Seeking a new ethics

My understanding of Zizek's critique of modern liberalism: setting up a framework for mere tolerance of the neighbor - defined as one with characteristics you find repugnant but are forced to endure by circumstance - as required by the modern liberalist framework [which endeavors to exclude violence and extremism as a solution], creates the situation of continuing to deny them basic rights (pushing them away, maintaining their stature of other). He is arguing that the Subject itself develops a toxicity, from which everyday people (i.e., you) have a right to resist in whatever fashion you can.

On the one hand, you have a feigned openness - here he compares saying "how are you," suddenly asking someone to declare their sexual orientation, and topless beaches. This is an openness that does not ask someone to reveal themselves in a personal way so as to move towards an understanding, but in fact represents a pushing away of the other. You aren't interested in getting to know them, but to mask your fear of them, you cover it with this openness which walks around the fringes of their being, and you then withdraw, satisfied that you've given them the opportunity to show their humanness and thus done your part in recognizing it.

Similarly, there is empathizing with their situation whilst retaining one's right to not be harassed. Here they retain their characteristic repugnant otherness. Urging of "tolerance", when coupled with the right not to be bothered, may be even worse because you feel like you're doing something, when the situation doesn't significantly change or it gets worse. Thus you are even less likely to lift a finger because you can say, I already did something (I recycle, I donate money to charity, I support this anti-war group). This leads to a minimal effort of recognition that can a) lead to tiny improvements, usually temporary, with no systemic change, or b) absent a real resistance, leave a vacuum for rightists to deny even basic human treatment. Then even if the vacuum doesn't emerge, allowing rightist violence groups to arise (as they are doing in Serbia and even traditionally moderate places like France, and to a lesser degree manifested in American Tea Parties), then still your priceless right not to be harassed leads to an acquiescence in the face of statist violence. So you don't mind if Mexicans come here, but you aren't going to tolerate their selling weed or mooching of welfare money, so you would prefer if the military was deployed on the border, and small town police drive around rounding them up for deportation. In other words, the danger is drawing this line that is not to be crossed: not threats to your personal livelihood or safety, but being annoyed with them (a reasonable racism). And the recourse is not dialogue or some sort of social intervention, but asking the state to intervene militarily. That is partly why liberalist tolerance (political correctness) isn't rejected by the state: it provides an opportunity to deploy the military and therefore strengthen control. It just must not go too far, as it almost did w/ the civil rights movement. Here is where propaganda systems step in to decaffeinate the movement. But at the same time, you're seeing a creeping police state, a creeping authoritarianism.

Next, there is a "psychologizing" of the other, an excessive but still shallow humanization of the other, wherein their despicable actions are excused on the basis that, they are a human just like me. One must be careful here, as this one can easily be manipulated to strip people of their humanness. Today a 17 year old kid was sentenced to, I dunno 20-40 years in jail because he encouraged a 12 year old to go rob an old woman as a gang initiation, and the woman, as a result of falling and suffering a heart attack, died 5 weeks later. Where should our "understanding" of his life and situation (and age) stop? Certainly we should hold him accountable, but is discarding of his "biography" to prevent empathy a good thing? The question is, when should we let our psychological empathizing lead us to overlook? On a similar note, the film Downfall was criticized on the basis that it "humanized" Hitler - actually Hitler was not a monster, or a demon, he was a human being. And we should be especially aware of humanity lurking behind the brutal. I was wondering yesterday where all these obscene creatures who comment on Yahoo articles are: they're in your backyard. And they're the same people who were waving flags at Nuremberg.
But when do we overlook, and when do we condemn? The danger in humanizing too quickly, we are apt to overlook their intentions, their programme, and see them as a person like us, just trying to get on. So must the question begin with an examination of the intentions of the other?

Where I'm stuck is, my recovery from alcohol abuse has made me acutely aware of the failings of the human organism lurking right around the corner. And I'm not sure where to draw the line between psychological empathizing and condemnation on an ethical basis.So we don't want a framework that creates this feigned openness or conditional acceptance which makes way for acquiescence to violence or authoritarianism. We don't want a tepid psychological identification that makes us too afraid to critique and revolt against others because they are just people like us, and again also helps the maniacs in power explain away their sick behavior by saying they're people like us. Of course we don't want a capitalist contractarianism in which ethical obligations are reduced to commodified agreements.

WHERE ARE WE GOING? Does the ethics lie in communism, psychedelic ethics, or taoism? Your challenge should be to elucidate these ethics and perhaps synthesize them.

