RSA Animate - First as Tragedy, Then as Farce

Hi Errick,

Before the industrial age most people around the world lived in poverty. That is a fact. Due to industrialism we no longer starve. If Africa were a tenth the population they are today, perhaps they would starve less. Their natural way of living would never have been able to sustain so large populations as they have today. Furthermore, they would still suffer from a ton of deseases that the western, "evil capitalistic" world has removed.

What removes poverty is scientific and technological advance. Nothing else.

Well, maybe it's because Zizek is a Marxist, and Marxists - unlike business men - don't think that society should be ruled by a minority elite. The follow through: "solutions" come from communal action, common agency.

Business men, on the contrary, rig the rules, naturalise them, and tell the people: "You must do these things (which will make us a lot of money) or you're doomed" (to put it simply).

Castoriadis talks about the way people have internalised the idea that what they have to say is of no worth; their own experience is nothing; they operate on a personal scale that has no relevance to the broader problems of society. It is exactly this, he says, that revolutionary practice has to explode.

Your own question presupposes that agency is the resolve of an elite (academic, or business or financial "experts"). Question this, and you might be starting to ask the right questions.

(Otherwise, don't worry: I'm sure we can trust the bankers and finance guys to sort out Societies ills - starting with that recession they caused.)

Best
C Wit

I think he doesnt provide a solution because he wants to become mainstream and Revolution would turn people off to any of his ideas (because it would require work to do this 'revolution' thing and Er'Merikans hate work!) or leave him vulnerable to the elements of the game (the state and capital game baby! and all that entails *jail, murder, dispearance, critque etc.*) and hence he'll be out of a job. Its probably why union's arent vessels of revolutionary struggle on the account or remote chance that they suceed there would be any no need for them. So their job is remain active in this society rather than prepare or create a new one or at least that what Malatesta griped about how anarcho-syndicalism(and probably to some extent guild socialism) was always going to be reactionary. So if Senior Slavoj helped usher in a new world his job would change and probably be forgotten, because everyone would be busy building communities and engaging in democracy and all that jive.

Nathan what you have missed in this speech is the very notion that speaks to the historical ideas of poverty and starvation. Before collonialism you boticed you didint hear much about poverty. Does poverty exist in nomatic tribalism. Z is upset about the very idea that we have created a system where the life or death of a person depends on the buying and selling in controlled enviroments. Take for example all theses comercial that come on televisoin asking you to adopt a child that is starving in Africa or some other impoverished country. There showing you children that are starving and need help from the people on earth who have money and power. The whole point of Z anger is why the hell are these children starving in the first place. It came from economic collonialism. A majority of nomadic tribes hunted and gathered food, made the own clothes etc. The basic insticnts and way of life has been striped out from under them and then told to survive in the way we do things in the first word way of life. When he talks about changing the way we live life as humans means don'tinterrupt someones else life because ones personal greed.

when he was speaking about the slave master being nice to his slaves. the point meaning there shouldnt be slavery in the first place. Listen to his speech again..

This is the third time I hear Mr. Zizek talk--the other two on TV about different topics--and I am disappointed that he always stops at the analysis of the problem stage. I haven't heard him actually offer a solution or even suggest a path to explore to come up with a solution to the social problems he talks about. Having a good understanding of the problem is key to finding a solution, I give him that, but he seems to be paralyzed on that stage. I'd rather take a bunch of business people trying to do something and exploring different options than a million philosophers and academics running around in circles defining the problem in a hundred different ways.