Idiots and Education

The ancient Athenians had a name for people unable to participate in and determine the course of public life: idiote - from which our word idiot is derived. And though we live in so-called democracies, these days very few of us are not idiots in this classical respect. It is this intersection of these two meanings of idiot (fool and heteronomous subject) that Marx drew attention to in his Theses on Feuerbach - in which Marx critiques the insufficiently critical, materialistic thought of Ludwig Feuerbach. Yes, the point is to change the world. But the world cannot be meaningfully changed without interpretation. And who is to educate the educators? The idiot - who is unable to interpret the world - is inextricable from the idiote - who cannot change it.

When considering how to rectify the political idiocy produced and reproduced by this society, one of the most obvious things that comes to mind is education. After all, education is, at its best, inextricable from broadening minds, opening eyes, and aiding in the contemplation of our mysterious existences - not to mention solving the problems that such contemplation brings to consciousness. Indeed, as the philosopher John Dewey put it: Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself. On the other hand, however, at its worst education is arguably not even education but mere indoctrination. And sadly, such is the condition of practically all levels of education in the US today. Subjected - along with the rest of us - to the demands of the market, rather than examining the world we inhabit in good faith, education has deformed into a massive industry that is busy creating and recreating this society's idiotic projects, along with its ideologies. Rather than critical thought, it is but a tool of a type of thought so uncritical that it raises the question as to whether it even qualifies as thought at all.

Among other places, this point was made very strongly by the French philosopher Louis Althusser in his 1969 essay Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses - in which he refers to the institution of education as the Ideological State Apparatus par excellence. These days, as schools function as either businesses, or minimum-security prisons, it is difficult to argue with that conclusion. In spite of the above, however, there still remains, implicit in the concept of education, a radically emancipatory kernel. For what is the point of education? It is not simply instrumental. Rather, it ought to question the purposes - the reasons - for any instrumentalization. Such larger, critical questions lead not only to the interpretation of the world, but to questions of justice intrinsic to social change.

As more and more public schools are privatized, and standardized test-taking stands in more and more for thinking, and even essays are being graded by computer programs, it is disheartening that the opposition to the hypertrophic commodification of education is more or less restricted to the no-brainer demands for reductions in classroom sizes, and requests for basic materials and facilities. In other words, the basic model and function of education is by and large not seriously questioned. This is highly troubling for a number of reasons, not least of which is the fact that the critique of the institution of education can draw out its radically critical kernel and lead to emancipatory forms of social organization.

Consider the community college. Rather than being viewed simply as feeder schools for four-year colleges and universities, community colleges could develop into dispersed sites of participatory democracy. Collectively-owned community colleges - one for every couple of thousand people, or so - could even develop cooperative economies. Developing the potential and the expertise of the community, one could have agriculture/horticulture departments that would support the community's food needs. Nursing and medical schools could train doctors and nurses who could, in turn, run and support community health clinics. Engineering, design, and architecture departments, in concert with ecology departments, could attend to the community's basic heating, plumbing, housing, and transportation needs, among others. Art and cinema departments could flourish within each community. Dispute resolution programs could help resolve disputes within the community in non-punitive ways. Journalism departments could support the journalism that is vital for an informed public. In cooperation with one another in regional, and inter-regional networks, such community colleges could not only organize such events as film festivals; they could attend to the problems of the community entirely beyond the profit-based demands of the physically, psychologically, and environmentally burdensome market-economy, and beyond the State as well. Such a thing as education overcoming idiocy in such a manner may sound improbable, but stranger things have happened. 

Hey Idiots

posted on counterpunch

It is interesting to observe that the word idiot derives from the Greek idiotes, which refers to a "private person" - as distinct from a public person, or one who is involved in determining public life. That is, an idiot follows the rules and laws that others draft and sign - irrespective of whether or not it is in the idiot's interest. Some people in society determine how society will be organized - how its economic surpluses are distributed, how its resources are employed, how its energies are directed, how its cities are designed, its transportation systems are routed, etc. - and others simply follow (or are determined by) these rules. Many of these followers (the idiots) don't even seem to mind this state of affairs. Still others live under the delusional understanding that they are, in fact, somehow in charge of determining the course of social life - through their duly elected representatives, of course, or through their reputed "consumer power."


What is of especial interest to those observing political idiocy is how thoroughly inconsistent and incoherent its ideologies can be. Indeed, many idiots justify the status quo (in which they are consigned to the position of idiot) by appealing to the founding documents of the United States, seemingly oblivious to the fact that the Declaration of Independence's main argument is that the only legitimate form of political organization is one in which people govern themselves. It does not take much critical acumen to recognize that self-government - or autonomy - is irreconcilable with the heteronomy that the idiot is subjected to - irrespective of the degree to which the idiot is aware of his or her particular political impotence.

In other words, we are idiots whether we are aware of our political impotence or not. All that it takes to be a political idiot is to be excluded from the actual processes that determine how the world we live in is organized. And how many of us are in any meaningful way able to determine how things are governed? Because public interest polls consistently show majorities of people supporting social policies (such as universal health care, increased environmental protections, access to free education, an end to the wars of aggression committed by the US, etc.) that are not pursued, it does not seem to be much of a stretch to conclude that most people in this country are idiots. In this respect I am a total idiot. And I suspect that I am not alone in being aware of the fact that I suffer from this regrettable condition. Moreover, I suspect that I am not alone in wanting to change this harmful situation. As with other collective problems, however, our collective political and economic idiocy requires a collective solution; the first step of which is recognizing that most of us are these alienated political idiots in the first place. As Obama and the privatizing classes maneuver to eliminate Social Security, contrary to public opinion, we must accept the fact that they have turned us into idiots. How long we remain idiots, though, is another question.

the beatles

they say that love
is all you need 
it's true -
as everything else
is extant in the world -
water, housing, food
abounds -
though it's all tightly held
in a small group of hands -
but love would disperse  
these all - it's true -
love, indeed
is all you need

Drive, Baby, Drive! - Pearl Harbor, Global Warming, and the Apocalypse

On the anniversary of the Japanese attack on the US naval base at Pearl Harbor, with typhoon Bopha having just spread vast carnage throughout the South China Sea, it is interesting to consider the parallels that exist between the Japanese attack and such global warming-caused weather events. Among their other similarities, both the attack on Pearl Harbor and global warming-caused disasters result from the industrial, imperialistic scramble for, and exploitation of natural resources. And though the Japanese bombardment surprised many, but was not unanticipated, likewise the typhoons, hurricanes, and other disasters increasing in intensity and frequency throughout the world might come as something of a surprise, but are not unanticipated in light of what we know about climate change. Furthermore, if the Japanese attack led to an alteration in the world social order, the ravages attending global warming-caused events threaten a change of an even more radical magnitude. 

