Peep!

I saw a brilliant movie the other day. It featured a highly sophisticated critique of both the prevailing intellectualism and the corporately hijacked political elite. Its protagonists presented in part woolly, but mostly toothy arguments supporting the view that our system is undeniably adrift and we are headed for imminent disaster.

The name of the movie was Ice Age 4: Continental Drift. The animal friends from the earlier three movies return in a swashbuckling adventure as their continent breaks apart, and they engage in an involuntary adventure to survive at the high seas, battling nutty pirates and other sea creatures.

Image courtesy of wikipedia.

This is exactly the kind of movie mr Zizek should analyse, and I asked him here on his facebook to do so.

The most memorable dialogue, and in fact the reason for this very write-up, runs something like this:
Two possums, Crash and Eddie, launch themselves for fun from a cliff, climbing on top of high pine trees that give way under their weight and smack them next to, and partly on top of, a molehog whose name I forgot.
molehog: "Watch out what you're doing! We are evacuating because of a disaster. Don't you see what's happening? How can you be just so happy?"
possum 1: "Shall I tell him our secret?"
possum 2: "Okay"
possum 1: "We are very, very..." [halts, and memorably touches his upper lip with his tongue, while raising his eyebrow] "...stupid!"
molehog: "Aren't you a teeny bit concerned with... for example, imminent death?"
possum 1: [pinches the nose of the mole with his thumb and index finger] "peep!"

That commentary, "peep!" seems all there is to say about the situation of our civilization. We are the weasels (with the difference that we are actually causing our disaster) saying "peep!" pinching the nose of anyone (scientists, activists, permaculturalists, vegans, leftists alike) who seems to spoil the party by expressing all too serious concerns. Our "culture of make believe" (Jensen) is what has brought us here. Every serious question we raise about the party (which is, of course, the paradigm of economic growth and the whole destruction in its wake) is more inconvenient than the most inconvenient truth - because "truths" don't exist anyway in the postmodern consumerist endgame.

It is so much easier to sympathize with the "peep!"-sayers than with the Cassandras and those foreboding destruction . Indeed, the creatures in the movie have had mine from the start. I think this is an extremely powerful rhetoric device and we must find a way for it to work in favor of the resistance and against the status quo.

How? Well, our enemy does have concerns: They care a lot about money. So let's say a CEO of a big bank or corporation is denied a bonus, made some really bad personal investments and goes broke.
"But can't you see, if I'm not properly remunerated I can't possibly do my best, and the whole system goes down."
-"We don't understand you because we are very, very stupid."
"Aren't you a teeny bit afraid that the whole financial system might collapse, and the rich elite would disappear overnight?"
-"peep!"

What do I think about Zizek?

What is he thinking?

As a learned philosopher with a funny blog, I should have an opinion or two about the Thinking Beast of Ljubljana, the populist, famous, celebrated, roaring, one and only, please welcome Slavoj Zizek (the adornments on the Zs are intentionally left out) who twists psychoanalytical theories together with rabid Marxism and generates a steady stream of anticapitalist thoughts with a dangerously early expiration date. I remember that he once proudly proclaimed that he didn't watch the movie Avatar, but had seen the poster and read a synopsis or something and considered that enough to burn it to the ground in one of his countercynical reviews. I hereby proudly proclaim that I never went cover-to-cover in any of mr. Zizek's books (but ind of did get the gist and the jest of that body of his texts). I also grow a beard now.

Some criticize Slavoj because he abuses Lacanian thinking for his own purpose, others think his rhetorical ardor precludes engaging and meaningful discussions of his work. He is turning himself into a caricature faster than anybody would be able to escape such a fixation. But still, what can we distill from his philosophies? We could - and should - have a good laugh with the Elvis of cultural theory, and learn not to take ourselves too seriously. Disappointing? You want to gain wisdom, you want to know the true essence of society, the inner workings of revolutions, crises, and submission to the capitalist beast? I don't think you'll find that in Zizek's philosophies. You can find a lot of controversial material, I mean the man calls himself a "friendly Stalinist" and I overheard him once in Berlin after a lecture where he was basking in self-indulgence, "Oh how smart we are..." - his interlocutor was Peter Sloterdijk and the venue the Rosa Luxemburg theater;- But "real" communists find him dangerous too, because he is to wild to be a dogmatic anything. The 4th International over at WSWS calls him a "charlatan" and "puerile thinker", and their argument is, as far as I can see, mere non-compliance with Marx and denial of the existence of the working class.

