People were hard then
self pity was forbidden
Duelling was common
even among the middling types

As rough as it gets now
is ordering hot wings after eleven
in Clapton or breakfasting
at a former working men's cafe
in Bethnal green

Re-usable Art Statement

Readymade.  Found. The Glib curtain. To insert your own titles, hang your own escutcheons.  Recycle, Re-use.

The Rabid Prophet / a little knowledge ain't always..

Missed this weekend's Zizek book launch in Dalston, Hackney.  It's hard to
believe that a 1000-odd page book on Hegel is a cause for sybaritic revels.
Not wishing to cast general aspersions but it is unlikely that the Dalston Jugendstil
have read much of their prophet, or, after all the beer swilling, will really
have time for Hegel either.  Anyway, swipes aside, more importantly:
This week in a Europe where football gets more thought...
On this day - of the Greek election which may decide the future of the single european economy;
Something interesting Zizek said in the L.R.B. last week about the eurozone and choice :


"Here is the paradox that sustains the ‘free vote’ in democratic societies: one is free to choose on condition that one makes the right choice. This is why, when the wrong choice is made (as it was when Ireland rejected the EU constitution), the choice is treated as a mistake, and the establishment immediately demands that the ‘democratic’ process be repeated in order that the mistake may be corrected. When George Papandreou, then Greek prime minister, proposed a referendum on the eurozone bailout deal at the end of last year, the referendum itself was rejected as a false choice".
...."Here is the paradox that sustains the ‘free vote’ in democratic societies: one is free to choose on condition that one makes the right choice. This is why, when the wrong choice is made (as it was when Ireland rejected the EU constitution), the choice is treated as a mistake, and the establishment immediately demands that the ‘democratic’ process be repeated in order that the mistake may be corrected."   ('Save us from the Saviours'  07/06/12)


I think here the prophet spake well.

Not wanting to nit-pick, but in the same publication (Resistance is Surrender 15/11/07)
and in the letters that follow theres a lot of toing and froing about the intellectual left being
whores to power.  It is obvious there is a liberal elite when you find yourself reading these
profound theses in a subscriber-only publication which has joyously, if not excruciating, long pieces.
As far as the great proletariat are concerned, one notes the journalism they tend to follow are 
not the manna of the intellectual elites, being of the star, mirror & sun varieties, nonethelessred-topped but eschewed by those who consider themselves in the know.

    

booze, butties and butterflies

"Equal but different".
Denies individuality..prevents human rights, has to dehumanize by levelling everyone.  Levelling isn't the same as raising up..quite the opposite.  For us to all be peas-in-a-pod, together in superb social harmony, we all need to be the same. Since we cannot all be the same, we are made us much as possible to think the same. (see all totalitarian Eastern European states, all inspired by rationalism).

The problem is always of who it is that decides, who sits council, on what is equal and what is not.  Those who are more equal vs. those who are deemed less equal.  The problem of the supremacy of a minority is henceforth not solved.

 If we are indeed all equal but different,  if this is in fact self-evident, what is there  to object to?  If this was in fact an objective truth about humanity, or of human existence on earth,  then why oppose and create division with ideas of inequality? What is there to negate?  How could this state of objection arise if it were, in fact, not so? 

Milton's Lucifer  - or, the origin of modern American conspiracy theories- whether they have the hues of christian, democrat, or republican.  Notably, they orbit around and if not center on, the Jew.   This has historical precedence in the Reformation where initially, the foe was Popery, and its adherents Catholics.  These are puritan diatribes, affirming the same old self-righteousness of people in the time of James I in the early 17thC, down to what they deem the other, lesser reprobate peoples (a kind of bad seed, prone to wickedness and evil) whom they can pronounce judgement and damnations upon.  IT is essential Cane trying to re-condemn Able.