Remarkable for striking a region that does not usually suffer from such storms, Typhoon Bopha is in this respect similar to Hurricane Sandy - whose destruction has yet to be corrected. Indeed, though it's been nearly six weeks since Superstorm Sandy's landing, and one might think that the situation is returning to normal (whatever 'normal' means these days), in actuality the weather-caused displacements have yet to subside. For the tens of thousands of people who have lost their homes, or are still living without electricity or heat in these days of advancing winter, not only do these conditions persist, recovery may still be months away; there is not even any certainty that former conditions will ever be recovered. 

While it may be attributable to the neo-liberal program that neglects collectively owned resources in order to induce their privatization, it is nevertheless a fact that the State these days is hardly able to maintain even its more mundane infrastructures (like bridges, roads, sewage and public transportation systems, and nuclear power plants) without the additional stresses wrought by "extreme weather" events. As such, it doesn't seem too contentious to suggest that, as these hurricanes and typhoons (as well as tornadoes, floods, fires, droughts, and other harms) deliver their unrelenting combination blows in the months and years ahead, the State's already limited capacities to prepare and respond will become only more circumscribed. Inadequately attended to, the wreckages wreathing Staten Island, Queens, and the Jersey shore, among the other places hit by Sandy - not to mention the places struck by Bopha - will not only fester, but will degenerate further, adding inexorably to the planet's growing slum population.

Though some will no doubt attribute such a conjecture to the unreasonably fearful, or to the unreasonably hopeful (eager for the collapse of the usurious system), the recognition of the advancement of catastrophic environmental conditions by the infamously conservative insurance industry, and the World Bank, ought to do much to deflect charges of well-intentioned, but ultimately misled, alarm. The World Bank's November, 2012 report, Turn Down the Heat, for instance, warns that rising temperatures pose an imminent peril to not only its investments, but to civilization itself. Current trends, their conservative report warns, will likely lead to a temperature increase of four degrees centigrade "as early as the 2060s." Such a rise in temperature would be nothing short of cataclysmic for all but jellyfish. To be sure, most climate scientists maintain that temperature increases above 3°C would precipitate mass die-offs.

In some senses, then, the coming "unprecedented heat waves, severe droughts, and major floods" warned of in the World Bank's report, along with their attendant famines and epidemics, may be likened to some sort of armada of hostile ships approaching the planet. Landing singly for now, dispersed in time as well as space, if drastic action is not taken it won't be long before their masses land constantly, overwhelming efforts to resist. And while the approach of such an armada, or any such assembly of threats, would elicit alarm in any reasonable person, or government, the US government, and the business powers it overwhelmingly represents, repeatedly demonstrate their utter lack of 'reasonableness' by continuing to practice their particularly venal brand of denialism. And though some in power - like the World Bank, and various congresspersons - at least recognize that there is a serious problem, aside from conceding that "serious policy changes" need to be implemented, and that harms indeed need to be "mitigated," such phrasing implies that they don't think their economic system needs to be extirpated. Yet, it does; for capitalist forms of economic and social organization not only obstruct efforts to correct harmful conditions (of all sorts, including global warming), but their normal functioning creates these very conditions in the first place. That is, the armada of hostile ships referred to above is not simply coming to attack us; its materials were mined, and refined, and their parts were designed and built and launched by us as well, in order to reap profits. And though many of these "ships" have already been launched, stopping not only production, but changing the system that compels people to produce unnecessary, harmful things in order to simply survive, would not only limit the multiplication of such disasters, and reduce the severity of those already on their way, it would be a step in the direction of a just world as well.

While in general public opinion is largely supportive of economic models that halve - or even quarter - the length of the workweek, resistance to the notion of abandoning cars, among other things that give rise to ecocide, often elicit apoplectic reactions. Related to outbursts such as these, it deserves mention that while they're predictably quiet regarding his Disposition Matrix, and other actual abuses, the sensationalistic denunciations of Republicans regarding Barack Obama's economic measures (in spite of the latter's deep conservatism) veer into just this type of reaction. Indeed, it is so vitriolic - insisting, among other things, that his tepid health care reform would initiate so-called 'death panels' - that in denouncing him in such a manner one would think that Republicans would have used up their biggest rhetorical weapons. By painting Obama not merely as a wild extremist, but as the Antichrist himself, it is difficult to imagine what they could come up with that's any worse. And should an actual radical political organization come along at some point - with a truly radical platform - it leads one to wonder what Republicans could offer in terms of denunciations that they haven't already. 

Beyond mirroring 'the boy who cried wolf', by pursuing such an extreme type of rhetoric, it seems the Republicans may have created a type of drama around 'No Drama Obama' which has induced a type of Aristotelian catharsis among its audience. By allowing audiences to purge their fears and passions in the safe and abstract realm of fantasy, Aristotle maintained that drama prepared audiences for an encounter with comparable events in reality. As such, by way of just such a cathartic process, the Republicans may have, ironically, to some degree, come to terms with the future arrival of a radical, socialist government.

