來自：ywsing0
時間：Fri 2018-05-11 08:37:07
the fear of real love
what should the left take as sa warning from this failure?
what will we learn from this failed revolution?
let me quote badiou here. I think this might amuse you. now, even sex, in the sense of intensively falling in love, is going out of fashion. what is fashionable now are one-night-stands, as shown by all these slogans: "Don't take bonds too seriously. you must creatively try homosexuality and heterosexuality. be open. don't fix yourself." alain badiou drew my attention to something. he found a wonderful french advertisement for an internet dating site and matrimonial agency, which promised: "we will enable you to be in love without falling in love!" it works both in french and english with the word "fall" which, in french, is "tomber." the idea of falling in love is considered to be something terrible. let's admit it. you have a good, normal life. everything is perfect. but when you fall in love - i mean in a true meaning of love - you will be shocked. falling in love is really just too traumatic. because your life will be totally ruined. we are too narcissistic to risk any kind of accidental trip or fall. even into love.
well, this is such a narcissistic economy that you must have a marital agency. it is somehow a nice idea, but nonetheless here we are basically in a way returning to the pre-modern tradition of arranged marriages or dates. only instead of parents and relatives, it's the agency that takes on this role. you know why? because we are afraid of exposing ourselves. we do not fall in love. rather, we look out for better characteristics and economic backgrounds. but it's incredible to see how this actually works. and did you notice, in our narcissistic era, how love or fanatical sexual engagements are themselves becoming transgressive?
i am tempted to link this to another example that really worries me. something weird is going on in hollywood. it's a small symptom, but i think it's dangerous. did you know that the james bond film quantum of solace - it's relatively leftist as james bond saves the morales regime in bolivia - was the first bond film where bond didn't have sex with the bond girl? in all the earlier movies, this happened. this was always the standard ending. james bond equals "sex in the end."
you can say this is only one example of this asexual character. then did you see the dan brown horror movie angels and demons? in the novel, there is sex between robert langdon and vittoria vetra. but in the film version, there is no sex. it used to be the other way around. hollywood inserted the sex. what is going on? then, take one of the worst novels of all time, lost symbol. no sex at all - there is not even erotic tension there, nothing. i frankly think that, in the west, we are developing into such a narcissistic culture; we want to be cocooned and safe, and even passionate sex, giving yourself to others, is becoming sex without love - sex is good but in moderation, you know. this reminds me of an explanation that i often use. it's somehow comical. the products we buy in the market have had their damaging ingredients removed: coffee without coffeine, alcohol-free beer, cigarettes without nicotine, even sex without sex. i like this paradox. it illustrates nicely what freud already said about the paradoxes of the pleasure principle. you see, any form of passionate attachment is seen as a threat in our narcissistic, solipsistic, and individualistic culture.
everyone knows love is the greatest thing, but, at the same time, it is the most horrible thing. ana you imagine yourself living a nice life and meeting with friends and having one-night-stands, but all of sudden, you fall passionately in love? it's horrible. it ruins your whole life. we are afraid of that. but - how can i put this? - we should return, i claim! when laura kipnis, an american writer who wrote against love, said that love is the last form of oppression, i told her: "no! this is today's ideology." even love, passionate love, is too dangerous.
and it is no wonder that the catholics are thriving. because this is the message of the catholic church: "don't be too much in love. if you are in love with a girl, mary her. because then you will see how she is in private, and if you spend all your time together, passion will fade, as usual, and when you need passion you can just go to a prostitute from time to time." my god, you see what a crazy world we live in. there is, on the one hand, more and more obsession with absolute safety, but, at the same time, there is, even within your society, more and more violence in all forms.
this is what i find problematic with so-called political correctness. How practically everything you do can be misread. for example, it has actually happened to me in the united states. i looked a woman in the eye and was accused of visual rape. i used a dirty word and was accused of verbal rape. practically everything you do can be interpreted as aggression. we perceive any excessive proximity of other people to be violence. what fascinates me is how, on the one hand, you have explosive forms of violence, but at the same time this extremely protective attitude, even, "just don't come too close to me." I think the discourse of political correctness hides extreme violence. and it is also related to the matter of tolerance. isn;t it interesting that this also fits in with the old judeo-christian cliche, the fact that we are afraid of being too close to other people?
i even find this obsession with smoking suspicious. i don't smoke; i am opposed to it, but i find it a little bit suspicious. did you notice how tthe same people who are opposed to smoking are often in favor of the legalization of drugs? why? because it is fashionable? but wait a minute. drugs are probably rather more dangerous than cigarettes. all i'm saying is that this campaign against smoking is another sign of the narcissistic economy. especially this obsession with passive smoking, which says: "you smoke? oh, you are killing me." it is total narcissism. and it is just some crazy theory, which is wrong. what scientists are telling us is that passive smoking can be more dangerous than active smoking. i think today that the discourse of victimization is almost the predominant discourse when it says that everyone can be a victim of smoking or sexual harassment. today we have an extremely narcissistic notion of personality.
so this all adds up, i think, to an absolutely narcissistic economy. we can have sex, but not love, and no passionate attachment, and we need to keep an appropriate distance, and so on. we are really like the roman empire in the third-fourth century, when it was in decline. this is a very sad thing. this is why i like to quote the famous lines of a poem by william butler yeats, who was right in his diagnosis of the twentieth century. in his poem the second coming, he wrote: "the blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere / the ceremony of innocence is drowned; / the best lack all conviction, while the worst / are full of passionate intensity." is this not a good description of today's split between anemic liberals and impassionate fundamentalists? where do you find passion today in politics? even though the so-called christian or muslim fundamentalist is a disgrace to true fundamentalism, we can only find this passion with fundamentalists. the best are no longer able to fuly engage themselves, while the worst engage in racist or religious fanaticism. this is what makes me sad.
demand the impossible, slavoj zizek
鍵盤試打。