#adam kirsch

[athletic-collection]

Adam Kirsch

[redshift-13]

Reviewed The Revolt Against Humanity: Imagining a Future Without Us, by Adam Kirsch, Columbia Global Reports, 100 pp., $16.00 (paper)

I very much think the NYRB picked the wrong person for this review.  The best reviews in the journal have writers with subject matter expertise who can both contextualize a given book within a larger discourse and who also know enough to spot mistakes or arguments that don’t cash out.

For example, O’Connell writes,

Just as they tend to be secular humanists, transhumanists tend to be libertarians and, if not always outright cheerleaders for capitalism, then certainly on the whole uncritical of it.

Also,

"Despite his justified reputation as a critic of range and depth, Kirsch’s treatment of transhumanism is really more of a journalistic survey than an essayistic engagement. He pays little or no attention to the fact that the movement is a metastasized outgrowth of capitalist individualism, concerned as it is with the perfection of the self and the extension of its reign into perpetuity. It’s an odd omission, because there’s a case to be made that capitalism—embedded though it is, like transhumanism, in liberal humanist principles—has itself become a profoundly antihuman phenomenon."

I don’t know whether it’s true statistically that transhumanism is libertarian dominant.  However, it would have helped for him to note that the World Transhumanist Association, subsequently and still Humanity+, was at one point run by a democratic socialist if I’m not mistaken, James Hughes.  Acrimony between libertarians and lefties has marked transhumanism possibly from its start.

Noteworthy is an informal poll of members of the transhumanist subreddit, which found an overwhelming preponderance of lefties of one stripe or another. 

It’s a case of underdetermination and guilt by association to claim that transhumanism is a metatstatic outgrowth of capitalism individualism.  Clearly you can find linkages with Silicon Valley and tech gurus like Ray Kurzweil, but, as already mentioned, democratic transhumanism is alive and well.  Also, it’s too glib to explain individualism, in the sense of a self-actualizing and self-differentiating tendency, with capitalism.  If you do this with transhumanism, you then must with various health trends, for example, or with new religious movements or virtually any lifestyle.  If you’re looking for social explanations for transhumanism modernity seems more apt.  But this is still too blunt to account for the specificities of transhumanism.  Nor does it seem very convincing to attribute transhumanism to some kind of generic religious tendency - itself an explanatory cliché that thinks it’s saying something sociologically useful about why one might want to overcome one’s limitations of mind or body.  You don’t  you need make any reference to transcendent religious categories though to understand the transhumanist impulse, only note that decline, debility and death are objectionable to you.

And that leads me to an observation that forms the backdrop of the discussion about transhumanism.  It seems to me that transhumanism (which it should be pointed out is not a univocal belief system) will be more likely to be seen as anti-human and extreme depending on how you’ve conceptualized the totality of the determining contingencies of our lives.  

In other words, if you never appreciated the following as a whole and recoiled from it - disease, illness, disability, death, ignorance, the limitations of short term memory/memory altogether, the limitations of the body, received prejudice and instinct operating everywhere, the inertia of institutions and society, the forced circumstances of history and previous technological choices - the sum of our limitations, it’s possible you’ve never felt a dialectical and moral pull in the opposite direction in all possible ways.  If you don’t have the sense that we’re much closer to hapless object and historical victim than we are possessed of radical agency and capacities for self-transcendence, then transhumanism will somewhat understandably be seen as anti-human.  But, what if we’ve never been able to be fully human?

Anyway, I have more to say but I feel like reading a book.

[byronicist]

"Under the long green hair of pepper trees, / The writers and composers work the street. / Bach’s new score is crumpled in his pocket, / Dante sways his ass-cheeks to the beat."

Adam Kirsch. trans. Bertolt Brecht, Hollywood Elegies (2009)

[jeffalessandrelli]

Perloff, by contrast, championed poetry that defied the very notion of communication. She was drawn to the avant-garde tradition in modernist literature, which she described in her book Radical Artifice as “eccentric in its syntax, obscure in its language, and mathematical rather than musical in its form.” She found this kind of spiky intelligence in John Ashbery, John Cage, and the late-20th-century school known as Language poetry, which drew attention to the artificiality of language by using it in strange and nonsensical ways. One of her favorite poets was Charles Bernstein, whose poem “A Test of Poetry” begins:

What do you mean by rashes of ash? Is industry systematic work, assiduous activity, or ownership of factories? Is ripple agitate lightly? Are we tossed in tune when we write poems?