Democrats, on the other hand, exposed to an entirely different narrative, see a wholly different picture. According to their story, Obama is a reasonable - even wise - leader whose efforts at establishing "a more perfect union" are repeatedly stymied by obstructionist Republicans - even when Democrats held a supermajority in congress. In addition to overlooking the peculiar fact that the two parties share virtually identical world views, this story also fails to consider that reasonable persons would not only not ignore the cataclysmic ecological exigencies confronting us, but would actively pursue energy and economic policies designed to correct these. Yet Obama, who neglects to pursue such an agenda, and actively abets the business community's worst practices, somehow continues to present himself as a reasonable person (just as he misrepresented himself as an agent of change) and somehow manages to be taken seriously. Indeed, his (and the Republicans) neglect of advancing ecological catastrophe is of such severity, and such a breach of responsibility, that it ought to be indictable as a crime against humanity. However, Obama and company no doubt sleep well, aware that the International Criminal Court in The Hague, along with the rest of The Netherlands, will most likely be well under water in no time. In spite of all of this, as it is spelled out over much of the mass media, the Democrats' political fantasy regarding Obama's reasonableness is not so easily dispelled.

So, though Republicans' hyperbole couldn't grow more volatile (what is worse than charges of Hitlerism?), and couldn't impede Obama more than they already do, it seems the actual obstacle to a more progressive Obama - as has been apparent all along - is not the unreasonableness of the Republicans, but the very unreasonableness of Obama and the Democrats. And though the Democrats would rejoin that they are being entirely reasonable, they seem to be unable to comprehend that their particular variety of reasonableness is itself subordinated to the overarching unreasonableness involved in organizing the world according to the priorities of business interests.

To some degree this dynamic may be elucidated through reference to Freud's Reality Principle. Unlike thinkers from Spinoza to the Marquis de Sade, and beyond, who maintained that human behavior is motivated by the pursuit of pleasure (what Freud called the Pleasure Principle), and the avoidance of what causes pain, Freud maintained that something else is involved. Like the Old Stoics of the Hellenistic period, who held that people are not motivated so much by pleasure as by the pursuit of a greater harmony, one in which suffering is sometimes necessary, Freud maintained a similar thing (although his notion of harmony is of a particularly bourgeois cast). Because the unrestricted pursuit of pleasure ultimately leads to pain, he argued, it too had to be limited - by what Freud termed the Reality Principle.

Among other stories, Aesop's fable of the Grasshopper and the Ants illustrates this dynamic. An arguably more sophisticated telling of this, however, is rendered in the story of The Three Little Pigs. Readers may recall that the little pigs who pursued pleasure most - slap-dashedly constructing their homes from straw and sticks - saw their homes destroyed by the predations of the wolf. Meanwhile, the more responsible pig, who had internalized the Reality Principle, who deferred pleasure in order to build a sturdy house of bricks, not only prevailed over, but succeeded in eating the wolf.

While it may be a shortcoming of these stories - which instruct children on the merits of being good ants (workers), and pigs (consumers) - in their ascriptions of reasonableness, or of a Reality Principle, to Obama, his proponents reveal a profound one. For the purported Reality Principle of Obama is in actuality subordinated to the system's incessant drive for growth and consumption - a drive leading not only to the world-wrecking ravages of global warming, but to epidemics of stress, heart-disease, cancer, famine, war, and other ills. That is, while the moderation, and thrift of the historical middle classes may continue to function ideologically (as internalized domination), these are firmly in the service of what Freud would describe not even as the Pleasure Principle, but what in his later writings he termed the Death Drive.

Opposed to survival, and the other creative drives, according to Freud the Death Drive is "an urge in organic life to restore an earlier [inorganic] stage of things." In dominating the natural, as well as the social world, deforming the living and natural world into inorganic commodities and waste, rather than exemplifying the Pleasure Principle, or the Reality Principle, contemporary social organization seems to be manifesting the aggressive destructiveness wrapped up in just this urge.

And though Freud held that the aggressive destructiveness of the Death Drive was an innately human phenomenon, he nevertheless contended that it could be overcome by way of a type of social Reality Principle, one rooted not in the destructive power of Thanatos, but in the generative, healing force of Eros. Indeed, it is interesting to point out that in addition to representing Armageddon, or the end times, the notion of apocalypse also means revelation, or unconcealment. As such, one may argue that the revelation, or unconcealment of the actual, ecocidal harms attending the present socioeconomic system (concealed by the culture industry) would instantiate apocalypse not in the sense of ending the world in general so much as contributing to the end of this particular form of social organization.

As this Death Drive hurtles us toward ecological holocaust, it is interesting to consider that rather than by opposing it by force - which only ever enhances its strength - we can deprive this drive of its power not so much by working (like the dead), but, rather, like Eros, by playing dead. For, though the forces of domination are far more dangerous than, say, a bear, or a bee, by playing dead, by refusing to participate - by removing our bodies from the gas pedal, withdrawing not only our 'moral' support, but our actual physical energy and labor from its reproduction of harms - by not paying our bills, among other things - like a fire deprived of its fuel, this system of death will soon slow and expire. And the armada of disasters advancing toward us - whose attack should not come as any surprise - will by and by dissipate. What do we have to lose, but our diseases?

Turkeys, Twinkies, and Toxins

 published originally on  counterpunch


Because the history of the United States is comprised of contradictions (for example, while its political institutions are rooted in the notion of freedom, its economic institutions arise from a foundation of slavery) it should come as little surprise to find that the holiday of Thanksgiving - so intertwined these days with hyper-consumerism - itself grew out of the rejection of a compelled  commercialism.

Prior to the Reformation in England, the Church maintained dozens of various holidays and feast days throughout the year. And not only were people compelled to participate in these celebrations, in addition to attending church services, they were also often required to purchase the various items employed in these rituals - candles and knickknacks, and other religious bric-a-brac, the cost of which were in the aggregate not insubstantial.

