I forgot to add a third thing to the list of most depressing phenomena, namely this:
This is ideology at its subtlest and at its cruelest. It presents itself as humane and authentic, yet it is the perfect perversion of both. So, what's wrong with cherishing "the little things in life", with seeking "true love", seeking "personal growth" and a rich "inner life"? Everything. This type of propaganda presents personal growth as an individualistic endeavor, as something we do alone as we run from others, as we abandon them and set our own interests as the measure of the world. It is what capitalism does to us, there is no need that we should try and bring this curse upon ourselves. It wants to present itself to us as the most tender thing. The worldview that breaks us asunder, that affirms the world as a cold, hostile place, full of pain and suffering and loneliness, is not tender, it is ruthless and inhumane. "Only the roughest would be tender," Adorno once wrote, "the demand that nobody must go hungry." Only radical thought and action can be tender. Radical in that they refuse to accept the world as it is and stubbornly affirm the right to happiness as a universal human right. The vicious propaganda of personal growth reduces individuals to mere objects. They become sources of profit or experiences and little more. Personal growth is then a result of the manipulation of oneself and others as resources. The truth is that we can grow only together by collectively working to improve the world and our relationships among ourselves. This new world is what represents our growth. The new world which we can only build together and that we can enter only together.
Thursday, November 25, 2010
Monday, November 1, 2010
The Secret
Two of the most depressing phenomena for me lately are neo-nazism and this:
They are depressing not just because they are signs that the world is going fundamentally in the wrong direction, but because they are proof of our failure. We have failed miserably in painting a vision of the world for which the oppressed would be willing to fight. We have failed to show them that a sense of belonging can only be won in our common struggle for a just society. We have failed to show them that a sense of self-worth can be attained by building that world. We have failed to offer a credible vision of happiness. Oh, we like to scorn racism, nationalism, new-age cults, but have we even the slightest idea of why people are turning to them? Perhaps we do not even want to know because then we would have to admit our own share of the guilt.
What I see in all these different phenomena is a compensatory function. Put together they are the dark mirror of contemporary capitalist societies. The Secret asks the audience to regress, as Freud would say, to one of the earliest phases of childhood. It is the phase Freud called infantile narcissism, when the reality principle has not yet manifested in the psyche of the child. A happy time when the constraints of reality were ignored, when they did not yet manifest as a psychic conflict (this conflict being, by the way, the constitutive element of the subconscious according to Freud). It is the last resort of the beaten and battered creature. It is total surrender, a complete removal from the world. Have their desires been frustrated to such a point that they do not even believe it is worth to fight for them? I am sorry. We have not given you hope when you most needed it.
And then there is neo-nazism, a rapidly growing trend in Europe. If the Secret chooses to surrender without a fight, neo-nazism chooses to lash out blindly. In a world in which true and lasting solidarity is made impossible, it chooses to adhere blindly to a completely arbitrary category, defined mostly by its hatred of those who are even worse off. The weak are thus bound together by their hate of the weakest, they become brothers and sisters in crime and thus, perversely, claim the solidarity that was denied to them. Why the weakest? Because the weak dare not lash out against the strong. I am so, so sorry. We have failed to acknowledge your hatred and to give you the support you needed to turn it against those who oppress you.
They are depressing not just because they are signs that the world is going fundamentally in the wrong direction, but because they are proof of our failure. We have failed miserably in painting a vision of the world for which the oppressed would be willing to fight. We have failed to show them that a sense of belonging can only be won in our common struggle for a just society. We have failed to show them that a sense of self-worth can be attained by building that world. We have failed to offer a credible vision of happiness. Oh, we like to scorn racism, nationalism, new-age cults, but have we even the slightest idea of why people are turning to them? Perhaps we do not even want to know because then we would have to admit our own share of the guilt.
What I see in all these different phenomena is a compensatory function. Put together they are the dark mirror of contemporary capitalist societies. The Secret asks the audience to regress, as Freud would say, to one of the earliest phases of childhood. It is the phase Freud called infantile narcissism, when the reality principle has not yet manifested in the psyche of the child. A happy time when the constraints of reality were ignored, when they did not yet manifest as a psychic conflict (this conflict being, by the way, the constitutive element of the subconscious according to Freud). It is the last resort of the beaten and battered creature. It is total surrender, a complete removal from the world. Have their desires been frustrated to such a point that they do not even believe it is worth to fight for them? I am sorry. We have not given you hope when you most needed it.
And then there is neo-nazism, a rapidly growing trend in Europe. If the Secret chooses to surrender without a fight, neo-nazism chooses to lash out blindly. In a world in which true and lasting solidarity is made impossible, it chooses to adhere blindly to a completely arbitrary category, defined mostly by its hatred of those who are even worse off. The weak are thus bound together by their hate of the weakest, they become brothers and sisters in crime and thus, perversely, claim the solidarity that was denied to them. Why the weakest? Because the weak dare not lash out against the strong. I am so, so sorry. We have failed to acknowledge your hatred and to give you the support you needed to turn it against those who oppress you.
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