Survival and its protective illusions form an inseparable whole. The end of survival naturally entails the disappearance of roles (although there are some dead people whose names are linked to stereotypes). Survival without roles is to be officially dead. Just as we are condemned to survival, so we are condemned to “keep up appearances” in the realm of inauthenticity. Armouring inhibits freedom of gesture but also deadens blows. Beneath this carapace we are completely vulnerable. But at least we can still play “let’s pretend” we still have a chance to play roles off against one another.
100
The proliferation of trivial changes titillates the desire for real change but never satisfies it. Power accelerates changes in illusions, thereby hastening the eruption of reality, of radical change.
For to place an ideology of change in the service of what does not change creates a paradox which nothing henceforward can either conceal from consciousness or justify to consciousness. Thus in our universe of expanding technology and comfort we see people turning in upon themselves, shrivelling up, living trivial lives and dying for details. It is a nightmare where we are promised absolute freedom but granted a miserable square inch of individual autonomy — a square inch, moreover, that is strictly policed by our neighbours. A space-time of pettiness and mean thoughts..t
The negation of despair would of necessity become the construction of a new life. The rejection of economic logic (which only economizes on life) would of necessity entail the death of economics and carry us beyond the realm of survival.
Almost every revolutionary movement embodies the desire for complete change, yet up to now almost every revolutionary movement has succeeded only in changing some detail.. t
..issue-politics, partial refusal and piecemeal demands are the very thing that blocks transcendence. The worst inhumanity is never anything but a wish for emancipation that has settled for compromise and fossilized beneath the strata of successive sacrifices. Liberalism, socialism and Bolshevism have each built new prisons under the sign of liberty. ..In this way once-radical impulses are doubly betrayed, twice renounced: first they are ossified, then dug up and used as a carrot..t have to show – no traces (police force et al
We must discover new frontiers. If the bounds of social alienation still imprison us, at least they no longer deceive us. For centuries men have remained before a wormeaten door, piercing little pin-holes in it with growing ease. *One kick is now enough to knock it down, and that’s when everything begins. The proletariat’s problem is no longer to seize power, but to put a definite end to it. On the other side of the hierarchical world, the possibilities come to meet us. **The primacy of life over survival will be the historical movement which will unmake history..t We have yet to invent worthwhile adversaries. It is up to us to find them, and to join them through the looking-glass of childhood.
**The primacy of life over survival will be the historical movement which will unmake history..t
It’s the dawn of another human organisation, a society where individual creativity gives its energy free reign, to shape the world according to each individual’s dreams harmonised by all..t
Utopia? Get stuffed! How condescension drivels! Who doesn’t behave as if this world wasn’t the dearest thing he owned? Sure, there are many who’ve let go, and now fall as despairingly as once they held on. Everyone wants his subjectivity to win out: we must therefore base the unity of men upon this common desire. No-one can strengthen his subjectivity without others helping him, without the aid of a group which has itself developed a subjective centre, a faithful reflection of the subjectivity of its members..t
If he doesn’t watch out, survival sickness soon turns a young man into a haggard old Faust, burdened with regrets, passing through the youth he longs for without realizing it. The ‘teenager’ bears the first wrinkles of the consumer.
..so here we are in the age of watchmakers. The economic imperative has converted man into a living chronometer, distinguishing feature on his wrist. This is the time of work, progress and output, production, consumption and programming; it’s time for the spectacle, for a kiss, or a photo, time for anything (time is money). The time-commodity. Survival time..t
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via fb post [says no longer available when i try to get a link to post – posted by button poetry]:
be you. 