Rejecting this compulsory consumption and opulence for a life of severe simplicity, the religious practices of the Puritans of the time eliminated not only these rituals, but all holidays. Instead of Easter, Christmas and the rest, days of thanks (celebrating propitious events as they arose) and days of fasting, honoring the more solemn occasions, were observed. And when they set sail for the Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts in search of religious freedom once and for all, the Puritans brought this approach to holidays along with them.

It is worth observing that, in 1621 - the year of the Pilgrims' legendary first thanksgiving dinner - the extremely powerful commercial enterprise, the Dutch West India Company, which would colonize what now includes the New York Metropolitan region, received its charter. Of course, its presence in the region began earlier, when reports of the region's treasures led merchants to regard it as something beyond an obstacle to Asia. Since 1609, when Henry Hudson first sailed into New York Harbor, chroniclers of the region consistently recorded in their accounts that, among the plenitude of fishes and the other riches of the strange world they encountered, the smell of the air was remarkably sweet, even at significant distances from the shore. In subsequent accounts, many would attribute this presence - among other things - to some sort of natural chance, or happenstance, the random richness of the land. More recent studies, however reveal that what were formerly conceived of as merely natural concurrences were, in fact, the result of the economic and cultural practices of the indigenous people, the Lenape. Attentively tending to the land, the Lenape produced and reproduced the conditions of plenitude encountered by Hudson and his crew. And although distinct, the Lenape were closely related - sharing not only a related language but a similar eastern woodland culture as well - to the Wampanoag people of Massachusetts, with whom the Pilgrims reputedly shared their first Thanksgiving.

As the centuries passed, and as their indigenous neighbors were systematically removed, it is interesting to see that - in spite of their mutual antipathy - the Pilgrims' religious fundamentalism and the commercial aggressiveness of their neighbors in what would come to be New York, among other places, would blend into a type of fundamentalist commercialism. And as this commercial culture developed, along with its "Indian removal" policies, and its slavery-based economy, and its array of technical wonders, it managed as well to transform the formerly bucolic land of the Lenape, and others, into a toxic sprawl of traffic, industry, and garbage. To be sure, unlike the mariners of Hudson's time, those who arrive in New York City these days do not smell the scent of flowers at all; those who are not already inured to it smell merely the cloud of car exhaust, blended with the other fumes blanketing the region.

Beyond this relatively mild - though still carcinogenic - smell, those visiting today might also see the vast new slums and still fresh wreckage left by Superstorm Sandy - only the most recent instance of the meteorological harms contemporary economic practices generate.

Yet, if this destruction is caused in part by the quantities of garbage and the poisonous fumes that are a byproduct of economic activity, it is no less attributable to the garbage and poison introduced as an intentional, finished product. One example of just such a product - much-discussed in the news these days - is the Hostess Corporation's Twinkies. Indeed, it is a measure of the degree to which the priorities of this economy are inverted that the threatened shuttering of the Hostess Corporation (which produces little, if anything, that is not poisonous) should itself jeopardize people's health by eliminating their livelihoods, compromising their ability to secure necessities. In other words, it is an upside-down economic system that determines that a person's ability to acquire necessities, and live a  healthy life, is contingent on how well the junk food industry peddles its toxic, cream-filled sponge-cakes.

In spite of the destructive practices present in every link of their production chain - from their sugar plantations to their factories, not to mention their modes of distribution - in terms of harms, the junk food industry is practically beneficent compared to the energy industry. While, among others, Naomi Klein has lately taken to terming them "rogue corporations," insofar as they harm the public health, the corporations comprising the energy industry should rather be viewed as criminal organizations. Indeed, if - as countless jurists over the centuries, including many US Supreme Court justices, have maintained - the health of the people is the supreme law, these violations of global public health constitute not only moral, but legal wrongs. When one adds the destruction that is wreaked by the "extreme weather events" (that they cause) to their oil spills and rig explosions - not to mention the various paramilitary activities they conduct across the world - the harms attributable to the energy industry far exceed those perpetrated by, say, Al Qaeda - an organization that couldn't commit a fraction of the damage on purpose that Exxon, Shell, and BP, among others, commit annually merely by accident.

But if the Thanksgiving holiday is rooted in a rejection of ritualistic commercialism, it is also noteworthy that the word Thank is etymologically rooted in the word Think. And when one thinks about the toxic conditions our commercial culture constantly creates, reproducing - along with the more mundane forms of domination - ecocide and wars as a matter of business, one would think that instead of suffering conniptions over the commercial fundamentalists' concerns regarding the cutting of deficits and the balancing of budgets (which is merely a pretext for the further privatization of the world and funneling of wealth to the rich) more people would exhibit a comparable measure of concern regarding cutting and eliminating the concrete pollutants and practices causing our actual ills in the first place. Moreover, because the Puritans practiced days of fasting along with days of thanks, one might think - especially at this time of year - that such a response to the ecological breakdown our fundamentalist consumerism is generating would be the observance of just such a day, or days, of fasting as well - of sacrifice. To be sure, for such a practice to adequately address today's exigencies, the notion of fasting ought to be expanded to include not only the abstention from food, but from economic activities in general, allowing the biosphere the time and rest necessary to heal itself. If the notion of thanks, appreciation, and gratitude is to advance at all beyond its most superficial, commercialistic, and ultimately meaningless articulation, it must not fail to incorporate within it the need to not only curtail the reproduction of harms, but must recognize the need to eliminate forms of domination altogether. And though justice demands that such ought to be pursued for its own sake, when faced with unprecedented ecological collapse it must be regarded as a social, economic, and political priority of foremost concern. Indeed, if the health of the people of the world is the supreme law, compliance cannot be optional.

On Critical Days

originally published on counterpunch


Whether it's the most recent extreme weather disaster, environmental calamity, financial scandal, debacle, super-crime, or otherwise, political and social life these days is presented - if not experienced - as a succession of crises. Indeed, the economic crisis alone has generated its own not inconsiderable brood of sub-crises: the foreclosure crisis, the jobs crisis (aka the unemployment crisis), not to mention the health care crisis, and the perennial, ideologically distorted, debt crisis are accompanied by still others. And with the so-called fiscal cliff crisis approaching, we encounter this incessant succession of crises latest incarnation. 

