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I wrote an essay about Things Fall Apart a long while ago as it is part of the curriculum in Critical Theory at University of Toronto.... "all violence as a means is either law making or law preserving. If it lays
claim to neither of these predicates; it forfeits all validity" - Walter Benjamin
"We pride ourselves for living in a society in which we freely decide about things which matter." Really, Slavoj? All those hundreds of millions of people in the so called "West" choose to be homeless? Choose to be working shít gig economy jobs? Choose to die childless? In fact, this is a society where the only things we can freely decide about are things that precisely don't matter.
Dear Slavoj, do you not feel embarrassed to write this - "we in the developed West." Did you get some sort of secret handshake to initiate you into this gang? I'm Irish and I'd feel very ashamed to write such a line.
Droll, but even a cursory review of the work of V. Nuland and the related authors of the Ukraine project as it actually exists indicates that nuclear weapons don't really fit in.
"what I meant was that, since Arab Muslims are regularly perceived as religious fundamentalists, one should sadly admit that the Russian nationalist fanatics are today on many points worse than Muslim fundamentalists"
The kind of "nationalist fanatics" which ...peace-loving NATO expanded towards year after year, and whose final line in the sand (to not have its bases in their neighbor country and next to their borders) was violated too, despite promises?
Whose concerns not only concerned their own direct borders, but also millions of ethnically Russian population living in the bordering country, which were abused by ultra-nationalists (including bona-fide nazi sympathizers), after they toppled their regular government in an orange revolution? Such "crazy nationalists", not to abide to that. They should have bended over and waited for the fait accompli.
Meanwhile the other side is led by the foremost actively nationalist power in the world, with military bases all around the planet, one which invaded over five countries in the last 20 years alone, supports and arms Israel in its current genocidal endeavor, and has intevened politically in dozens of others. But that's only to promote peace, love, and flowers.
Never mind their ideology based on their global importace, "global cop" duties, national interests they need to intervene and invade all around the globe in order to protect them, their "Manifest Destiny" even, all of which are not some rhetoric, but which they put in practice, and have been for over a century, and on a massive scale, and is shared by the people and the media. Including pioneering and proudly using the very same "we are the civilized dealing with barbarians" rhetoric you ascribe to the other size, which the shout on any chance they get, in their news media, their political speeches, and in pop culture like movies.
Thankfully you're not first and foremost a Slovenian nationalist on this matter /s
I am more or less agreeing with you. “Dealing with Russia” for a Ukraine looking out for Ukrainian interests would mean making deals with both the West and the burgeoning counter powers trying to create a multipolar world. It would have meant trying to not have anyone’s military forces on your soil other than your own.
It would mean maintaining a neutrality, and not joining any alliance.
Look, this an irrelevant. What is relevant is that Ukraine got rid of its nukes. They will not be getting them back. Unlike in the Rememberance of Earth’s Past Trilogy, there is no technological explosion they can experience to put them way ahead and no chain of suspicion into eternity.
You have at least two different topics here packed within the same essay. My answer: yes, to the first one. As crazy as it may sound, your idea to give Ukraine nuclear arms, is not only logical (given the context) but it may work. Westerners still don't understand Putin, they really don't understand that world. Your comparison between the Russians and the Arabs (ha, ha, stop blushing, Slavoj, you really hit this one over the head! ) was more than appropriate. As for Trisolaris, a first observation: thank you for bringing Nature in the discussion about the environment--because when one listens to the ecologists, one is under the impression that the environment has nothing to do with Nature, and that to fight for it, you just need to go into a museum and pour soup onto works by dead white artists. Finally, your last and most important point: we need "a social order of global solidarity." Oh, Slavoj, you haven't learned anything from communism, have you? Didn't we already have a social order of global solidarity? No, I am not saying that any kind of solidarity is communism; of course, not. I am saying that such "social order" can only be tyrannical. It wouldn't work because of human nature. I am sorry, but you need to read more literature--literature that teaches you about human nature.
You know the tyrants in Classical Greece were those who curtailed the ability of the rich to rape the poor. Most Greeks thought the tyrants were the good guys. Btw., I've been to Romania several times. I never met anyone who thinks Romania is better today than with Communism. I guess you agree - since you also don't want to live in the "freedom" of today's Romania.
