BORN FREE
IN THE NEW WORLD ORDER
- COMING DIRECTLY TO YOUR FROM YOUR SMART
PHONE (i assume)
Summarizing (in fairly clear English)
Slavoj Žižek, gives a YouTube lecture that is relatively short, on freedom, and I will summarise
each paradigm within’ this blog
I sped the dialouge in the video up, obviously. Just reiterating.
I will also give some opinions or agree/disagree
However, first, I will present some quotes I love from Žižek so if you don’t know him this will give you some what of an introduction.
If you are unaware of the kind of philosopher Zizek s and what perspective he comes from (he is one of the great philosophers of our time and is still alive and is from Slovenia, which is a very forward-thinking area of the world in my opinion), hopefully, these quotes will give you an idea of who he is and his position politically.
He is a Marxist and probably an atheist of some kind, and he is a lover of German philosopher Hegel (Phenomenology of the Spirit), and psychologist Sigmund Freud (a love we share; Freud is very important in my opinion):
ZIZEK SAYS:
“Perversion is to be looked down upon, but hysteria is celebrated instead.”
“Bill Gates and Elon Musk are the truly dangerous ones in my opinion. All they want is socialism.”
“Experts are by definition the servants of those in power; they don’t really think, they just apply their knowledge to problems defined by the powerful.”
“The proper way for the woman to test the man’s love is thus to ‘betray’ him at a crucial moment in his career.”
“And this is what we should do today when we find ourselves bombarded with sensationalised images of violence, war and conflict. We need to “learn, learn, and learn” what causes this violence.”
“A BREAKTHROUGH HAS TO APPEAR AS EVIL FIRST. EVERYTHING IS EVIL IN IT’S FIRST STAGES”
- SLAVOJ ZIZEK: Giving a lecture on Adam and Eve, evil and knowledge at NYU. (With a feminist lecturer who (from what I could tell) lived in Brooklyn Williamsburg. She was the cause of it getting super white and politcally correct and causing all the interesting people to move to Austin or thereabouts)
A LETTER TO NYU BY VIVIAN V
DEAR NEW YORK UNIVERSITY CIRCA NINE YEARS AGO,
Can I just condemn you please NYU? Circa nine years ago, for having all men ask Zizek questions (which is fine) and then, as the last male asks a question, the speaker announces, “no sorry! There hasn’t been any females asking questions yet, so we will go with this woman here please…..Please this woman wants to ask a question…..shhh.” And I assume she has comes up to the mic and then she speaks, and I wasn’t watching just listening, and I hear a males voice again, and think, what the hell? Ohhhh because, it is a trans woman. So, no females asked questions that day. I have no dislike for the trans women, what I didn't like and what I found to be insulting and patornising about that incident, was that they made such a big deal out of allowing a female to ask a question and shir……..For it to not be a female.
Why is it ok for men to patornise women using transwomen as their weapon to do so? Because this is what that felt like it was. I can't help but feel its a new wave of mysogony.
Like, there are females in this room, but we are going to choose the woman who was born a male and make a big deal about allowing her to ask a question, but the woman born female, no we would never do this for you. You are females are all adults, you should have asked questions when you had the chance too. (Which I agree with......But doesn't that go for the transwoman as well? Don't you idiots or love equality and all that shit?). Love V xoxo
PREDATOR
(I was nine years ago!)
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Side note concerning the snake from Adam & Eve: I think that the tree of knowledge of good and evil, is misplaced in the Garden of Eden, obviously. Is it a portal? And if this is true, is the snake constantly sitting on the edge of good and evil? How horrible this would be.
I personally feel, I have sat on the edge of good and evil for a few weeks like the snake, and while it was (kind of) bliss, a lot of the time, there was something fundamentally wrong with this cautious feeling of bliss I was experiencing.