Insofar as it relates to the present crisis (which provides yet another pretext for the business class, and their acolytes, to pursue not only the elimination of social security, medicare, medicaid, and the rollback of the New Deal, but the fulfillment of their longstanding dream of totalized privatization) it is not only interesting, but revealing as well, to consider the history of the concept of the crisis. 

While the word crisis is rooted in the Greek term krinein - which means to separate, distinguish, or judge - by the time the Hippocratic Corpus was assembled, beginning in the fifth century BCE, the concept of the crisis had already acquired an important place in ancient medical theory. According to this, a crisis is a turning point in the development of a disease - a point at which a patient's disease begins to either intensify or diminish. Because Hippocrates, among other ancient thinkers, held that the organism possessed an intrinsic healing capacity, he also argued that the job of the physician was to pay attention to such crises (thought to occur preponderantly on what were termed "critical days") and adjust the patient's treatment so as to facilitate this natural healing process, and lead to the recovery of the patient's health.

Elaborating upon this concept, the legendary Roman physician, philosopher, and medical theorist Galen made contributions to the development of the theory of the crisis. Writing and practicing in the second century of the common era, Galen's theories would spread through the Roman Empire, influencing the practice of medicine in much of the world until well into the 19th century. And while much of Galen's work would lead to its supersession in ensuing medical discoveries, intriguingly, his theory of the crisis provides considerable insight into the contemporary political situation. Indeed, insofar as the theory of the crisis is comparable to a notion of a rupture or break in the causal chain of history - enabling an intervention, and an alteration, into what would otherwise have been a more or less predetermined sequence - the classical concept of the crisis allows for a critical analysis of the present, and of political activity. 

This notion of the crisis is even - in some respects - comparable to the contemporary philosopher Alain Badiou's concept of the Event. Roughly defined as a moment of truth that emerges from a more or less predetermined "situation," an "event" requires an intervention of some sort that disrupts, interrupts, or otherwise ruptures the inertial "situation" and allows the event - the genuinely new - to emerge into history. Akin to just such a rupture, the classical medical notion of a crisis as a turning point is similar. For a crisis is likewise a gap in the regular advance of a disease that allows for the turn to not only the patient's recovery, but for a new health, a new life, to emerge. 

(Of course, to the extent that the event is involved in the creation of the subject - and the subject's existence, according to Badiou, is contingent on its 'fidelity' to the event - the event is considerably more complex than the crisis. Nevertheless, the two concepts still overlap insofar as each recognizes an affinity between an interruption of 'fate', an exertion of a sort of autonomy, and truth.)

Among other things, the present fiscal cliff "crisis" - along with contemporary crises in general - conforms to the classical, medical definition. For a crisis is just such a turning point, from which things can improve or worsen. With this in mind, Galen and Hippocrates would likely agree with Rahm Emanuel's well-known statement that "you never want a serious crisis to go to waste." Indeed, for Hippocrates as well as Galen the crisis is absolutely vital as it is the point from which recovery from a disease can begin. However, while Galen and Hippocrates may agree with Rahm Emanuel's position concerning the importance of crises, it seems exceptionally unlikely that they would agree with any of Rahm Emanuel's prognoses, or his recommended course of treatment.

For while Rahm Emanuel may recognize that crises are important for advancing the goals of his political-economic class, and their sympathizers, the policies that they in fact advance do not by any stretch of the imagination lead to health. On the contrary, they only accelerate the spread of disease. For, among other things, the economic policies they advocate lead to more and more work (at least for those precariously holding onto their jobs), accompanied by less and less pay, which leads to not only disease in the sense of the diminution of ease, but also contributes to and perpetuates disease in the more chronic sense. That is, their economic policies are inextricable from occupational and social stresses which lead directly to heart disease and cancer, not to mention poverty and homelessness, among others. Moreover, endless production also results in ever more pollution, resource destruction, ecocide, and global warming, leading to droughts, malnourishment, famine, and war, to name just some of the most prominent manifestations of economic disease.  

As such, while people are in many respects aware of the fact that the present manner of organizing society is (not too) slowly but surely destroying the planet (and, a fortiori, the rest of our lives as well) the inertial situation continues. And although these crises, these potential turning points, come along regularly, instead of intervening in order to cure the systemic harms and wrongs of our institutions and ways of life, Emanuel and his ilk - the Romneys, Obamas, Koch Brothers, Bloombergs, Carlos Slims, and manifold kings, who happen to still exist, along with queens, and princes, among others - like thousands of Neros, merely fiddle with their riches in their palaces as the world burns.

And as it burns, accompanied by various forms of misery, a variety of treatments are distributed in order to stave off total social collapse. Instead of intervening and treating the root of the disease, though, only the symptoms (which, incidentally, happen to be a huge source of profit) tend to be treated - treated, in general, by bombardment by a barrage of pain-killing and sleep-inducing anesthetics. Indeed, beyond the more conventional aspects of the anesthetics industry (represented mostly by alcohol, street drugs, TV, and religion), with the advance of the disease over the past few decades anti-depressant and anti-anxiety prescription drugs like Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, and others, have become the top-selling pharmaceuticals in the US. But anesthetics do not begin, nor do they end, there. Along with the other 'opiates of the masses', smart phones, endless television channels, and other forms of entertainment ensure that people are properly anesthetized. And just as the general disease (which includes the sickness of the planet) is growing only more extreme, more and more extreme forms of anesthetics are being developed in order to just keep up with its growth. In some respects, this growing numbness may account for the extreme intensification of various activities such as the hypertrophy of sports into extreme sports, and the concentration of sex into extreme, unlimited amounts of pornography, among other things.

