Philosophy

Philip K Dick’s The Electric Ant

Categories Literature, Philosophy2 Comments on Philip K Dick’s The Electric Ant

It is Dick's exploration of existential questions and the malleability of reality that I am concerned with in this blog. The short story “The Electric Ant” deals with what it means to be human and how the experiences of an android might differ, if at all, from that of a human being. Our protagonist Garson Poole wakes up in hospital to find that he is missing his right hand and that he feels no pain. This is the start of his discovery that he is not human, after all, but an android. It is in fact a horrible awakening

E.M.CIORAN: Melancholy & Decay

Categories Literature, Medical humanities, Philosophy, Psychopathology2 Comments on E.M.CIORAN: Melancholy & Decay

He was born born Emil Cioran in 1911, in a small Transylvanian village, Rasinari. He moved to Paris in 1937 and died there in 1995. He was a Romanian philosopher and essayist who was known for his pessimistic and nihilistic perspectives.

Borges and Maps

Categories Literature, Medical humanities, Philosophy, Psychiatry, Psychopathology6 Comments on Borges and Maps

‘…In that Empire, the craft of Cartography attained such Perfection that the Map of a Single province covered the space of an entire City, and the Map of the Empire itself an entire Province’

Lies, Lies, & Alternative Facts

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In Philip K Dick’s (1928-1982) Beyond Lies the Wub, we have a particular paradigm of lying, of deception. The Wub is described as “a huge pig. It must weigh four hundred pounds”. And, it was dirty and “flies buzzed about its flank”. Nonetheless, its physical appearance distracted from its intelligent ploy which was to replicate itself…

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COVID19 and the Re-emergence of Tyranny

Categories Literature, Philosophy16 Comments on COVID19 and the Re-emergence of Tyranny

This is the hardest blog post I have written yet. I had started out aiming to write about the re-emergence of tyranny in the context of the COVID19 crisis but I was ambushed by events, specifically by the brutal and intentional murder of George Floyd, a black man, by a white policeman in Minneapolis, aided…

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Darkness & Light in Jumoke Verissimo’s A Small Silence

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Jumoke Verissimo’s new novel, A Small Silence, amongst other things is about darkness. The actual material darkness of not turning the lights on at night and of inhabiting a darkened room with the curtains drawn during the day. It is within this nightly space that Desire meets and converses with Prof.   The tradition of…

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Wub, swibble & pizzled- neologisms and meaning

Categories Literature, Medical humanities, Philosophy, Psychiatry, Travel3 Comments on Wub, swibble & pizzled- neologisms and meaning

  I've cycled to Quarteira from Vilamoura, distance of just under 5 miles. It's a very warm morning. The sun is a strong even searing midday brightness glistening and bouncing off the sea. Even I with my dark eyes, have to squint. This is November but it could easily be midsummer.   The restaurants are…

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Winter Blues: I begin to discern the profile of my death

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  Oliver Sacks has just revealed that he has terminal cancer. This sad news from the voice of humane medicine put me in mind of Marguerite Yourcenar’s Memoirs of Hadrian, an account of the last days of a great man, looking back and forwards, in a letter to Marcus Aurelius.     The letter opens…

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Pestilence

Categories Literature, Medical humanities, Philosophy4 Comments on Pestilence

  Sophocles’ Oedipus The King starts with lamentation. The priest cries   A blight is on the fruitful plants of the earth, A blight is on the cattle in the fields, a blight is on our women that no children are born to them; a God that carries fire, a deadly pestilence, is on our…

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The Journey In My Head

Categories Literature, Medical humanities, Philosophy, Poetry, PsychopathologyLeave a Comment on The Journey In My Head

  In 1931, probably in November, Bernardo Soares daydreamed during ‘the journey between Cascais and Lisbon’. He said I went to Cascais in order to pay the tax on a house my boss Vasques owns in Estoril. I looked forward eagerly to the trip, an hour there and an hour back, a chance to watch…

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