Where he would get interesting for us is the moment he turns his Heraclitian rigor toward the planet. He is worried about ecological disasters like the BP oil spill, and climate change related forced migrations. Yet what I miss is a scientific understanding of the world. That is my main concern with Žižek (here my friend, I gave you back the toboggans on your Zs), when I hear him talk I miss a scientific understanding. I want to hear him explain in some depth the depletion of groundwater levels, the dangers of fracking, the destruction of the Amazon, the melting of glaciers and the pollution of rivers. Why? Because it is a basis we don't need to fight over. The blind fanatics and their spasm of denial of natural realities will die off quickly after nature makes her cold breath felt.

What we need is a philosophy - and philosophers - with a firm ground in science, not political theory or economy. Perhaps, ideologues and anti-ideologues have in common that scientific (ecological, geological) knowledge doesn't affect the core of what they want to say. While they diligently absorb ecological disasters into their theories, they are merely there because they illustrate the bankruptcy of the System (our artifact), not because we are a species among other species that are about to fuck up the planet - and ideology is piled up with anti-ideology on the trash pile of petty righteousness called "history".

Back to nature, less meta-reflection, and better sex.
At this point, I could suggest a counter-philosophy, and engage in some kind of dialogue with monsieur Žižek. But I leave that to the reader as an exercise. Please inflate your own balloons of meaning. What I see as the role of philosophers does have something to do with ideology and dialectics, precisely because these beasts of mass culture are not going do disappear ('t would be naive to think that). A philosopher knows what she needs to know about metaphysics, and should tirelessly criticize new ideologies, be it ecofascism, post-capitalism or new age collectivism. And precisely because they have a firm base in scientific understanding, they can differ and digress and do that what Nietzsche's old, halkyonic pharmacy once prescribed: bearing the largest possible contradictions in our chest. I hope this account wasn't too šcattered, and its intuition more or less clear.

"OMG!" look at these ads on Huffpost.

Advertising on "Huffington Post", December 6th, 2011

The 99% are 1%. The majority of the people is not on the streets, but sits at home watching sit-coms. And that is not just some politician's quote.

What is the real sentiment of "the people"? To get a good indicator, we would have to assess their interests, their hopes, wishes, desires, fears, worries, their faith, habits, and hate. Where should we start?

The advertising industry itself ($400 billion USD as of 2011) has already done it better than we could. All we need to do is take a look at the sponsored links on websites (yes, those annoying messages we've trained ourselves to avoid looking at) because what the machines that put them there assume the average reader's interest is, is probably pretty close to what it actually is.

August 10. All about Bragging.

What I also see is a video on Slavoj Zizek. My interest in this funny bear comes back when I hear he married a very pretty underwear model. Zizek's paranoid hyperphilosophy is very sexy but for me just an attempt to make things sound more interesting than they are. He could tell for example that by not forgiving the nazis, by carrying along our wrath, we turn them into humans and they have won. We can't forgive them and we can't not forgive them. Simple and BORING. Zizek may roar for me he's a bore. But he is obviously good with women ;) Perhaps Mr. Zizek will one day explain why there is more to his thinking than I can see. But it is better to write children's stories.

Also, he tells jokes like this one.

"I used to think I was a grain, and I was very afraid of chicken that would pick at me. Because of that, I went in therapy."

-"Oh, I see. And are you cured now?"

"Yes. I know very well I am not a piece of grain, but does the chicken know it?"

The waitress has her name in Cyrillic on a small name sign. I need some time to read it and stare at the name sign. That name sign was attached to her dress just on her breast. I got away only because she was Ana and not Natascha Zacharatschitulaya Rimski-Korsakoff.

Welcome to my theory of Natural Bragging (NB). Have a seat, make yourself comfortable. One. Common topics of NB are good and bad experiences. Good experiences to the extent that they are quantifiable and bad experiences to the extent that their qualitative badness has universal appeal. Are you still comfortable out there? Two. When someone tells us about his experience, we are naturally inclined to mention the equal or superlative experience.

"Last year, I have been to China."

-"I lived there for two years before I went to Thailand and Laos."

"I took a boat to America."

-"My brother sailed back and forth to America three times single-handedly."

"I am going to climb the Zugspitze."

-"Last time I did that in three hours."

"I am beginning to learn some Japanese now."

-"My cousin knows seven languages fluently and writes a phd in linguistics at Harvard."

"Both my grandmothers died."

-"My three grandmothers have died long ago."

"I have lung cancer. I might die."

-"And I have irreversible intestine cancer. I will die for sure."

"I lost both my arms in a car accident."

-"And I lost my mind in a poker game."

"My wife divorced me, she left me for my son."

-"And I overcooked my spaghetti."

"And I was buried alive for seven days."

-"My feet smell too."

Hair problems are not real problems.