Brilliantly argued, but one expects nothing less from you. At age 65, I worry about seeing a situation in complete black and white, though there have been a couple in my life time that have been clear right versus wrong (Vietnam, El Salvador, Chile, all casualties of American monomania). But there has been nothing like this, with Putin’s fantasies of frying the world and going straight to heaven to sit at the right hand of Jesus. Like his patron Trump, he must be stopped.
The reason the Left tends to support Russia is not because we think Putin is a good guy or is a closet Communist, or anything like that. It's because we believe that the Soviet Union will, one day, be re-established. And that can never happen if NATO is in Ukraine. Likewise, the only reason the Yanks want to be in Ukraine is that they believe that, one day, the Soviet Union may be re-established - and that can never happen if NATO is in Ukraine. So both the Right and the Left agree on this one. It's only weak minded Libs who can't see what's really being played out here.
Regarding nuclear weapons, Ukraine would never have had them without the Soviet Union. In reality, Ukraine has never had anything without the Soviet Union. It's all been downhill for Ukraine since 1991. Of course, Ukrainians had a good idea that this would happen and voted by over 70% to keep the Soviet Union. Their votes were ignored by drunken criminals like Yeltsin.. Well, it was a choice between being ruled by a drunken criminal like Yeltsin - or being a lackey of the Yanks. Not a very great choice. As Henry Kissinger famously said - To be America's enemy is dangerous, to be America's friend can be lethal. Now Ukraine is in ruins. No longer a viable state. That's a pity, because Ukraine was Lenin's creation, and worked very well within the Soviet Union.
>>>"Although our planet has only one sun around which it circulates, our predicament could be called “a six-crises problem”: ecological crisis, economic imbalances, wars, chaotic migrations, the threat of AI, disintegration of society. Although the underlying cause of these crises is the dynamic of global capitalism, the interaction of crises leads to chaos which is no less unpredictable than the situation on Trisolaris. Do these crises strengthen each other or does their interaction offer some hope – say, a hope that the ecological crisis will compel us to move beyond capitalism and war to a social order of global solidarity? Although Cixin Liu imagines wonderful and/or terrifying new scientific and technological inventions, he is fully aware that the basic dimension of our crises is social, the coexistence of different civilizations as well as the antagonisms within each civilization."
For a systems-theoretical account of how the whole of the multiple problems listed by Zizek may be thought of, and possibly acted upon the basis of, via a single systems-theory model, see as an example an unpublished paper by Laurenc DeVita entitled "Culture as a Self-Organizing System".
Below is quoted the "Abstract" and the "Key Terms" sections
It is the intention of this description to cast a large net, a “view from 30,000 feet”, in order to distill the discussion three million years long to a few pages. It uses ideas from many different disciplines to describe the relationship between humankind and culture. It proposes that early human ancestors were motivated by the desire to live, to have offspring live, and to that end, as social beings increasingly seeking access to group resources, to enjoy status in the group. This motivates an animal that was already social, and already had forward pointing eyes and dexterous front limbs, to use a stick or a pebble to increase food supply. Slowly, a complex system builds, organizing the energy of repeated behavior.
The description makes clear that humankind is in crisis as a species as the result of the function of a system at least three hundred thousand years old. Philosophically, the description displaces human agency. Sociologically, it focuses on the gradual appearance of “culture” and its sculpting of humans from its earliest moments through to its expression as the global social system. Finally, it proposes circumstances for the system in the near future.
Key terms: collapse; complexity; complex social system; context; energy: human action, debt and trade; iteration; Red Queen; social structure; subsystems"
I reproduce my review of DeVita's book on Amazon here (apologies, I only just noticed the glitch that led to the same review being posted twice in a single post on the Amazon site):
"One of the most valuable aspects of DeVita’s rich and stimulating work is the beautifully elegant theoretical model used to describe and analyze both civilizational and societal systemic functioning and systemic collapse. This is a model is derived from systems theory in which the basic unit of measurement and of value is *energy*.
The two fundamental systems of Human systems and Natural systems meet and interact at the interface of Culture. Both systems possess the essential function of maintaining the optimally maximum flow of energy through their numerous sub-systems. Typically throughout human and natural history this has led to higher levels of systemic complexity as the systems evolved greater capacities as problem solving entities. (As Joseph Tainter has described, this complexity can itself become a problem and point of potential fragility. Complex systems require meta-systems in order to govern complexity itself. System-wide collapse may occur when these meta-systems fail).
