Existential Comics

How the new Star Wars should have ended, honestly.

To be clear I'm not making fun of vegans, I'm making fun of people who stay out of politics while a power mad politician normalizes cruelty in society.

Quintus Sextius was a quasi Stoic Roman philosopher, who apparently came from a wealthy, powerful family, and turned down a Senate role from Julius Caesar. He had an interesting argument for Veganism, which is based more around the Greek and Roman ethics of the time. Instead of talking about suffering, it talked about the virtue in the individual. Eating things which have their origin in cruelty causes the person to become accustomed to cruelty. In a way it erodes your virtue and soul. Of course, if there was anything in Roman society that got you accustomed to cruelty, it was probably politics. The incredibly brutal acts of Caesar were celebrated and praised officially, so it seems like maybe he could have gone into politics to try to temper the cruelty of the State. I mean, they would have just ignored him probably, but most people probably ignored his vegan argument too, so maybe poor Sextius was doomed either way.

To be clear I'm not making fun of vegans, I'm making fun of people who stay out of politics while a power mad politician normalizes viscous cruelty in society.

A lot of people say virtue is "worth" more than money and land etc, but rarely do people put their money where their mouth is and do a straight up trade.

Sports under anarchism actually would be much better. Coaches would be elected by the population, instead of appointed by the rich guys who own the teams, etc. Imagine how much more entertaining that would be? Like if this guy sucks and the crowd hates him, they could fire him. When appointing the new coach they would run like politicians, promising how much more they will press for goals, instead of playing defensively or whatever. Rules would also be written by the population at large. Right now a lot of people are mad at the computer overturning goals because someone is a millimeter offsides or whatever, and seem to be unironically arguing that the rule should be that you can be "a bit" offsides. I would love to see the mob right the rules, especially when they are emotional after a loss. Change it halfway through the tournament! Anarchism! Power to the people! And don't forget this classic comic: World Cup Philosophy.

I'm actually in favor of Bakunin here, where soccer rules, and even the immediate enforcement of the rules, are governed by some kind of direct democracy. So if the crowd boos the red card, they just take it away.

When Foucault was young his father sent him to a famous psychoanalysis named Jean Delay, due to self harm, and suicide attempts. Apparently this experience, where he was more or less diagnosed as his homosexuality being the source of all his problems, may have caused many of his anti-psychiatry ideas that he later wrote about. Michael Sugrue had a great lecture on this..

To be fair, structural critiques of power mechanisms in society are pretty French and Gay, which you think about it.

The title is based on Sarah Bakewell's excellent book "At the Existentialist Café".