For Perloff, the difficulty of this kind of poem had a political edge. At a time when television and advertising were making words smooth and empty, she argued that poets had a moral duty to resist by using language disruptively, forcing readers to sit up and pay attention. “Poetic discourse,” she wrote, “defines itself as that which can violate the system.”

[blogdemocratesjr]

Artist and the Muse by Marcel Antonio

Every writer needs a fireplace. On publication day, an author should burn a copy of his [or her] book, to acknowledge that what he [or] she accomplished is negligible compared to what he [or she] imagined and intended. Only this kind of burnt offering might be acceptable to the Muse he [or she] has let down.

—Adam Kirsch, “Rocket & Lightship”

Oh to be able to celebrate you with all the words of joy. / Sing, burn, flee, like a belfry at the hands of a madman. / My sad tenderness, what comes over you all at once? / When I have reached the most awesome and the coldest summit / my heart closes like a nocturnal flower.

—Pablo Neruda

[grandhotelabyss]

Do you think Logo harbors some hidden latent anti-semitism?

I don't know. If it's there in his thinking, it's probably more in the quasi-theological vein described by Adam Kirsch with reference to Žižek and Badiou (I imagine the argument applies just as well to Logo's beloved Kojève)—

It makes sense, then, that Žižek should finally cast his anti-Judaism in explicitly theological terms. Why is it that so many of the chief foes of totalitarianism in the second half of the twentieth century were Jews—Arendt, Berlin, Levinas? One might think it is because the Jews were the greatest victims of Nazi totalitarianism, and so had the greatest stake in ensuring that its evil was recognized. But Žižek has another explanation: the Jews are stubbornly rejecting the universal love that expresses itself in revolutionary terror, just as they rejected the love of Christ.

—than to the T. S. Eliot brand of modern anti-Semitism aimed at "free-thinking Jews" I was describing recently. The one takes aim at Jewish "particularism," the other at Jewish "universalism."

[usunezukoinezu]

‘‘In corporate and military settings, there is an expectation that everyone, especially leaders, will act with dignity, as a sign that no individual is more powerful than the system and its rules. During World War II, when men were being killed by the thousands daily, General George S. Patton could still be disciplined by his superior, General Dwight Eisenhower, for slapping shell-shocked soldiers in the face. “I must so seriously question your good judgment and your self-discipline as to raise serious doubts in my mind as to your future usefulness,” Eisenhower wrote to Patton, instructing him to apologize personally to the two soldiers involved.

Eisenhower’s reference to “usefulness” is a reminder that respectful behavior isn’t only a moral issue but a practical one.’’

- Adam Kirsch

[madame-verte]

“Ours does not promise to go down in literary history as a great age of religious poetry. Yet if contemporary poetry is not often religious, it is still intensely, covertly metaphysical. Human nature, it seems, compels us to keep asking about the first things, even if we no longer accept the same answers that our ancestors did, or even the same kind of answers. The more widely you read, in fact, the clearer it becomes that our poetry has a distinctive metaphysics, a set of principles or intuitions held in common by poets as different as Seamus Heaney, Charles Simic, and Billy Collins. This metaphysical sensibility, I think, is what will give our period a retrospective unity, when readers of the future come to survey what looks to us like chaos."

- Adam Kirsch, from the piece “The Taste of Silence”, read at Poetry Foundation.                                                

[jewishbookworld]

The 75 books posted on JewishBookWorld.org in August 2022

The 75 books posted on JewishBookWorld.org in August 2022

Here is the list of the 75 books that I posted on JewishBookWorld.org in August 2022. The image contains some of the covers. The bold links take you to the book’s page on Amazon; the “on this site” links to the book’s page on this site. #antisemitism: Coming of Age during the Resurgence of Hate by Samantha A. Vinokor-Meinrath (on this site) Admi­ral Hyman Rick­over: Engi­neer of Power by Marc…

[hyper-revenge-sio]

I made this and thought maybe someone on here would appreciate it <3

[nosensedit]

⊹ ִ࣪ এ credits on twitter ִ࣪ ⌁ like or reblog if you save! ♡ ¸. • *

[outlawssweetheart]

Send me a character I've mentioned in my tags, and I'll tell you some of my headcanons for them.

[your-averagewriter]

Request rules.

I don't write smut but I will write steamy make-out scenes and all that.

