to positions themselves higher within that hierarchy (because are the people in these audiences ever going to be considered 'on their level'? The answer to that should illuminated the whole situation.)

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So what if—just another fancy idea of mine—what if Chomsky cannot find anything in my work that goes "beyond the level of something you can explain in five minutes to a twelve-year-old because" because, when he deals with continental thought, it is his mind which functions as the mind of a twelve-year-old, the mind which is unable to distinguish serious philosophical reflection from empty posturing and playing with empty words?

--Slavoj Žižek

https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/1365-some-bewildered-clarif...