Something serious to compensate the humor in your post: I think, this little paradox can be extrapolated to explain why we have lot of problems around us, in the world (problems right from hunger to ecological disaster) , even when we as human beings claim so much pride in doing the most exciting things in our scientific research. The truth, we already know of, is that most of the problems we work on our research are not "problems" at all. Here we will need to remember Zizek who claims that we should ask and define the right problems instead of exhausting our efforts for finding solutions for wrongly defined problems, which is where we now need the help of philosophy, more than anything else.
Also it is interesting to note how much ideologically man has kept the 'wrongly defined problems' close to his heart, while conveniently neglecting the 'real, non-defined problems'. According to Zizek, all the problems concerning "impossible" scientific adventures can indeed be solved and made very much 'possible'--man can travel to any astronomical body, man's penis can be cut into two so that he can have sex with two women simultaneously and so on ! But any small political or sociological problem: like a slight increase in old-age pension or a small increase in the bonuses for manual laborers, can never be made 'possible' and is not even supposed to be thought about.
Something serious to compensate the humor in your post: I think, this little paradox can be extrapolated to explain why we have lot of problems around us, in the world (problems right from hunger to ecological disaster) , even when we as human beings claim so much pride in doing the most exciting things in our scientific research. The truth, we already know of, is that most of the problems we work on our research are not "problems" at all. Here we will need to remember Zizek who claims that we should ask and define the right problems instead of exhausting our efforts for finding solutions for wrongly defined problems, which is where we now need the help of philosophy, more than anything else.
ReplyDeleteYes, Sankar. So this problem is deeper than it appears!
ReplyDeleteAlso it is interesting to note how much ideologically man has kept the 'wrongly defined problems' close to his heart, while conveniently neglecting the 'real, non-defined problems'. According to Zizek, all the problems concerning "impossible" scientific adventures can indeed be solved and made very much 'possible'--man can travel to any astronomical body, man's penis can be cut into two so that he can have sex with two women simultaneously and so on ! But any small political or sociological problem: like a slight increase in old-age pension or a small increase in the bonuses for manual laborers, can never be made 'possible' and is not even supposed to be thought about.
ReplyDelete