PROPAGANDA NOW. ’Every day our cause becomes clearer and people get smarter’[1]
“One of the most remarkable characteristics of human nature,” writes Lotze, “is, alongside so much selfishness in specific instances, the freedom from envy which the past displays towards the future.” Reflection shows us that our image of happiness is thoroughly coloured by the time to which the course of our own existence has assigned us. The kind of happiness that could arouse envy in us exists only in the air we have breathed, among people we could have talked to, women who could have given themselves to us. In other words, our image of happiness is indissolubly bound up with the image of redemption. The same applies to our view of the past, which is the concern of history. The past carries with it a temporal index by which it is referred to redemption. There is a secret agreement between past generations and the present one. Our coming was expected on earth. Like every generation that preceded us, we have been endowed with a weak Messianic power to which the past has a claim. That claim cannot be settled cheaply. Historical materialists are aware of that.[2]
WITHOUT LOVE BEAUTY AND DANGER IT WOULD ALMOST BE EASY TO LIVE[3]
The news item’s role is probably that of preserving within contemporary society the ambiguity of the rational and the irrational, the comprehensible and unfathomable; and this ambiguity is historically necessary as man still needs signs (which reassure him) but also signs which are uncertain in content (which make him irresponsible…)
This is a twilight condition of consciousness: neither high noon nor tender night. And precisely for this reason our relationship with mass culture is itself interminable. There can be no conclusion or certainty, where the very structure of communication has founded the reign of perplexity, of dissociation, of procrastination ‘The consumers relation with the real world, with politics, history and culture is not one of interest, investment or engaged responsibility — rather, it is one of curiosity … One must try everything: in fact man in consumer society is tormented by the fear of ‘missing’ something, any enjoyment whatsoever … It is no longer desire or even taste or specific inclination that is in play, it is a generalised curiosity motivated by a widespread anxiety’ — the all pervasive anxiety of Riesman’s radar-man, always ready to pick up signals from the outside world and, especially, always uncertain as regards their decipherment. This is no longer the anxiety described in ‘Beyond The Pleasure Principle’, which was motivated by the fear of trauma, that is, by the conviction that the outside world is fundamentally hostile to the individual. It is no longer the state of mind of one who lives in the constant expectation of danger: it is the anxiety of always feeling on the verge of — but only on the verge of — finally grasping the object of desire, the meaning of life, the rules of the game.[4]
COMPOSITIONS
illuminated
Dream Within a Dream
“the most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all it’s contents”[5]
The Murder Of Love
“…the idea of crime is able always to ignite the senses and lead us the lubricity”[6]
DUEL JEWEL
“the imagination is like an engine that can work on many different fuels: but it must be powered, and sex, properly used, is a fuel of high potency”
P MACHINERY
“the dark religions are departed and sweet Science reigns”[7]
Sorry For Laughing
“…always two strangers uniting in the interests of torment”[8]
Dr. Mabuse (The First Life)
“the greater an individual’s power over others, the greater the evil that might possibly originate with him”
The Chase
“reliance on powers of reason does not come easily: it is opposed to our basic animal instinct”
THE LAST WORD
“the comtemplation of the world independently of the principle of reason”[9]
The Strength to Dream
“…so it is”
ZTTIQ 3 Action No. 13 ‘beauty love and danger’
ZTTIQ 3 Action No. 13 ‘repetition plus variation’
Footnotes
Die Religion der Sozialdemokratie by Wilhelm Dietzgen ↩
Theses on the Philosophy of History by Walter Benjamin (1940) ↩
La Nauśse by Albert Camus (1938) ↩
Signs Taken for Wonders: On the Sociology of Literary Forms by Franco Moretti (1983) ↩
The Call of Cthulhu by H.P. Lovecraft (1928) ↩
The 120 Days of Sodom by Marquis de Sade (1904) ↩
Vala, or The Four Zoas by William Blake (1807) ↩
Comment c’est by Samuel Beckett (1961) ↩
Arthur Schopenhauer ↩