Nina - Thoughts after reading Zizek...

When Zizek was talking about the four threats posed by capitalism that would create an apocalyptic scenario, I couldn’t help but think – why would a revolution be any different than that? Why would the overthrowing of this incredibly flawed system lead anywhere different? He often spoke about how we must begin from the beginning again...
What I’m getting at is that his four threats: ecological catastrophe, private property, scientific developments, and new forms of apartheid (like slums) are of course, terrifying. I think however that we are attracted to these things – just as Zizek is himself attracted to violent revolution, to the destruction of a system, we too are attracted to that very same sort of violence. Aren’t those four threats in a way almost like having a violent revolution, but without the need for a human uprising? It’s the result of self-destructive capitalism that things will eventually change, and has nothing to do with us “fighting against the system” or something.
I wanted to talk about all of these separately, but only briefly, and state why I think we’re attracted to them. Ecological catastrophe is something that seems at once removed and an immediate danger: global warming is happening, and we’re attacked with that information on a daily basis; yet, we go on with our lives as if nothing is happening. Isn’t it possible that we aren’t reacting not out of laziness, but out of an unconscious desire for something like this to happen? I am hopefully not sounding incredibly crazy when I say that.
I don’t want to talk much about private property, but with increasing privatization and mechanization of our lives, we are going to destroy ourselves in a very real way. There is an interesting freedom though, in the thought of being completely transformed into a machine. Perhaps we could be programmed to behave more humanely than we usually behave (I think our behaviour does have much more to do with the situation than our inherent “goodness/badness”) and this makes me think of the creatures in District 9 who were still persons regardless of their actual material compositions. However, I also think there is much beauty to be found in our flaws and etcetc... Zizek spoke of how we would be turning into substanceless substances, but I’m not so sure that this is the case. Again though, I think we have a desire to escape/destroy ourselves by turning ourselves into machines – we do not even have to change our physical compositions. I think it’s happening already: when I take public transportation or listening to the politically correct conversations of other people, I can tell that most of them are already dead. I’m not saying I’m much better... and this is both repulsive and fascinating to me. I have to admit, I am at least somewhat attracted to an entire world that consists of self-absorbed individuals who are robot-like (think American Psycho) while I still find myself yearning for some idealized form of social interaction and understanding that is becoming an increasingly rare thing to find.
So much rambling about this... Anyways. Finally, the last one mentioned is where he was talking about how capitalism would result in the ever-increasing differences between the rich vs poor, so much so that we would have (to an even greater extent) a minority of the incredibly rich and well-off in a segregated section of the world, while the rest of it is starving, diseased, and barely able to survive. I think that this might be the downfall of capitalism, but only if those starving were not so poorly off that they had no way to organize themselves/did not hold onto any ideas of being able to achieve something higher or move up in the system/etcetc, though in this extreme version I think that they would have given up all hope of achieving a change.

For me, I don’t really know where to take that last one, except that it’s the one that disturbs me the most... today for an English class my prof compared something else we were reading to a cruise line that is bound for Haiti/is already in Haiti and is going to some safe, tranquil part only a few miles away from all of the people still buried under rubble/displaced/and so on and the imagery of this makes me incredibly sick.. I told my mom this today, and she asked “why would it be different if the people vacationed elsewhere?” and I don’t have a real answer for her. I don’t think the solution is to feel incredibly responsible for what happened or any sort of white guilt, but at the same time, deciding to go there for vacation is really, really sickening for me. It makes me think of some tour guide being like “over here on the left we have all of these poor people dying... and on the right, we have some American tourists with money who are enjoying life and acting as if nothing horrible is happening at all” and yes.

I wanted to make more Zizek comments, he is very fun to read. I will stop though. I love his social critiques, I am probably a bit young to be reading him but that doesn’t really matter. Everyone starts somewhere I guess. I could never embrace Marxism in any sense besides an apologetic Leftist stance that Zizek absolutely despises.