I will write fem!character x fem!reader, male!character x fem!reader, male!reader x male!reader. All of it including gender neutral reader.

I also only really write x reader fics.

My Masterlist - What I've already written, I update when I post.

REQUESTS ARE CLOSED DUE TO HAVING LOTS OF REQUESTS!

- Thanks for the requests though! :)

Keep an eye on this as I add more characters as I watch more shows/movies!

People/characters I will write for:

DYSTOPIAN and ACTION:

- Hunger Games - Peeta Mellark, Katniss Everdeen, Haymitch Abernathy, Finnick Odair, Johanna Mason, Annie Cresta, Lucy Gray Baird, Sejanus Plinth.

- Maze Runner - Thomas, Newt, Gally, Minho.

- Kingsman - Harry Hart (Galahad), Gary "Eggsy" Unwin (Galahad), Hamish Mycroft (Merlin), Jack Daniels (Whiskey).

- Zombieland - Tallahassee, Columbus, Wichita.

- Luther - John Luther, Alice Morgan, Justin Ripley.

- Call of Duty - John Price, Simon "Ghost" Riley, John "Soap" MacTavish, König, Alejandro Vargas, Kyle "Gaz" Garrick, Kim "Horangi" Hong-jin, Valeria Garza, Keegan Russ.

- The Boys - Homelander, Starlight, Soldier Boy, Black Noir, Billy Butcher, Hughie Campbell, The Deep, Queen Maeve, A-Train, Translucent.

- Gen V - Marie Moreau, Emma Meyer, Jordan Li, Andre Anderson, Cate Dunlap, Luke Riordan and Sam Riordan.

- Fallout - Cooper Howard (pre and post Ghoul), Lucy MacLean, Maximus.

- The Walking Dead (I've only seen the first season so no spoilers please!!) - Rick Grimes, Glenn Rhee, Lori Grimes, Andrea

HORROR:

- Scream - Billy Loomis, Stu Macher, Dwight "Dewey" Riley, Randy Meeks, Richie Kirsch, Sam Carpenter, Tara Carpenter, Chad Meeks-Martin, Mindy Meeks-Martin, Ethan Landry.

- The Lost Boys - Michael Emerson, David, Star, Marko, Dwayne.

- What We Do in the Shadows - Nandor the Relentless, Laszlo Cravensworth, Nadja, Guillermo de la Cruz.

- Late Night with The Devil - Jack Delroy

- Renfield - R.M Renfield.

- A Quiet Place (1&2) - Lee Abbott, Evelyn Abbott, Emmett.

- The Boy - Brahms.

- Fight Club - Tyler Durden, The Narrator.

- Alien - Ripley, Dwayne Hicks, Hudson.

- Saw - Adam Faulkner-Stanheight, Amanda Young, Peter Strahm, Mark Hoffman.

- The Crow - Eric Draven.

- Midnight Mass - Sheriff Hassan, Father Paul, Riley Flynn.

MARVEL:

- MCU - Tom Holland!Peter Parker, Andrew Garfield!Peter Parker, Bruce Banner, Steve Rodgers, Tony Stark, T'Challa, Stephen Strange, Logan, Scott Lang, Wanda Maximoff, Clint Barton, Natasha Romanoff, Yelena Belova, Matt Murdock, Valkyrie, Carol Danvers, Peter Quill, Bucky Barnes, Phil Coulson, Gamora, Thor Odinson, Loki Laufeyson, James Rhodes, Pietro Maximoff, Druig, Sam Wilson, Shuri.

- Spiderverse - Hobie Brown, Miles Morales (both variations), Gwen Stacy, Miguel O'Hara, Pavitr Prabhakar, Peter B Parker, Spider Noir.

- X-Men and others (Deadpool etc) - Young!Charles Xavier, Young!Erik Lehnsherr, Nightcrawler, Jean Grey, Scott Summers, Nathan Summers, Wade Wilson.

DC:

- The Dark Knight Trilogy - Christian Bale!Bruce Wayne, Jonathon Crane.

- The Batman - Robert Pattinson!Bruce Wayne, Selina Kyle.

- Justice League - Diana Prince (Wonderwoman), Arthur Curry (Aquaman), Clark Kent (Superman).

- Gotham - David Mazouz!Bruce Wayne, Jerome Valeska, Jerimiah Valeska, Alfred Pennyworth, Jim Gordon, Selina Kyle, Ed Nygma, Barbara Kean, Oswald Cobblepot, Victor Zsasz, Harvey Bullock, Jonathon Crane, Jervis Tetch, Victor Fries.