Problems arise when the flow of energy is impeded or lessened. This may be due to either or both an interruption in energy supply – such as caused by climate change and the transition away from fossil fuels; peak oil. Or by a systemic collapse caused by internal weaknesses. When this occurs, contrary to previous movements toward greater energy flow, systems collapse into simpler forms. This decline may be very sudden in the manner described by Ugo Bardi in his “Seneca Effect”: “increases are of sluggish growth, but the way to ruin is rapid”.
DeVita’s account of civilizational and societal systemic Collapse is backed up by an impressive array of data culled from a rich and highly informative variety of sources ranging from political science to sociology to the natural sciences of biology and energy extraction.
In addition to the theoretical account of Collapse, DeVita’s book also contains practical advice on the securing the rudimentary essentials of life – shelter, security, food, fuel, potable water etc. As well as less tangible public goods such education. As well as the work of Tainter and Bardi mentioned above, DeVita has also drawn on the sociology of Erving Goffman in an excellent account of social interactions.
I personally would perhaps have liked to have seen DeVita expand the scope of the subjects addressed, either as part of this book or as another book, as I am especially interested futuristic scenarios and would have been very interested in DeVita’s views on this topic. That is, what might be the potential of post-collapse communities to contain the seeds of future renewal? In a variety of ways possible answers to this question are already logically implied in DeVita’s diagnoses and prognoses of Collapse and in the practical advices that is proffered here. For this topic to be directly addressed may well have taken what is intended to be a practical guide and manual too far afield and so perhaps we must wait for a sequel. As well as wait and see in real history."
There is a book that very eloquently deals with this dialectical dilemma called ‘Things Fall Apart’ by Chinua Achebe.
I wrote an essay about Things Fall Apart a long while ago as it is part of the curriculum in Critical Theory at University of Toronto.... "all violence as a means is either law making or law preserving. If it lays
claim to neither of these predicates; it forfeits all validity" - Walter Benjamin
"We pride ourselves for living in a society in which we freely decide about things which matter." Really, Slavoj? All those hundreds of millions of people in the so called "West" choose to be homeless? Choose to be working shít gig economy jobs? Choose to die childless? In fact, this is a society where the only things we can freely decide about are things that precisely don't matter.
Why are you fomenting a nuclear war and hatred of Russia?
Dear Slavoj, do you not feel embarrassed to write this - "we in the developed West." Did you get some sort of secret handshake to initiate you into this gang? I'm Irish and I'd feel very ashamed to write such a line.
Why does none of you understand that that's an ironic statement?
Because the rest are said non-ironically, and not for the first time
Droll, but even a cursory review of the work of V. Nuland and the related authors of the Ukraine project as it actually exists indicates that nuclear weapons don't really fit in.
"what I meant was that, since Arab Muslims are regularly perceived as religious fundamentalists, one should sadly admit that the Russian nationalist fanatics are today on many points worse than Muslim fundamentalists"
The kind of "nationalist fanatics" which ...peace-loving NATO expanded towards year after year, and whose final line in the sand (to not have its bases in their neighbor country and next to their borders) was violated too, despite promises?
Whose concerns not only concerned their own direct borders, but also millions of ethnically Russian population living in the bordering country, which were abused by ultra-nationalists (including bona-fide nazi sympathizers), after they toppled their regular government in an orange revolution? Such "crazy nationalists", not to abide to that. They should have bended over and waited for the fait accompli.
Meanwhile the other side is led by the foremost actively nationalist power in the world, with military bases all around the planet, one which invaded over five countries in the last 20 years alone, supports and arms Israel in its current genocidal endeavor, and has intevened politically in dozens of others. But that's only to promote peace, love, and flowers.
Never mind their ideology based on their global importace, "global cop" duties, national interests they need to intervene and invade all around the globe in order to protect them, their "Manifest Destiny" even, all of which are not some rhetoric, but which they put in practice, and have been for over a century, and on a massive scale, and is shared by the people and the media. Including pioneering and proudly using the very same "we are the civilized dealing with barbarians" rhetoric you ascribe to the other size, which the shout on any chance they get, in their news media, their political speeches, and in pop culture like movies.
