Something slightly interesting finally came up in my stat reports:
OK, so I've been thinking lately that I wanted to write a blog (I don't write them often). I've had several ideas, one of which was an entry about a guy who calls himself "Alex Kierkegaard," who writes the commentary section of a website called "
Insomnia." I've always wanted to delve deeper into post-modernism, and this Kierkegaard guy seems to fancy himself a contemporary Baudrillard (based on the two or three commentaries I read at Insomnia).
http://philosophywithpair.blogspot.com/ ... ision.htmlSkimming through his blog, I found out that he seems to be a professor of some kind (philosophy most likely), and he also wrote that Zelda/philosophy book that came out recently. So I skimmed further, and came upon these priceless gems:
This brings me to my next point. The description of the Zelda book on amazon promises to consider a few questions concerning Zelda and philosophy. Note the use of the word "consider." Consider does not mean answer, nor does use of the word promise to provide one.
lolled pretty hard at this. Why the fuck should anyone waste his precious time reading your rubbish book, if you are not even promising to answer anything?
As Bertrand Russell taught, philosophy does not necessarily seek to answer any specific question; philosophy considers questions for the sake of the questions themselves.
Russell had some pretty mad defense mechanism skills. He needed them, too, seeing how crap at philosophy he was.
If this doesn't appeal to you, then, again, you're likely not so philosophically inclined.
How much more ass-backwards can you get? THE EXACT OPPOSITE is true. Whoever is satisfied with just "asking questions" will never achieve anything in philosophy (though he will achieve a great deal in academia). It's the people who will stop at nothing TO GET THE ANSWERS who are best suited to philosophy. This guy's blog is defense mechanisms running amok, lol.
I will be editing a World of Warcraft and Philosophy book sometime in the future, so, if possible, maybe that book can address some of the questions the Zelda book can't. But do remember that no one has read the Zelda book yet!
Seems to be a pretty lucrative market. How about a Dead or Alive Beach Volleyball and Philosophy book next? It seems that reviews are not enough to cover videogames any more -- each game should from now on have its own full length book.
This book is, in some sense, an attempt to bring the best parts of academia together.
The result speaks for itself! This "academia" place seems more and more interesting by the minute!
Some might be thinking that the writers are all ivy-leaguers trying to make money by exploiting yet another pop-cultural icon.
Perish the thought!
One doesn't have to be a philosophy professor to be a thinker.
Yes, but if one is a thinker, one is most certainly NOT a philosophy professor. Schopenhauer has already explained this, but I guess if you are writing ENTIRE BOOKS about individual videogames, you might perhaps not have enough time left over for studying people like Schopenhauer.
One of the goals of studying games, I think, is to figure out what it is about us that attracts us to them.
You don't have to "study" games to figure that out (and you most certainly do
not have to spend half your life writing worthless books on individual videogames). Just stop playing games for a year or two. Then see what you miss about them,
and how much you miss them. All the answers will be right there.
...
In conclusion, the chances that this dude might have something interesting to say about me are now very close to zero. The initial paragraph made me hopeful, but the rest completely reversed my expectations. Oh well. But if he does end up writing something, perhaps debunking it will provide me with amusement for a few minutes.