If anesthetics and the anesthetics industry is as prevalent as it is, though, it is important to note that the opposite of anesthetics is not the intensification of sports, and other activities, which are merely an extension of the problem. Rather, the opposite of anesthetics is aesthetics. Defined broadly as the critical examination of art, culture, and nature, more than merely the opposite of anesthetics, aesthetics may be seen as its corrective. As opposed to the practice of aesthetics which - as prevalent as it is confused - tends to spend its energy pondering the latest monochrome painting, series of dots, or installation of wires - among other derivative anesthetic and consumer items - an actual aesthetics pays more attention to the relationships and intersections between "culture" and "nature." Moreover, where it is not creating them, a meaningful aesthetics ought to not only pay attention to the arrival of crises, but ought to also contribute to the discussion of how these turning points may be recognized for the turning points they are, thereby allowing us to turn away from disease, privatization, and austerity, and toward health. 

Returning to Hippocrates and Galen, it may be helpful to consider the fact that what they most often prescribed for their patients was not medicine so much as rest. Believing that ease was required to overcome disease, they maintained that the organism was endowed with an innate healing power (the vis medicatrix naturae) and healed itself under the correct conditions. According to this view, supported by contemporary medical research, the physician's role is to create the conditions that allow this healing function to manifest best. As such, it should not be too difficult to imagine that, in examining the present political-economic situation, Galen might prescribe just such a treatment for this society. 

As anathema as it may be to the capitalist economy - which requires unlimited expansion and work - the requirements of health, and of crises, demands just the opposite. For although it is necessary for health, rest is opposed to the economic functioning of capitalism - and, in spite of the harms its deprivation causes, it is systematically subordinated to the dictates of the economy. To be sure, it is not only human beings' rest that economic exigencies destroy. Not even the sky is afforded any rest. 

Indeed, who does not recall the fact that the eruption of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano in Iceland, in April and May of 2010, led to the grounding of thousands of air flights, and that this resulted in not only noticeably cleaner skies, but healthier air as well? Though less discussed than the economic loss engendered by the cancellation of so many flights, the cessation of air traffic also resulted in the elimination of what has been estimated to be between 1.3 to 2.8 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions - contributing to not only less pollution, but to less disease as well. Likewise, the general strike in Spain this week led to decreases in Spain's national energy consumption (measured on November 14 at 8 a.m. by Spain's national energy grid) of 18.6% compared to a normal work day at that time. As was the case with Eyjafjallajokull, not only does this decrease in work and activity lead to less disease, and more ease to heal, it leads as well to less pollution, and less disease in that respect, too. And while health requires that energy must still be used, the critical judgment of a meaningful aesthetics, among other disciplines, must consider that, among other things, much of the energy and work that is pursued in present economic production in fact results not in goods and services at all so much as in atrophied health on one end, and hypertrophied wealth on the other. 

As we consider this latest so-called fiscal cliff crisis, and contemplate the austerity measures that many policy-makers hope to leverage into being with it (of which the gutting of social security, and the cutting of medicaid and medicare, are only the most obvious of the continuing efforts to completely privatize the globe), it is particularly ironic that Obama should state, at a press conference this week, that "health care costs continue to be the biggest driver of our deficits." For these costs are not so much the costs of health, they are the costs of systemic disease. And the continuation of exploitative economic policies, rather than ameliorating the general condition, will only reproduce, exacerbate, and accelerate conditions of disease, all the while making it more difficult to treat them. 

If our consideration of the classical, medical concept of the crisis elucidates anything, it should lead us to the position that a crisis is indeed a turning point. As such, it should also lead us to agree with the pronouncements of Rahm Emanuel, Obama, Romney, and others, that we require austerity. However, the conditions required for justice (which in many respects are articulable as the concrete conditions of health) requires not the austerity of work and disease. Rather, it requires the austerity of rest and ease. The austerity that recognizes that the elimination of poverty requires the elimination of not only extreme concentrations of wealth, but the elimination of the institutions that allow such concentrations to amass in the first place, is required in order to move out of this crisis and recover our collective health. In other words, a critical austerity recognizes that a crisis is, indeed, a turning point - and that another term for such a turning is revolution. 

The Zombie Vampire Industrial Complex

published originally on counterpunch


As Obama celebrates his reelection, and his supporters find themselves in the odd position of planning how to fight the man they helped reelect in the first place, it is worth reflecting on the fact that Obama was able to prevail in the presidential election by receiving a preponderant number of ballots - and that these ballots (a term derived from the word 'balls') in many respects represents the surrender of his supporters' symbolic balls - not only their symbolic heads, and minds, but also their actual autonomy to the ruler whose power they simultaneously support and decry.

What is interesting, as well as relevant, is that this dynamic of surrendering autonomy shares a substantial resemblance with features of the fictitious, yet symbolically loaded, figure of the zombie and its relationship to political power. Appearing in countless books, movies, tv shows, video games, and advertisements, the zombie has arguably attained the high level of popularity it has in recent years on account of the fact that, as a society, we relate to these undead creatures in more ways than we might initially suspect.

Indeed, who doesn't from time to time, when commuting to and from work each day, for example, feel like one of a veritable army of zombies? Or, deprived of energy or power at the end of a day of work, who doesn't find themselves shuffling about like a member of the "living dead"? Among other things, just looking about at the crowds surrounding them, who doesn't ever think of altering the famous words of the late June Jordan and reflect - only half-facetiously - that, in certain respects, "we are the zombies we've been waiting for"?

Yet, if the powerless, half-dead zombie may be said to represent one end of the spectrum of political power, the other extreme is arguably occupied by another popular, undead figure. In contrast to the speechless, decaying slob of the zombie, at the other end of this spectrum of power one may not be too surprised to discover the stylish, aristocratic, and generally articulate, vampire.

While living people occupy the midsection between these two undead extremes - and are under attack at each end by these vampires and zombies - in one sense the zombie may be seen to be the product of vampires. For, among other things, zombies are generally produced by a parasite or some other life-depriving agent; and this is just what the figure of the vampire represents.