The Western God idea still stifling

In our haste to escape the oppressive disapprobation of the Western man-god and all he was associated with, we've left behind some useful ways of looking at the world:

a. Any aspects of the world as being "designed"
We do not want to admit any agency whatsoever to the development of existence, as the highest agency we can conceptualize right now is human agency, so that if there is some agency in the development of being, we put a human face on it. That human face is for us God, and that God has been assigned by the Western cultural imagination personality traits wholly distasteful to contemporary Western life.
So though some aspects of existence seem to be inconceivably set up to work towards an equilibrium, or lower entropy states, we want to see those phenomena as doing it themselves, because that is the only rational alternative to super-agentic intervention. The example I have in mind is ecosystems.
Speech is another example. Indeed it's sort of technology, shaped to be sure by human beings and existing as a sort of artifact. To McKenna speaking is "articulating syntax" or "organizing gestural intent." "The word burst forth, full-blown, based on a platform of gestural syntax that had been maybe millions of years in its formation." So "language" in the sense of speech was developed by people, but the technology of articulation seems to have "burst forth, full-blown," suddenly, with small degrees of human intent.
I'm not suggesting we necessarily see all phenomena through the lens of divine intent, i.e. "this is here because the divine wanted us to do X with it," but as part of a existential scheme that indeed has some sort of development or movement in mind that it is realizing through our consciousness and by the phenomenon of being.

b. Non-Relative Morality
That God figure was unfortunately not only the creator of everything, but was its moral moderator: the engineer, supervisor, and disciplinarian. The annoyance with God's control over the minutia as well as the critical points of our ethical selves led smoothly, after the discarding of the God idea, into ethical relativism. Now we are too afraid to reestablish a moral order because we don't want to be associated with the taxing God. I'm not suggesting the reinstitution of absolutist morality of course, where individualism is muted in favor of the dominating ethical culture, but we shouldn't be afraid to condemn unhelpful and unhealthy modes of being.

Zizek: Living in the End Times

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gw8LPn4irao

"images are the true reality today...if we discard the images, nothing remains; just some pure abstraction."

Responding to allegations that the current economic collapse is owing to failure to let capitalism flourish - i.e. state intervention awarded those who should have failed, saved them, and enabled them to compete with those who were "smart" or "able" enough to last without state intervention. This action was, according to the speaker, like socialism.

Zizek: This is precisely how communists behind the Iron Curtain responded to failures of communism. The communism was not "pure enough". This is the fundamentalist answer. Blame not the system but rather how we were not faithful enough to the fundamentals of the system.

Pressure to make massive amounts of money overrides ethical practice. A small bank cannot resist the urge to make bad loans.

Zizek: It's not a crisis of our ethical values, but the global capitalist system urges violation of basic ethical rules.Perhaps it's not a personal corruption (Madoff) but he is being pushed by the system!

Making money replicates the same reward process as taking a drug.

Zizek: Let's not appraoch capitalism as a psychological problem - we aren't trying to rid addiction to money, but see how this attitude is generated by "an objective social system" part of which are such attitudes.
Let's compare canned laughter, where laughter is part of the soundtrack. In the experience of watching a television sitcom, you don't even have to laugh - the television laughs for you. But after the experience, even if you (personally) have not laughed, you feel "relieved, as if I have laughed." It's a psychological discharged, objectivized.
Staying in these coordinates, the most we can do is charity. But it's part of the logic of the system - it depoliticizes the problems. Through charity, capitalism can redeem itself; be itself the medicine to the evil it causes. It becomes the panacea over, e.g. new social systems. That's disgusting, but a crucial ideological phenomenon.

 On nature:

Zizek: Humanity is no longer one among the living species, but is literally becoming a geological factor.
We should accept that nature doesn't exist; i.e. the image of nature as a balanced, harmonized circulation destroyed through excessive human agency. Nature is in itself a series of mega-catastrophes.
1. We should accept our full alienation from nature. Science & technology, though causing problems, are the only solution (better than going "back to nature"). We are already within technology. We should remain open and patiently work. How?
2. With much stronger social discipline. Maybe a consequence of ecological crisis will be that the American way of life (free spending, individualist liberty) is wrong and we will have to invent a new mode of living together as humans, with more solidarity, togetherness and social discipline.

Afghanistan: Americans have no interest for the country. But now not only the Taliban but others are wondering wtf these Western troops are doing here, busting into homes and roughing people up? This is the Russians again! You need to tell the Afghans what you're doing and when you're leaving, not "we're looking for al-qaeda." Al-qaeda is not in Afghanistan anymore.

Zizek: Yes, Afghanistan is the symptom of what is wrong with US politics. But it is perceived as the ultimate fundamentalist country, but remember 40 years ago, the same country was probably the most tolerant and secular of all Muslim Near East states. Pro-West modernising, a strong communist party, but through getting caught in global politics (Cold War) that Afghanistan became fundamentalist. Today's fundamentalism is not a dark remainder of the past but generated as part of the global process,OK America went there to fight their enemy, but far from demonstrating their power, they've revealed their impotence. They took on a small defenseless country bc they can't attack Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, where al-qaeda really is, as they are their allies.
The real problem in Afghanistan is that with the corruption of the existing Afghani puppet regime, if US withdrew the Taliban will take over, which is a fiasco the US can't afford.