Thankfully you're not first and foremost a Slovenian nationalist on this matter /s
I am more or less agreeing with you. “Dealing with Russia” for a Ukraine looking out for Ukrainian interests would mean making deals with both the West and the burgeoning counter powers trying to create a multipolar world. It would have meant trying to not have anyone’s military forces on your soil other than your own.
It would mean maintaining a neutrality, and not joining any alliance.
Look, this an irrelevant. What is relevant is that Ukraine got rid of its nukes. They will not be getting them back. Unlike in the Rememberance of Earth’s Past Trilogy, there is no technological explosion they can experience to put them way ahead and no chain of suspicion into eternity.
Ultimately, Ukraine must deal with Russia.
You have at least two different topics here packed within the same essay. My answer: yes, to the first one. As crazy as it may sound, your idea to give Ukraine nuclear arms, is not only logical (given the context) but it may work. Westerners still don't understand Putin, they really don't understand that world. Your comparison between the Russians and the Arabs (ha, ha, stop blushing, Slavoj, you really hit this one over the head! ) was more than appropriate. As for Trisolaris, a first observation: thank you for bringing Nature in the discussion about the environment--because when one listens to the ecologists, one is under the impression that the environment has nothing to do with Nature, and that to fight for it, you just need to go into a museum and pour soup onto works by dead white artists. Finally, your last and most important point: we need "a social order of global solidarity." Oh, Slavoj, you haven't learned anything from communism, have you? Didn't we already have a social order of global solidarity? No, I am not saying that any kind of solidarity is communism; of course, not. I am saying that such "social order" can only be tyrannical. It wouldn't work because of human nature. I am sorry, but you need to read more literature--literature that teaches you about human nature.
so whats the deal or you just asking rando questions..?
You know the tyrants in Classical Greece were those who curtailed the ability of the rich to rape the poor. Most Greeks thought the tyrants were the good guys. Btw., I've been to Romania several times. I never met anyone who thinks Romania is better today than with Communism. I guess you agree - since you also don't want to live in the "freedom" of today's Romania.
Zizek Always capitalizing on fashions!
Given your ending you might like this
https://ranas9.substack.com/p/the-curse-of-knowledge
Well aren’t we a Reaganesque nukular warmonger?
P.S. I liked Reagan. And Nixon. But giving Ukraine nukes is a bad idea.
the end sentence essential sense!.. i give cicec tri suns up for that essay!.. 👍👍👍
Brilliantly argued, but one expects nothing less from you. At age 65, I worry about seeing a situation in complete black and white, though there have been a couple in my life time that have been clear right versus wrong (Vietnam, El Salvador, Chile, all casualties of American monomania). But there has been nothing like this, with Putin’s fantasies of frying the world and going straight to heaven to sit at the right hand of Jesus. Like his patron Trump, he must be stopped.
The reason the Left tends to support Russia is not because we think Putin is a good guy or is a closet Communist, or anything like that. It's because we believe that the Soviet Union will, one day, be re-established. And that can never happen if NATO is in Ukraine. Likewise, the only reason the Yanks want to be in Ukraine is that they believe that, one day, the Soviet Union may be re-established - and that can never happen if NATO is in Ukraine. So both the Right and the Left agree on this one. It's only weak minded Libs who can't see what's really being played out here.
Regarding nuclear weapons, Ukraine would never have had them without the Soviet Union. In reality, Ukraine has never had anything without the Soviet Union. It's all been downhill for Ukraine since 1991. Of course, Ukrainians had a good idea that this would happen and voted by over 70% to keep the Soviet Union. Their votes were ignored by drunken criminals like Yeltsin.. Well, it was a choice between being ruled by a drunken criminal like Yeltsin - or being a lackey of the Yanks. Not a very great choice. As Henry Kissinger famously said - To be America's enemy is dangerous, to be America's friend can be lethal. Now Ukraine is in ruins. No longer a viable state. That's a pity, because Ukraine was Lenin's creation, and worked very well within the Soviet Union.
>>>"Although our planet has only one sun around which it circulates, our predicament could be called “a six-crises problem”: ecological crisis, economic imbalances, wars, chaotic migrations, the threat of AI, disintegration of society. Although the underlying cause of these crises is the dynamic of global capitalism, the interaction of crises leads to chaos which is no less unpredictable than the situation on Trisolaris. Do these crises strengthen each other or does their interaction offer some hope – say, a hope that the ecological crisis will compel us to move beyond capitalism and war to a social order of global solidarity? Although Cixin Liu imagines wonderful and/or terrifying new scientific and technological inventions, he is fully aware that the basic dimension of our crises is social, the coexistence of different civilizations as well as the antagonisms within each civilization."