The Suicide Squad - Jared Leto!Joker, Harley Quinn, Rick Flag, Chris Smith (Peacemaker), Robert DuBois (Bloodsport), Chato Santana (El Diablo).

ANIME:

- Attack on Titan - Eren Yeager, Levi Ackerman, Mikasa Ackerman, Armin Arlert, Jean Kirstein, Reiner Braun, Annie Leonhart, Sasha Braus, Erwin Smith, Miche Zacharius, Hitch Dreyse, Kenny Ackerman, Marco Bodt, Pieck Finger, Porco Galliard, Colt Grice, Bertholdt Hoover, Nicolo, Ymir, Zeke Yeager, Floch Forster.

- Demon Slayer - Giyu Tomioka, Mitsuri Kanroji, Obanai Iguro, Muichiro Tokito, Shinobu Kocho, Kyojuro Rengoku, Tengen Uzui, Kanao Tsuyuri, Tanjiro Kamado, Zenitsu Agatsuma, Inosuke Hashibira, Gyutaro, Daki, Enmu, Hinatsuru, Makio, Suma.

- Castlevania - Alucard, Sypha Belnades, Trevor Belmont, Carmilla, Lenore.

- Tokyo Ghoul - Ken Kaneki, Juuzou Suzuya, Touka Kirishima, Kuki Urie, Ayato Kirishima, Itori, Uta, Hideyoshi Nagachika.

- My Hero Academia - Shota Aizawa, Hizashi Yamada, Tenya Ida, Ochaco Uraraka, Denki Kaminari, Eijiro Kirishima, Kyoka Jiro, Hanta Sero, Shoto Todoroki, Katsuki Bakugo, Itsuka Kendo, Tamaki Amajiki, Hitoshi Shinso, Keigo Takami, Mirko, Dabi, Himiko Toga, Jin Bubaigawara.

- Obey me - Lucifer, Mammon, Levi, Satan, Asmodeus, Beelzebub, Belphegor, Diavolo, Barbatos, Simeon, Solomon.

- Haikyuu! - Daichi Sawamura, Kōshi Sugawara, Asahi Azumane, Tobio Kageyama, Tadashi Yamaguchi, Kiyoko Shimizu, Keishin Ukai, Tetsurō Kuroo, Kenma Kozume, Tōru Oikawa, Hajime Iwaizumi, Kōtarō Bokuto, Keiji Akaashi, Wakatoshi Ushijima, Satori Tendō, Yūji Terushima, Kiyoomi Sakusa, Atsumu Miya, Osamu Miya.

- Avatar the Last Airbender - Zuko, Katara, Sokka, Aang, Azula, Ty Lee.

- Avatar: Legend of Korra - Korra, Asami, Mako, Tenzin, Iroh.

MUSIC:

- Waterparks - Awsten Knight, Geoff Wigington, Otto Wood.

- My Chemical Romance - Gerard Way, Mikey Way, Ray Toro, Frank Iero, (all the killjoys).

- Pierce The Veil - Vic Fuentes, Tony Perry, Jaime Preciado.

- All Time Low - Alex Gaskarth, Rian Dawson, Zack Merrick.

- Ice Nine Kills - Spencer Charnas, Ricky Armellino, Patrick Galante, Joe Occhiuti, Dan Sugarman.

- Palaye Royale - Remington Leith, Emerson Barrett.

- Others - Oli Sykes, Ronnie Radke, Andy Hurley, Brandon Flowers, Chris Motionless, Kellin Quinn,, John O'Callaghan, Josh Franceschi, Lzzy Hale, Hayley Williams, William Beckett, Noah Sebastian, Will Ramos, Will Ghould, Dave Grohl, Vessel (Sleep Token).

- Metal Lords - Hunter, Kevin, Emily.

SCI-FI:

- The Sandman - Dream, Corinthian.

- Prey - Naru, Taabe.

- Stranger Things - Steve Harrington, Nancy Wheeler, Jonathon Byers, Max Mayfield, Robin Buckley, 001, Dimitri, Eddie Munson.

- Star Wars - Anakin Skywalker, Luke Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Han Solo, Rey, Kylo Ren, Boba Fett, Poe Dameron, Din Djarin, Cal Kestis.

OTHERS:

- Barbie - Barbie, Ken.