Whereas the zombie is a relatively powerless walking corpse, it should be remarked that their lost power does not necessarily merely evaporate. Rather, it may be seen to concentrate in the agent or parasite that so deprived it in the first place - i.e., in the vampire. In this respect, then, we can view the figure of the vampire as - to some degree - symbolic of the owners of the world, and the zombies as their exploited underclass. For just as Marx opined concerning capitalism, it is "vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labor and lives the more the more labor it sucks." Zombies, as the nonthinking result of this deprivation by the owners of capital, are for their part the living dead whose life force has been sucked out.

However, as physically (and metaphysically) powerful as the vampire is, with its capacity to fly, and its ability to defy age, among other powers, the vampire is at the same time in certain respects profoundly weak. For like any parasite who dominates its host, yet is at the same time utterly dependent on it, the vampire's power is restricted by this dependency. And the host, strangely, who is depended upon - who in fact is the source of the parasite's power - is the one who is in turn dominated.

To some degree this parasitic relationship of powerless dominator and powerful dominated is formulated by the German idealist philosopher G.W.F. Hegel. As he elaborates it in his Master-Slave Dialectic, in the Self-Consciousness section of  his Phenomenology of Spirit, the host or slave can ultimately come to live without the master, but through their exploitative relationship the master becomes unable to live without the slave.

Dominated by the master and forced to work, the slave, according to Hegel, winds up becoming creative, and consequently attains self-consciousness. The master, meanwhile, becomes ever more dependent on the slaves' output. Yet, as a result of the slaves' emerging self-consciousness, the slave comes to demand independence from the master, and the dialectic continues from there.

So, in spite of its similarities, the so-called Master-Slave dialectic is distinct from the dynamic between the vampire and zombie. For, whereas the master's slave ultimately achieves self-consciousness, and freedom through his or her creative labor, insofar as the vampire deprives people of their blood and energy through mindless work, the vampires (unlike the Master) succeed in creating zombies who, instead of attaining self-consciousness, become a member of the living-dead without seeming to notice or mind much at all.

Insofar as it contributes to an understanding of the speculative relationship under consideration between vampires and zombies, Friedrich Nietzsche's master and slave morality schema - as elaborated in his Genealogy of Morals - deserves consideration alongside Hegel's theory. However, like Hegel's theory, Nietzsche's also ultimately fails to capture the complex dynamic at play.

To be sure, although the vampire possesses a type of nobility (in the aristocratic sense of a nobleman, or noblewoman) and may be said in this respect to embody the morality, or ethos, of the master in Nietzsche's Genealogy, the other aspect, that of slave morality, does not in the end arise.

Among other things, because the zombie is not especially vindictive or resentful, the zombie may be said to lack a slave morality. Unlike Nietzsche's slave, who schemes to destroy the master, zombies don't want to bring the vampire down at all. They are more than happy to simply eat vast quantities of brains and watch American Idol. In spite of this, however, one can attribute a type of cowardice and resentment (which Nietzsche argues characterizes slave morality) to the zombie. This sentiment (or, rather, resentiment), is not directed toward the vampire, however. Rather, it is directed at those who critique the vampire. Zombies seem to truly hate such tiring exercises in critical thought.

Among other characteristics of slave morality, Nietzsche argues that the slave possesses a desire for equality. The contemporary zombie, however, to the degree that s/he considers this notion at all, tends to think of equality in only the most superficial, regressively egalitarian ways. The championing of the elimination of public sector employee benefits, based on the rationale that all are not fairly suffering the effects of an austerity economy - all the while neglecting to consider the excesses enjoyed by the rich (vampires) who created the wretched conditions in the first place - provides just one example of such invertedly resentful zombie "thought."

However, while Nietzsche's theory may not fit the relationship between vampires and zombies very tightly, certain similarities are still worth considering. For instance, like Nietzsche's master, the vampire may be said to be - in Nietzsche's words - "value-creating." This is the case insofar as the vampire creates social norms. However, this value can also be viewed as the "value" that the businessperson creates in degrading the living world to an assortment of lifeless commodities. This "value" of the master, or vampire, and its attendant norms, which Nietzsche's slave emphatically rejects, are, however, uncritically embraced by the zombie.

Moreover, rather than resenting the vampire, the contemporary zombie often aspires to become just like one of them - just as the well-known Joe the Zombie Plumber aspired to become a vampire, a la some Bloomberg. Indeed, unlike the slave, the zombie does not villainize its oppressor at all. Like those afflicted with Stockholm Syndrome, who come to care for their tormentors, or the host possessed and deformed by a parasite, the zombie more or less willfully sacrifices itself to the vampire.

Though Nietzsche is often presumed to support a version of a master morality, a careful reading of his  works leads to the conclusion that Nietzsche in the end rejects slave morality as well as master morality. This position finds considerable support in Nietzsche's consistent, tireless argument for not master morality at all, but for "a revaluation of all values."

Relatedly, the term Value derives from the Latin Valere, which means wellness and health. Considering this fact, it is especially noteworthy that the opposition of class interests, or values, is complemented by the phenomenon that the health of one class in today's world is generally dependent on the diminution of the health of the class they exploit. That is, just as the vampire extracts one form of value (health) from its host, it is significant that it then replaces this with its own (ideological) values. And because the zombie seems to accept the values of the vampire, rather than Hegel's Master-Slave dialectic or Nietzsche's master slave morality, the Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci's notion of hegemony may at this point help to elucidate the relationship between the vampire and the zombie.

According to Gramsci, cultural hegemony occurs when one social class successfully imposes their values on another social class - justifying the status quo's contingent constitutions and institutions and distributions of power and resources as inevitable, natural, and just - in spite of the fact that such values are not only contingent, but operate to the detriment of the oppressed classes.

Trained in the masters' schools, raised on the tv shows the masters create, which reflect their cultural norms, reading the newspapers the masters run, and generally swallowing the predominant ethos, culture, and tastes of the ruling classes, it should come as little surprise that the zombified host (who, as living dead, lost his political resistance along with his pathogenic resistances) should come to esteem the enterprising vampires.