Religion and human rights:

Zizek: All religions are basically opportunistic in the sense that God, or whoever wrote the texts, writes contradictions - "don't kill, but as Jesus said, if you don't have a sword, sell your clothes to buy a sword"
The problem is not this fundamentalist terror grounded in Islam. It's a contemporary phenomenon so the stories about big democratic potenital in Islam are true but the same goes for practically every religion. But we shouldn't look for democratic potential in religion but elsewhere. e.g. in the people, authentic explosion as in Iran.

Should we stay or leave Afghanistan?

Zizek: The solution is not to quickly simply leave. You've turned it into a more fundamentalist country than it ever was, then leave? That's worse.
If nothing else, after all the US did there, ruining the whole place, it's too easy just to simply leave.
Today's left is offering this option just to get easy morality, clear conscience. This is actually a revelation of lack of ideas.

So you're a communist? Let's take a look back at the weird servility of 20th century Communist Party by seeing a clip of Romanians obsessing over Ceausescu.

Zizek: Of course there is no realistic prospect for this to return. The story of 20th c. communism is over.
How to prevent this from returning? Remember that this is returning in contemporary China, which is actually a more efficient capitalism than capitalism itself. So we should worry about Western models actually adopting this.
Only the radical left can provide a good theory of what went wrong with communism. The 20th c. left in all versions (state socialism, social democracy, self-managmeent, local self organization) is over. The left will have to begin from the beginning.

Can democracies find a way to tackle the issues that need to be tackled for long-term prosperity for countries? If not, and democracies fail, you're discrediting democracy as a system. This is already happening with declining voter rolls, declining voter participation, declining support for mainstream political parties.

Zizek:Liberal democracy as we know it (as an element of global capitalism) is in a crisis and will become more and more in a crisis.
Fukuyamist terms: His point was that with the rise of the latter, a certain social and political form remained at the only realistic option. It is as if today's left is now dreaming of "global capitalism with a human face." Ask this: can we step out of capitalism? Can we imagine a society not organized by state mechanisms? instead of thinking about how to introduce new laws, make societies more tolerant, more health care, help minorities within the system.

The "right wing" takes over the vocabulary of "left intellectuals" and seems to be "infinitely better" as using it against "the opponent," i.e. the left.

Zizek: There's truth here. The central event in the political process is that till 3 decades ago, one of the key tactics of leftists: the mass mobilization of civil society (e.g. for struggle against racism, women's rights, etc.) is now more and more integrated into the right wing populist "rebellions." And this is worrisome part of process where the left limited itself to cultural topics (gay, women, ecology) leaving all this appeal, even class appeal to right wingers. The danger for democracy is that there's a new shift: the basic formula of politics was 2 big popular parties (aiming at entire body) - center left (liberal sociaql democratic) and center right (Christian conservative). SD is disappearing and the new dualism is centrist (depending on circumstance) technocratic liberal capitalist party and the right wing populist reaction to it. The reason this is dangerous is we obviously live in discontent with liberalism, but who will articulate this discontent? Unfortunately the only channel for more radical forms of discontent is the right wing populism.

Berlusconi?

Zizek: He's an option for future: the neutral technocratic liberalist party. Maybe he'll combine that with the populist. Capitalism with Italian values: Berlusconi is not only representative of politics as empty spectacle/depoliticization of politics - political debate proper disappears and what's left is expert/spectacle/corrupt economic measures. It is a self-destruction of minimal dignity of state authority, and this is not a joke. It's as if the state is discovering that it can function in a totally cynical way (making ajoke of itself) but this shouldn't blind us of the other side: Italy has been in "emergency state" for a year and a half, rendering the government able to deploy military and use it. And people have accepted it. It's not old authoritarianism where all of a sudden you awake one morning and a voice tells you all the freedoms are suspended. Small individual freedoms are left to us! Perverse sex, consumerism, life as a spectacle BUT the new (Groucho Marx) authoritarian state lingers.

The core problem is we are emerging as subjects deprived of our symbolic substance. We should redefine proletarian communism.

Zizek: We aren't looking to achieve an old state socialism. We are confronting problems which concern our commons (hence keeping the term communism): only some kind of popular mobilization outside state and outside the market can do the job. Who will voice the discontent at liberalism? We can't leave it to right wing populists. My message to liberals: Are you aware that the dynamic of your own system is generating this reaction? The only way to save what's worth saving in liberalism (freedoms,solidarity, etc.) will be saved only through revitalized, more radical left. The future will be fight to the utmost.