The First Casualty: War and the Rape of Truth

While it remains true that the first casualty of war is the truth, and that all lovers of truth must therefore abominate war as the rape of truth, there is also a sense it which war is also an apocalyptic irruption of a new and majestic truth into the world, and the means by which a false and mendacious world is decisively and definitively swept away. War is a paradox.

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Press, Pressure, and Propaganda

The “Press” got its name from the application of pressure onto blank paper to leave an impression — the written word. Newsprint is like an artists’ canvas, in that respect; and a symbolic enactment of what is deemed the originary state of the mind as being “blank slate” or tabula rasa.

In broader terms, however, making impressions on paper is only the first step in the goal of attempting to apply pressure on consciousness — to impress something deemed “newsworthy” or even “sensational” upon the nerve-endings of the consumer of the press.

Devolution of Man: I Will Make You a B[el]ieber

Recently, a study group of evolutionary biologists suggested something to the effect that “evolution was deselecting for human intelligence”, or undergoing evolutionary regression. I don’t recall where I saw it, now. I think it was in The Guardian.

But… here’s the proof.