(That these parasites should be portrayed as sexy aristocrats, ought to yield little surprise either. Meanwhile, unlike the sexy, aristocratic vampire, the proletarian zombies - sapped of all elan vital - are rarely portrayed as anything aside from the thoroughly repulsive creatures they have been deformed into. Indeed, no one ever wants to touch, let alone sleep with any of these shuffling, rotting corpses.)

But the correspondence between vampires, parasites, and hegemony does not stop there. Insofar as the dominant classes' values tend to produce behavior among the dominated that is to their detriment, there is an interesting - albeit highly problematic - parity between cultural hegemony and the biological, deterministic dynamic inherent in parasitism.

That parasites change their hosts behavior to the detriment of the host, and to the benefit of the parasite, is a well-established neurobiological fact. In the article How Your Cat Is Making You Crazy, which appeared in the February 2012 issue of the Atlantic Monthly, a number of examples of this phenomenon are examined. Among others, the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins is quoted discussing a parasitical flatworm that turns its host - an ant - into its slave. Although uninfected members of this particular ant species normally hide underground at the approach of sheep, when infected with the parasitical flatworm the ants exhibit apparently self-destructive behavior. Exposing themselves to the sheep by climbing to the tips of blades of grass, they attach themselves there and are consequently eaten by the sheep. While this behavior may be regarded as harmful for the ant, it is vital for the parasitical flatworm. Swallowed by the sheep, the parasite is thereby able to reproduce and thrive in the sheep's digestive system.

Beyond these examples, parasites and viruses have been shown to alter human behavior as well. As cited in the same article, behavioral biologists and biomedical anthropologists at Colorado State University, and SUNY Binghamton, have discovered social behavior in humans that is influenced by pathogens. When infected with the flu, for instance, and the virus is at its most contagious, otherwise unsociable people have been observed to experience highly increased desires to socialize with others, going so far as to throw parties when they otherwise only rarely hosted such activities. It goes without saying that this type of behavior is not beneficial for the host, who needs rest to recover from his or her illness. However, it is quite advantageous for the parasite to be exposed to new hosts in which to spread. Additionally, people infected with herpes, syphilis, and AIDS have all been found to express an enhanced desire for sex when their respective virus is most contagious.

While there is no evidence to support a correlation, it is intriguing to reflect on the similarities that exist between these biological, parasitical relationships, and the antagonistic relationships that exist between social classes which result in a dominated class exhibiting apparently self-destructive behavior vis-a-vis their exploiters. To be sure, there may even be a biological homology between parasitism and cultural hegemony.

However, though one may be tempted to find a cause for the zombification of people within biological processes, we must nevertheless resist the temptation to attribute contemporary zombie-ism to such environmental, genetic or strictly neurological factors. For as much as biological and subconscious determinants may be at play in the reproduction of ideologies, we must not overlook the fact that for the most part the things which influence our thoughts are, overwhelmingly, things we can control - and things which we are, therefore, responsible for. That is, the things that most influence us are not so much microscopic organisms, but those things which are - more than merely learned - intentionally taught (not least of which are floods of advertisements, ideology, and propaganda). Surrounding and immersing us in so-called consumer culture, this dogma is all around us. And, among other things, it is this dogmatism - and its corresponding lack of skepticism - that ensures that zombie and vampire "thought" is not able to rise much beyond the level of distraction and reflex - i.e., it hardly attains the level of thought at all.

Furthermore, it is vital to stress that everyone has a tendency, at least from time to time, to become a zombie, or a vampire (or, for those for whom being a zombie or a vampire is their primary mode, to from time to time become "human" - that is, to become not undead, but alive). In other words, though we have been distinguishing between the undead monsters and living humans, the zombies and vampires under consideration are still, after all, human beings. And not only is it a constitutive part of being human to at times become a monster, with even the most sensitive among us possessing the potential to at any moment carelessly slip into some monstrous extreme, humans may in fact be the only actual monsters anywhere.

Being sentient, however, and not being some member of the living dead, arguably means being able to catch and preclude this proclivity - just as it also means becoming cognizant of one's ability to disrupt the causal, inertial chain of everyday life and determine our own fate. In spite of this, however, our power and ability to determine ourselves is itself severely limited by the present political-economic system, which concentrates and attenuates power to monstrous degrees, deforming people into zombies and vampires.

In other words, irrespective of one's social role, no one is in essence a monster. However, the monstrous forms of work, among the other relations which possess us, deform us, and destroy our dignity and our health - not to mention the health of the world - is the vampire which reproduces vampires and zombies alike.

While we cannot at present explore all of the implications raised by the attempt to distinguish the vampire and the zombie from the human (such as responsibility, dignity, and many others), we can at least provisionally remark that the vampire and the zombie may be said to represent the extreme concentration, as well as the extreme lack, of social, economic, and political power. Considerations of the zombie and the vampire must lead us, therefore, to recognize the monstrous injustice that inheres in a system whose necessarily inequitable distributions of social, economic, and political power concentrates in one monstrous extreme what it deprives in the other.

That is, the problem of zombies and vampires is ultimately a problem of justice. And like the term value, which is related to health, it bears mentioning that justice - insofar as it is intrinsically related to balance - is also intimately related to the concept of health. Indeed, in many respects the concrete conditions of justice are even articulable as concrete conditions of health. Moreover, like the balance of health, which is not the balance of mere cancellation, justice requires the balance of distribution.

The corrective to the extremes of power that result in vampires and zombies is not, then, humanity (which, since we're all human, is effectively a meaningless term) but the elimination of both of the extremes of the dead, through the equitable distribution of the world of the living. This parasitic relationship of zombies and vampires has its corrective, then, not in the destruction of the parasite or the elimination of the host but, rather, in the replacement of the capitalist system (along with the other relations of domination) with not parasitic relations, but with a symbiotic social arrangement in which all may benefit - and justice, which is always possible, can be made actual.