Top 100 of 2000

I got caught in a micro fascism the other day. In my desperate attempts to create deeper conscious awareness Idemanded they see the world through my lens and drop their silly perspective. If you are what you think (a sentiment agreed to by the video game heavy rain, where you decide what to think about and depending on what you decide your reality changes), then there definitely is danger in spending all your damn time looking at celebrity news. But awareness comes not from someone telling you you are stupid, even if that scolding is done poetically, universally, and abstractly. It is still a fascism, I am the all powerful subject and you and your actions are the object of my analysis. I am tired of being the subject. I am tired of feeling like I need to do the obvious shitting on a movie thats no good, its too obvious, its too easy, it's draining. I am putting myself on that level and calcifying the subject-object barrier, something I do not want to do, and instead I will not worry about it, or only on a sort of parallel. I will instead try to riff off of things outside of me that I feel represent me as subject, incorporating objects into me and thus realizing myself as an object. Maybe then I will be able to get through to others. I realize this is the strength of Zizek's book First as Tragedy, Then as Farce. When he preempts arguments the audience will have, when he shows his process of thought, as he takes you through the formulations of the questions to ask and how to visualize the current predicament. Highly recommended.

I think the cut and paste method will help, using others words rearranged and hopefully the merging of yourself and the other will create something new and outside. Eventually I will apply the method to my own longwinded fascist piece and cut it apart and get to the deeper meaning of what I wrote. I am not yet ready to do this though, that piece is still too painful to read.

Cokemachineglow released their top 100 albums released since the new millenium. Its an amazing list. Look to the top twenty if you are looking for some new music. Look to their writings on the music to see how seriously people can take the music they love, and how they can truly be inspired from it in their writing. Surely makes me feel better about being a music obsessive, and that listening to music does not have to be approached cynically-ironically, nor does it have to be enjoyed purely physically, as an empty-headed vacuous exercise. If anybody can find a list quite so passionate for novels, or poetry........

I also find here is about as far as hardcore experimental is going to go. The bountiful negative space, the absence of substance, “ok, I guess I get that, sure”, nought-y due to all the cracks. Artsier sci-fi is all about cutting off your air supply and is set upon stripping away every last piece of unnecessary flesh, if that’s creepily titillating or just plain off-putting, well, The Big Bang happened. Derelicts align perception down to a prenatal understanding, it doesn’t sound forced or lifeless- pretentiousness isn’t actually real. A massive entity that can apparently fuck with your genetic code interfaces with us, its immensity and mesmeric draw stretch my consciousness out wider and wider. Enclose it with my thought, I am transformed, untouchable, one single image that includes those inmost parts of all who encounter it. Sculpted time, typically filled by the impatient murmurs of those who will have none of it, subjects us to that shit because that’s actually the shit that most defines us. The projector is flipped and a sea of light dances across our cornea, sort of coldly comforting that I am not alone. The nigh infinite depth is just barely ample enough for the insertion of the tip of one’s own soul.

Makin Planz

These are the days, Danny, the good old days, so let's sculpt them in the image of what we'll one day want to see, because nostalgia's one of my weeknesses, my cheif weekness even, and I know i'll be old some day, dead some time after that, bed ridden at some point in between, becuase I smoke and drink and do too many drugs, and so will you, all three of those things, and we'll want to look back fondly on what we did in our twenties. Even now, at the age for which fat fucks in their forties feel nostalgic, I feel nostalgic for my childhood, my precious youth spent playing cricket and hide and seek in the park, and i feel sad about the things i didn't do. It's a problem of mine, an illness of the mind, but one i need to take into account when planning for my old age, because it's not the kind of thing that i can kick. So, here's what I propose. Come back to America and we'll let New York chew us up and swallow us, then we'll roll down the esophogus of central america - by train, by car, by magic school bus - until we reach the belly of south america - columbia, brazil, venezuela - fat and distended, where we'll let ourselves digest and bounce around until we get squeezed into the long slender intestines that are Argentina and Chile, and we'll stay there, tucked away in some absortive fold, until we've got nothing left to give and we're shat back into the world with a purpose.