For a systems-theoretical account of how the whole of the multiple problems listed by Zizek may be thought of, and possibly acted upon the basis of, via a single systems-theory model, see as an example an unpublished paper by Laurenc DeVita entitled "Culture as a Self-Organizing System".
Below is quoted the "Abstract" and the "Key Terms" sections
https://imgur.com/a/qddzHX9
"Abstract
It is the intention of this description to cast a large net, a “view from 30,000 feet”, in order to distill the discussion three million years long to a few pages. It uses ideas from many different disciplines to describe the relationship between humankind and culture. It proposes that early human ancestors were motivated by the desire to live, to have offspring live, and to that end, as social beings increasingly seeking access to group resources, to enjoy status in the group. This motivates an animal that was already social, and already had forward pointing eyes and dexterous front limbs, to use a stick or a pebble to increase food supply. Slowly, a complex system builds, organizing the energy of repeated behavior.
The description makes clear that humankind is in crisis as a species as the result of the function of a system at least three hundred thousand years old. Philosophically, the description displaces human agency. Sociologically, it focuses on the gradual appearance of “culture” and its sculpting of humans from its earliest moments through to its expression as the global social system. Finally, it proposes circumstances for the system in the near future.
Key terms: collapse; complexity; complex social system; context; energy: human action, debt and trade; iteration; Red Queen; social structure; subsystems"
I reproduce my review of DeVita's book on Amazon here (apologies, I only just noticed the glitch that led to the same review being posted twice in a single post on the Amazon site):
https://www.amazon.com.au/gp/customer-reviews/R2J6VZ2EU54XC0?ref=pf_ov_at_pdctrvw_srp
"One of the most valuable aspects of DeVita’s rich and stimulating work is the beautifully elegant theoretical model used to describe and analyze both civilizational and societal systemic functioning and systemic collapse. This is a model is derived from systems theory in which the basic unit of measurement and of value is *energy*.
The two fundamental systems of Human systems and Natural systems meet and interact at the interface of Culture. Both systems possess the essential function of maintaining the optimally maximum flow of energy through their numerous sub-systems. Typically throughout human and natural history this has led to higher levels of systemic complexity as the systems evolved greater capacities as problem solving entities. (As Joseph Tainter has described, this complexity can itself become a problem and point of potential fragility. Complex systems require meta-systems in order to govern complexity itself. System-wide collapse may occur when these meta-systems fail).
Problems arise when the flow of energy is impeded or lessened. This may be due to either or both an interruption in energy supply – such as caused by climate change and the transition away from fossil fuels; peak oil. Or by a systemic collapse caused by internal weaknesses. When this occurs, contrary to previous movements toward greater energy flow, systems collapse into simpler forms. This decline may be very sudden in the manner described by Ugo Bardi in his “Seneca Effect”: “increases are of sluggish growth, but the way to ruin is rapid”.
DeVita’s account of civilizational and societal systemic Collapse is backed up by an impressive array of data culled from a rich and highly informative variety of sources ranging from political science to sociology to the natural sciences of biology and energy extraction.
In addition to the theoretical account of Collapse, DeVita’s book also contains practical advice on the securing the rudimentary essentials of life – shelter, security, food, fuel, potable water etc. As well as less tangible public goods such education. As well as the work of Tainter and Bardi mentioned above, DeVita has also drawn on the sociology of Erving Goffman in an excellent account of social interactions.
I personally would perhaps have liked to have seen DeVita expand the scope of the subjects addressed, either as part of this book or as another book, as I am especially interested futuristic scenarios and would have been very interested in DeVita’s views on this topic. That is, what might be the potential of post-collapse communities to contain the seeds of future renewal? In a variety of ways possible answers to this question are already logically implied in DeVita’s diagnoses and prognoses of Collapse and in the practical advices that is proffered here. For this topic to be directly addressed may well have taken what is intended to be a practical guide and manual too far afield and so perhaps we must wait for a sequel. As well as wait and see in real history."