1 faggy idealism

–So you were going to break down all of philosophy for me.
–Right, no problem.
–Well?
–I’m serious and I’m joking. You’ve heard of varieties of religious
experience. Well philosophy is varieties of faggy idealism.
–Faggy?
–By which I mean pastel, unwordly, precious, fancy.
–As opposed to more substantial action in the real world?
–Right. For instance, a speech writer for a politician is doing it.
–But we can think of philosophers as speech writers for speech
writers.
–Nice. There you go. I’m guilty of loving these speech writers for
speech writers, this speech about speech about speech. I’m doing
it now, right?
–So you are being a faggy idealist?
–Exactly. That’s the insight. We can think of the faggy idealist as
the guy who thinks he is cleaner than others. He doesn’t dirty his
hands with work. He spends that time more wisely and righteously
in the bathtub, contemplating his own holiness as he grooms.
–OK, but that sounds critical, like you want distance from it.
–Yes, but that seeking for distance is one more form of bathing.
The later forms of faggy idealism take faggy idealism as the filth
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that must be eliminated. So as a sophisticated neopragmatist
anti-Platonist etc I have to cleanse myself of the need to cleanse
myself.
–I see. But what if one just shuts up about it?
– You can, but you are no longer in the game. I’m not talking
about the people who aren’t talking this stuff but about those who
are.
–Including yourself.
–Right. And I haven’t finished.
–OK.
–The complementary insight is that existence is basically empty,
and that faggy idealism is the best we can do.
–And here we get the varieties of faggy idealism. The quality
varies.
–Right. So I’m playing at playing the game with an intense self-
awareness. It’s not any deeper than Ecclesiastes. It’s implicit in
that book.
–It falls out of nihilism.
–Right. So this word, which can function as a cartoon, also points
to heights and depths of consciousness. Or it can be used that
way.
–Nothingism.
–As Feuerbach said, the true philosophy is no philosophy. There
is no system, no secret, no infinite guilt or innocence. All is finite.

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Everything comes and goes, and maybe even coming and going
will go.
–The heat death.
–Right. And then maybe the gods will fire the whole thing up
again.