Disassociation from Tezt

its important to know that james uses no samples in his music from other artist. he creates all of the sounds himself from scratch using old digital samplers/synths and weird keyboards and stuff blending things together. besides using some beavis and butthead straight of the T.V. I read in a italian magazine interview last week, it was cool to hear that because I was under the impression he sampled alot of his material, really adds a really cool dimension knowing that its all from scratch. he was being interviewed from his apartment in las vegas at the time september of last year. was asked about all the internet slamming and replied by saying he doesn’t mind what people think “I imagine most of the people contributing to it to have some inner turmoil they have to get out and it just manifest itself in that way ,” and as far as it being information, the writing is so bad, so sometimes I cant help but interpret what I read as a reflection of their own self hate, the words dissolve and its just the energy behind it, which appears to be pretty black, hopefully it doesn’t spread to far out of the arena,but it seems completely natural for communication to evolve into this” a lot of its okay with him though he goes on to say. he views it as ”a virtual cage of online persona crucifixions and those as “psychological throw downs” but he “loves a good roast” and if it makes some one feel good until the next inability to cope with reality puts them in front of the computer thats cool with him. also from an aesthetic point of view he thinks it’s really cool and makes it easier to understand t.v. shows like CSI LAS VEGAS and Survivor, it’s like watching the central brain of a world on autopilot, and its cool to be in there somewhere. and ended with saying ‘’some times when the rage travels outside of the fun house people should just pull their own plug but you gotta let everyone have their fun, it’s sadistic I love it!

Every Man's a Hero (Where am I?)

Jean Baudrillard. The despair of having everything
Translated by Luke Sandford
November 2002

The West's mission is to make the world's wealth of cultures interchangeable, and to subordinate them within the global order. Our culture, which is bereft of values, revenges itself upon the values of other cultures. by Jean Baudrillard

IS globalisation inevitable? What fervour propels the world to embrace such an abstract idea? And what force drives us to make that idea a reality so unconditionally?

The universal used to be an idea. Yet when an idea is actually realised globally, it commits suicide. With humankind as the sole authority of note, occupying the empty space left by a dead God, the human species now rules unchallenged, though it no longer has any overarching goal. Since humanity's enemies have all fled, it must generate foes from within its own ranks, while showing symptoms of inhumanity.

Hence the violence associated with globalisation, with a system that wants to eliminate any manifestation of negativity and singularity (including the ultimate expression of singularity, death). This is the violence of a society in which we are almost forbidden to engage in conflict. This violence, in a way, marks an end to violence itself, because it yearns for a world free from any natural order that might govern the human body or sexuality, life or death. It might be more accurate to use the word virulence, rather than violence. This violence has viral force: it spreads by contagion and chain reactions. It gradually destroys our immunity and ability to resist.

Globalisation's triumph is not certain yet, though. Faced with its homogenising and destabilising effects, hostile forces are arising everywhere. But anti-globalisation's ever-sharper manifestations — including social and political resistance — should be seen as more than just outmoded forms of rejection. They are part of an agonising revision that focuses on the achievements of modernity and "progress", a process that rejects both the globalised techno-structure and an ideology that wants to make all cultures interchangeable.

Anti-globalisation actions may be violent, abnormal or irrational, at least as judged by our enlightened philosophy. They may be collective, bringing together different ethnic, religious and linguistic groups, or they may be individual, including maladjustment and neurosis. It would be wrong to denounce anti-globalisation forces as populist, antiquated or terrorist. Every current event — including Islamic hostility to the West — happens in opposition to the abstraction that is the concept of universality. Islam is now public enemy number one because it has shown the most vehement opposition to Western values.

Who or what can thwart the global system? Surely not anti-globalisation forces, whose only aim is to slow the pace of deregulation; their political influence may be considerable but their symbolic impact is nil. The protestors' violence is merely another event within the system that the system will absorb — while remaining in control of the game.

Singularities [unique or unusual identities or approaches] could be used to baffle the system. Being neither positive nor negative, they do not represent alternatives; they are wild cards outside the system. They cannot be evaluated by value judgments or through principles of political reality; they can correspond to either the best or the worst. They are obstacles to one-track thinking and dominant modes of thought, although they are not the only kind of contrary approach. They make up their own games and play by their own rules.

Singularities are not inherently violent. Some can be subtle, unique characteristics of language, art, culture or the human body. But violent singularities do exist, and terrorism is one of them. Violence revenges all the varied cultures that disappeared to prepare for the investiture of a single global power. This is not really a clash of civilisations. Instead, this anthropological conflict pits a monolithic universal culture against all manifestations of otherness, wherever they may be found.

Global power — as fundamentalist as any religious orthodoxy — sees anything different or unorthodox as heretical, and the heretics must be made to assume their position within the global order or disappear completely. The West's mission (we could call it the "former West" since it lost its defining values long ago) is to reduce a wealth of separate cultures into being interchangeable, of equal weight, by any brutal means possible. A culture that is bereft of values revenges itself on the values of other cultures. Beyond politics and economics, the primary aim of warfare (including the conflict in Afghanistan) is to normalise savagery and beat territories into alignment. Another objective is to diminish any zone of resistance, to colonise and tame any terrain, geographical or mental

The rise of the globalised system has been powered by the furious envy of an indifferent, low-definition culture faced with the reality of high-definition cultures. Envy is what disenchanted systems that have lost their intensity feel in the presence of high-intensity cultures. It is the envy of deconsecrated societies when confronted with sacrificial cultures and structures.

