h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Good News at last!

Thought I'd share Jacques Derrida's assertion - from my current reading but it's generally notorious anyway - that

'There is nothing outside the text'.

So everything's all right then:
No poverty
No inequality
No starvation
No wars, whether for oil,(greed), for power or for religion or race
No debts
No house repossessions
No suffering
No hatred
No loneliness
No bad health and really good jobs or unearned incomes for all
AND SO ON

All the bad stuff is in books.

[He was the leading French postmodernist philosopher until recently when he - sort of - died - sort of - outside the text - sort of.]

Jab

Hmmm, this is taken from cloud cuckoo land then?

Yep. It's called Postmodernism.

Too many people trying to be too clever. Mostly a Continental Europe thing. Exce3pt for arty types trying to sound intelligent.

Architecture's suffered the worst.
I think it may be past its peak by now, ST. Hope so.

Jab

Oh, the effects aren't intended like that. They're the logical consequences of the absurd statement.

This is all a bit beyond my sad little brain,trouble is ,i am now curious,i will have to read all about Jack Bottom Dada when i should be doing the garden.Tomatoes don't grow well with out help.

I put up with a lot of that postmodernist stuff in graduate school when we had to read Paul Goodman . Like, a piece of music is entirely the exact right sequence of notes. If you stretch a rhythm for aesthetic effect, it isn't the same piece of music. Give me a break!

HEALTH WARNING Sue. Don't try to read Derrida, your brain might revolt against all the nonsense and non-sequiturs and shut down in confusion - ot someone might suffer injury from a flying book. Reading ABOUT him always to be preferred. Wikipedia (though I haven't tried it) prolly preferable.

Jab

Nah - that's too long & boring.

It's sad to think that the first 50-odd years of my life were spent in a period of cultural history that many people will try hard to forget. The parts that I appreciate most (American musical comedy, 1960s humor, classic 50s rock and roll) are problematic for large segments of the younger generation.

Sounds a little like the creed of the psychological social worker:

But I believe in the inherent goodness and perfectability of mankind!

But no one would do a thing like that!

My brain shut down in confusion many, many years afo, and has since begun to ferment, sprouting mushrooms in outlandish colors such as purple and lime green .