Eric Jarosinski - Nein. A Manifesto

Harder still to keep saying it, especially when we live in a world of yes. A tyranny of yes. Yes to family. Yes to friends. Yes to terms. Yes to conditions.

Yes to work. Yes to play. Yes to a life of yes, yes, and yes, please. But there is another life. An uncertain life. Of no. For no. For no.

Not just any no, however. A no of not now. Not yet. And not only. The no of Nein. Aesthetics: Art for the artless. Analytic philosophy: When mathematicians try their hand at poetry. Anxiety: Fear of the unknown. (Depression: Fear of the known.) Aphorisms: 1. (Depression: Fear of the known.) Aphorisms: 1.

Old ships in new bottles. 2. Philosophy for those with little Zeit. Written by those with little Geist. Art: The silence of the ancient mariners painted ship. Art history: The study of art without art. Art history: The study of art without art.

And history without history. Atheism: A religion without a prayer. Benjamin, Walter: The mourning of philosophy cut short by history. Book: A relic of the days when paper was wasted on words. Borges: Argentinas greatest German author. Capitalism: The ship of state rigged by pirates. (Communism: The ship of state rigged by the state.) Change: What you want. (Communism: The ship of state rigged by the state.) Change: What you want.

When, where, and how you do not want it. Close reading: The art of reading what has never been written in order to write a book that will never be read. Coffee: The diuretic of enlightenment. Cold War: A conflict too expensive to be fought, but too cheap for a Roman numeral. Commodity fetishism: Mistaking someones labor for something you would want to buy. Continental philosophy: What Europe does when its depressed. Craigslist: A casual encounter with the social contract. Culture: The cigarette not smoked after not having sex. Cynicism: The hope that someday you will have known better all along. Dead certainty: Socrates without a question. Deconstruction: Reading with a microscope. Deconstruction: Reading with a microscope.

Thinking with a hammer. And writing with an erasure. Degree: Devised by doctors to take ones temperature or tuition. Dialectics: A Werner Herzog documentary narrated by Klaus Kinski. Diplomacy: The art of turning swords into plowshares. Plowshares into tractors.

And tractors into tanks. Discretion: An undertaker who never says die. Elegy: Pathos played in a minor key. Emoticon: Symbol expressing an emotion we can no longer express in the form of a face we can no longer countenance. English: A language everybody speaks but nobody can spell. Europe: A continent tied to the left that drifts to the right. Failed intellectual: One who tries to intellectualize ones failure. And fails. And fails.

At times brilliantly. Foreign policy: The logical extension of illogical domestic policies. Frankfurt School: An institute that taught us to read Freud like Marx. Marx like Hegel. And Adorno like Adorno. French theory: Americans who still smoke. Freudian slip: When the unconscious speaks in tongues. Fundamentalism: A literal misreading of the misunderstood. Genius: When sadness speaks to loneliness. Genius: When sadness speaks to loneliness.

And laughs. German: A language invented for philosophy but used to build automobiles. German beer: Carefully brewed in accordance with purity, and slowly poured in defiance of gravity. German literature: Where protagonists go to die. God: 1. 2. 2.

The monster over our beds. GOP: An American political party devoted to the principle of one nation under God. And one above. Graduate school: Related fields seeking advanced degrees of separation. Grammar: IKEA assembly instructions that are different in every country. Happiness: A feeling of well-being appreciated once it has stopped. Hegel: A philosopher best understood if never read. Hermeneutics: The science of reading text messages. (Critical Hermeneutics: The art of deleting them.) Hipster: Indifference wasted on the young. History: The victors present for the vanquished. Hope: A beacon made of fog. Humanism: The sober realization that were all weve got. Ideology: The mistaken belief that your beliefs are neither beliefs nor mistaken. Instability: When capital is frightened by its own shadow. Instagram: A marketplace in which pictures of your cat are exchanged for a thousand unspoken words of derision.