The global system assesses any resistance as potentially terrorist, as in Afghanistan (1). When a territory bans democratic liberties such as music, television or women's faces, when nations take courses opposed to what we call civilisation, the "free" world sees these events as indefensible, regardless of what religious principles may be at stake.

So to disavow modernity and its pretensions of universality is not allowed. Some resistors reject the belief that modernity is a force for good or represents the natural ideal of our species; others question the universality of our mores and values. Even when the resistors are described as "fanatics", their contrariness remains criminal, according to the received wisdom of the West.

This confrontation can only be understood by considering symbolic obligations. To understand the hatred the rest of the world feels towards the West, we must reverse our perspectives. This is not the hatred felt by people from whom we have taken everything and to whom we have given nothing back. Rather, it is the hatred felt by those to whom we have given everything and who can give nothing in return. Their hatred stems from humiliation, not from dispossession or exploitation. The attacks of 11 September were a response to this animus, with one kind of humiliation begetting another.

The worst thing that can happen to global power is not for it to be attacked or destroyed but for it to be humiliated. Global power was humiliated on 11 September because the terrorists inflicted an injury that could not be inflicted on them in return. Reprisals are only physical retaliations, whereas global power had suffered a symbolic defeat. War can only respond to the terrorists' physical aggression, not to the challenge they represent. Their defiance can only be addressed by vengefully humiliating the "others" (but surely not by crushing them with bombs or by locking them up like dogs in detention cells in Guantanamo Bay).

There is a fundamental rule that the basis for all domination is a total lack of any counterflow to the prevailing power. Bestowing a unilateral gift is a powerful act. The "good" empire gives without any possibility of a return of gifts. This is almost to assume God's place or to take on the role of the master who ensures his slaves' safety in exchange for their labours. (Since work is not a symbolic compensation, the only remaining options for the slaves are revolution and death.)

But even God allowed humanity to give him the gift of sacrifice. Within the traditional order it was always possible to repay God, or nature, or another higher authority, by sacrifice. This safeguarded the symbolic equilibrium between human beings and everything else. Today there is no one left to compensate, to whom we might repay our symbolic debt. This is the curse of our culture: although giving is not impossible, giving back is impossible, because sacrifice has had its importance and power taken away, and what remains is a caricature of sacrifice (like contemporary ideas of victimisation).

So we find ourselves stuck with always being on the receiving end, not from God or nature, but from technical mechanisms that provide general exchange and gratification. Almost everything is given to us. And we are entitled to it all. We are like slaves, bondservants whose lives have been spared but who are still bound by an intractable debt. At some point, though, that fundamental rule always applies and any positive transfer will be met with a negative reaction.

This is a violent expression of repressed feeling about lives in captivity, about sheltered existences, about, in fact, having far too much existence. The return to a more primitive condition may take the form of violence (including terrorism) or the form of denials characterised by powerlessness, self-hatred and remorse, negative passions, which are a debased form of the payback that it is impossible to make. The thing we hate within ourselves, the obscure focus of our resentment, is our surfeit of reality: our excessive power and comfort, our sense of accomplishment. This is the fate that Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor had prepared for the tamed masses in The Brothers Karamazov ["to vanquish freedom and to do so to make men happy"]. It is exactly what the terrorists condemn in our culture. Hence the endless coverage of — and fascination with — terrorism.

Terrorism depends not only on the obvious despair of the humiliated, but on the invisible despair of globalisation's beneficiaries. It depends on our subjugation to the technology integral to our lives, and to the crushing effects of virtual reality. We are in thrall to networks and programmes, and this dependence defines our species, homo sapiens gone global. This feeling of invisible despair — our own despair — is irreversible because it is the result of the total fulfilment of our desires.

If terrorism is really the result of a state of profusion without any hope of payback or obligation to sacrifice, of the forced resolution of conflicts, then eradicating it as if it were an affliction imposed from the outside could only be illusory. Terrorism, in its absurdity and meaninglessness, is society's verdict on — and condemnation of — itself.

(1) You could say serious natural disasters are a form of terrorism since, although they are technically classified as accidents (such as Chernobyl), they may resemble terrorism. In India, the Bhopal poison gas tragedy (technically an accident) could have been terrorism. Any terrorist group could claim responsibility for an aviation accident. Irrational events can be attributed to anyone or anything, so that, at the limit, we could see anything as criminal, even cold weather or an earthquake. There is nothing new about this: in the aftermath of the 1923 Tokyo earthquake, thousands of Koreans were blamed and killed. In a system as integrated as our own, everything destabilises; everything seeks to undermine a system that lays claim to infallibility. Given what we are already undergoing because of the system's rational grip, we may wonder if the worst catastrophe is the infallibility of the system.