Feb 2008

Censorship Today: Violence,
or Ecology as a New Opium for the Masses - Part I

ziztilton3

by SLAVOJ ZIZEK

In spite of the infinite adaptability of capitalism which, in the case of an acute ecological catastrophe or crisis, can easily turn ecology into a new field of capitalist investment and competition, the very nature of the risk involved fundamentally precludes a market solution - why? Capitalism only works in precise social conditions: it implies the trust into the objectivized/"reified" mechanism of the market's "invisible hand" which, as a kind of Cunning of Reason, guarantees that the competition of individual egotisms works for the common good.

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Censorship Today: Violence,
or Ecology as a New Opium for the Masses - Part II

ziztilton2

by SLAVOJ ZIZEK

The horror of the Chernobyl accident resides in the fact that when one visits the site, with the exception of the sarcophagus, things look exactly the same as before, life seems to have deserted the site, leaving everything the way it is, and nonetheless we are aware that something is terribly wrong. The change is not at the level of the visible reality itself, it is a more fundamental one, it affects the very texture of reality. No wonder there are some lone farmers around the Chernobyl site who continued to lead their lives as before - they simply ignore all the incomprehensible talk about radiations.

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