- Monster High - Frankie Stein, Clawdeen Wolf, Cleo de Nile, Deuce Gorgon, Draculaura, Lagoona Blue, Abbey Bominable, Clawd Wolf, Gillington Webber, Heath Burns, Holt Hyde, Jackson Jekyll, Neighthan Rot, Operetta, Robecca Steam, Rochelle Goyle, Venus McFlytrap, Kieran Valentine, Porter Geiss.

- Euphoria - Rue Bennett, Jules Vaughn, Maddy Perez, Cassie Howard, Fezco, Lexi Howard, Nate Jacobs (nothing abusive).

- Wonka - Willy Wonka, Fickelgruber.

- Saltburn - Oliver Quick, Felix Catton, Farleigh Start, Venetia Catton.

-

I know that's quite a long list and if you want me to write for a character not on there then just ask :)

[trans-rights-adam-jensen]

Adam Jensen's Detroit apartment trivia--tiny details

I just went ahead and made a list of things I think the Wiki should have but doesn't.

Meds that adam has in his apartment:

-chromium supplements

-atocyl (skin wipes)

-paracetamol

-nuronex 

-not a medication, but tracheostomy sponges (wound dressings for areas around drains)

Adam keeps his apartment at 59F??? BRO IM SHIVERING

Some of the notes on his wall are "the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog" (from relearning how to write) ; ;

Books that adam has in his apartment:

Format: Title (author(s))

Gurus (like part of a type of book series) SWAT

Feeding the fires of babylon

child and violence

encyclopedia alumnica (entire set)

vernix (samuel wale, an irl book illustrator)

self gratification

Human Traffic (Birck ??? and ???)

being more effective

sick management tactics (Jim Doughe?)

desk rooster

forging the bonds

living with your new cybernetic prosthetic, 2nd edition, all you need to know about treatments, recovery and functionality (J. Bowkett and G. Moreau)

a detailed history of cybernetics

guns blazing

hairy plumber(?) (spine resembles harry potter and the deathly hollows, likely a parody)

the planet of cakes

man in armor (william ???)

resolving conflicts (marcus larson)

the many levels of hate (Ben Ayotte)

Fatal Feet (FF) (sidenote, this is the kind of shit I would put as filler stuff at 2am on level design too, man)

La Colonna Spezzata

Narcotics 

Life and Regrets (Adam Manyoki)

Laws of Detroit 

Laws of Detroit II

Orpheus Slain (Johanna Kirsch)

Chaos theory unraveled

the act of gratuitous violence

general tao: the man behind the chicken

tactical manual volume 1 

Tactical manual (thicker alternate book to volume 1) 

clubbing the incompetent brain

Mechanics

Police force and ethics 

using force for peace (Berth Morisot) (howling at the title oh god)

under heavy fire

sports encyclopedia (phil zelzork)

police tech-???

on the brink of oblivion (johnson)

(???? title in cursive)

No I did not put how many copies he had of each. That would have melted my brain.

[grandhotelabyss]

With Logo and Kantbot both having kids and familys, do you ever feel left behind or think that they basically admiting that all their opinions don't matter and they are setteling for the quiet life?

The great irony of Why Lyrics Last is that in Shakespeare’s sonnets Boyd has chosen one of the supreme statements of the inferiority of physical life, and specifically of biological reproduction, to art. This is dramatized in the structure of the sequence, whereby the poet moves from urging his “fair friend” to become a father to boasting that his own poems will be his friend’s posterity: “So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,/So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.” Boyd is aware of this, of course, and he addresses Shakespeare’s treatment of death and immortality, but he does not seem aware of how deeply it undermines his own Darwinian analysis of art. When Shakespeare tells us repeatedly that it is better to write and be written about than to live and have children, he is positing a value directly opposed to biological necessity.

[...]

The whole notion of art as a vocation implies that the “short term” and the “long term” are not aligned in this case—that immortality requires a sacrifice of this life and its rewards. Shakespeare had three children, one surviving grandchild, and no great-grandchildren: he singularly failed to perpetuate his genes. Yet he is regarded as one of the most successful, the most worthwhile, the most consequential men to have ever lived, because his spiritual children have thrived beyond measurement. And once you acknowledge that human beings can and do think about success and failure in this way, the possibility of comprehending art, and all human endeavor, in purely Darwinian terms simply disappears.

—Adam Kirsch, "Art Over Biology"