/lit/ - Literature

>>12444189
>What would happen in this doomsday epidemic, if we were to push it even further, consciously, manufacture more weapons, create more global conflict, erode more cultures?
you'd get precisely what we have now, with one caveat: you will hear it reported as Did You See What Trump Did, or Can You Believe These Lefty Activists. you get either the Tucker Carlson Face or the smug grins of jackasses on TYT. you get a *pathological lack of compassion,* because being on camera fucking does this to people. as soon as you get the feeling that Millions Are Watching Around The World, you find yourself speaking as Millions Around The World are not in fact actual human beings, much like you. we can all be intoxicated with fame and celebrity. we all want to be stars - especially moral stars. none of us are.

but applause - uproarious love - is the rapture of the Last Man. *fame* and fame alone, we think, is what we want. after all, this is the age of the crowd, of the demos. God is Dead, the Ubermensch too, but at least there's - *us,* *this,* the crowd, the Great Benevolence. that's how the Romans thought also. fame, beauty, youth, wealth, happiness - find a flaw! and Wisdom, and all of this stuff. we want things to be All Right. but they aren't All Right. problems are *complicated.*

>>12444509
>You're projecting.
is this an argument?
>You're the only one who believes in utopia here.
nah. Gillette has already shown you what a market utopia looks like. i happen to think it's a preposterous and cynical one. every advertisement gives you a utopia in microcosm. that's how commodity fetishism works. every McDonald's you see on television in utopia in nuce. and those dreams become our own.

my problem is not believing in utopia, it's living in a world that cannot allow itself to live without them. that is what politics is: a priori thwarted utopias, and parades of the sad passions. Utopias are hard-wired into our thinking. they bring out the best, the worst, and the craziest in us. technocommercial ones are among the hardest to critique, because they tend to be the mirrors that show ourselves in them. hence the love for the nondual quietism. and the frustrations with it.

>>12444560
probably. but there may not be a forward, or the forward from here may lead only in the end to Thirty Years' War redux. or it may only lead around and around in circles - but hey, that's still forward too, technically.