Liberals in the U.S. often talk of being hushed, of their dissent marred by

a consensus-making media run and funded by capitalist greed-elites who wish to crush civil liberties.  While this is evidently happening, they often forget their own empowerment and mobility, that they are in turn galvanised by

a shrill, domineering, wealthy elite - Hollywood, people - their own Vox Populi  {"speaking on their behalf, giving them a voice"} such as Fonda+, Farrow, Redgrave, Penn, Moore, Sarandon who seek to encrust their gilded lives with a halo of whipped cream and sentimental schmaltz.  'Tis well known that the vast majority of Hollywood heavies are firmly democrat*.  

Yet, the problem of the supremacy of a minority isn't not solved, when the supreme minority appears to support an insignificant majority.  


*[notable exceptions to this rule being Hoagy Carmichael, Clint Eastwood & Arnold Schwarznegger].   +{married media oligarch Ted Turner, has since silenced herself}. 

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=limousine%20liberal

Obituary: Tony Benn Esq,

Patron Saint of Parvenu Aristo Lefties everywhere, we salute you for your great stage presence, for
maintaining the theatrical tradition of English politics. 

Pre-Industrial Gothic Revival / Arbeit Mach Frei

Concerning Greece, the appropriately named Michael Fuchs (Chairman of the German Group of the Trilateral Commission & Deputy Parliamentary Floor Leader for the German Christian Democrats) says "They have to get back on track" but who's track?  His track - the unending, indentured servitude of the German protestant work ethic with the need for insuperable, exponential industrial growth.  I hearby declare 'Arbeit macht frei', the old-testament thumping protestant toil ethic to be the wrong track, no one needs to be more like the Germans, and they've certainly not ditched the superiority complex.  Perhaps Merkel's country needs to get back on track, maybe the one it was on pre Luther, or at least before the industrial revolution.  That would be a good track to be on - to check the lunacy that the Chinese growth model is predicated upon, plastic consumerism, obsolescent motorcar manufacture. 

I am dismayed, being a devotee of deutsche auto technik, of how many superfluous models Mercedes, VW, and Audi are rolling out.  They should restore more existing old models, as there are too many cars in Europe.

*climatically its not possible to have industry on the scale of northern countries in southern countries.  You just have to experience any part of summer in the med to realise the difference - of course there isnt the urgent need for providence in the south because northern winter's require surplas storing (hence the north's industrial prowess). 

The Monolith Gaze

In state controlled countries such as Burma, street business is booming
while large companies in liberal democratic economies are self-destructing with the exception of banks, who, in the Vampiric glory of bail outs, live on. 
Breaking up these monoliths would be preferable to consolidation 
(Schumpeter's creative destruction).
Capitalism is a vague abstraction like Communism.  The negative
aspects of both are the same thing - the monolithic rather than
the distinct freedom of the creative peculiar.


Zizek  opposes the gangster capitalism of former
GDR states like the one he comes from.
The cause of this gangsterism isn't capitalism but
the former communist state-monolith bureaucracy. 
The former and the current state of affairs are not a synthesis.


He is an apartment-confined intellectual,
but with Zizek I agree on at least three things- that Success mantra is repugnant,
and that the bank-monolith-Mammon's shouldn't of been bailed out; and
that ecological destruction is the Only conclusion of the previous two.


We are in unanimous agreement that the success mantra of corporate culture is
nauseous and culture would be greater if we Celebrated not Optimism but the
tragic - which reached its apotheosis in the crucified man-god.
The crucified man God - Christ - is the natural outcome of the
pantheon of classical gods. This was achieved by
(much maligned as merely the era of famine, plague  & maniacal superstition)
catholic culture at its height.
Nietzsche was unable to equate the self sacrificing god into his masterly essay, The Birth of Tragedy. He could not perceive, blinded as he was with his classical palate, by an instinctual distaste for Lutheranism,
that Christ was synthesis, Alpha & Omega, the outcome of the classical
conundrum, equitable with Zarathustra, after Diogenes and Heraclitus.