My Pre-Frontal Cortex (PFC), which is a very strong part of my brain that monitors actively all my actions and/or choices, was talking to me, but it had been turned down. Because little did I know, I was losing feeling in my Frontal Lobe (FL), dulling the voice of my PFC, as my FL slowly went numb. By the end of (I think around) one week, (I’m not sure though because I was fast losing track of time), I felt like I had a hole in my brain, on the left side (my left side) of my head, just above my head to the front a little (my FL).
It was so obscene, I remember texting a friend and saying, “I have a hole in my head lol.”
In any case, this I can’t prove to you, you just must believe in the authenticity of my words, which I don’t expect you to do.
By and large, because it had dulled the usually very active part of my life and body, my PFC, things started going down-hill very fast after that. I ended up in the ultimate place of knowledge and good and evil yet again, where the snake sat that day when the snake met Eve. Sitting on the tree of knowledge of good and evil, in psychosis, slowly being pulled down to hell by the evil of my spirit. (I don’t expect you to believe this either, but it happened).
If you have ever been in a psychosis and remembered it, you would understand what I mean, but maybe never likened it to Adam and Eve (lol) metaphor/snake metaphor. I love metaphor.
There is a room in The Vatican, where the pope goes every week to worship his and their God, or whatever. The room is dominated by the snake. The snake is gliding over the top of the church ceiling in a beautiful stained-glass artwork, and the snake’s fangs are spearing down into the sides of the stage, which is where the Pope sits, in the middle of the fangs. Behind the Pope, there is a huge (in my opinion) ugly big sculpture of what looks like Jesus raising from the dead or hell maybe, and there are all these dark figures trying to pull him back down(that was my soul during this process, and the snake was my PFC). I assume and what it looks like, is the snake is freeing Jesus from hell, like the snake freed Adam and Eve from Paradise……. I don’t know that’s what I conclude.
Long story short even though it’s already long (it was the wrong guy-aiaiaiiiii…..You will only get that if you are a really big Taylor Swift fan soz), I was raised up from evil thanks to the strong reason of my PFC, and my soul at this point, is so used to listening to it, it did in the end. It rebelled at first a few times, but luckily it was talked sense into, and I came out of this hell that I had got myself into. (It was circumstantial).
How did this start: Short answer, ALOT OF EMOTIONAL PAIN. Maybe the worst melancholy and emotional pain I’ve ever been in, in my life, in very short time (5 seconds until psychosis started). It came on very fast, and I believe I probably have PTSD from it, because I’m still recovering two years later.
Since then, the snake has always been a point of fascination for me in the parable of Adam and Eve and particularly the relationship between Eve and the Snake. My Reflection called Predator (Conwell 2024), has me explaining a six-year period of my life in which I was at war, metaphorically likening it to the relationship between Eve and the Snake and the Snake’s relationship with reality. I’m featuring a reading of it by Samantha, a partitioned audio book reading of my non-ficton reflection called Predator, on this podcast, chapter by chapter over the next two monthes. I only write non-fiction. I have done one chapter, a few out of order here and there, but starting from one and going through not until the end. It’s not finished yet, well maybe it is. You tell me.
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SLAVOJ ZIZEK ON DIFFERENT PARAGDIGMS OF FREEDOM
(video for this lecture can be found on YouTube and watched before or after. It’s of no matter)
A explanation of Slavoj Zizek’s explanation, from my perspective (however, I tried to just interpret it with no bias, if I have an opinion I will state that before I write it and you can choose to read it or not. Comment freely but not free(you must be a member to comment), if you agree or not with me or Zizek)
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INTRODUCTION - THE SLAVOJ ZIZEK HOW TO BECOME FREE LECTURE & BLOG ABSTRACT BY VIVIAN V
Zizek’s main point over all, seems to be that freedom has rules one must abide by in order to truly be free. Which is an ironic or self-contradictory point, and I think Zizek enjoys this about it.
I personally, have understood this for some time, however I have never explicitly thought about it in so many plain words, but I would always agree feverishly that discipline is freedom. Because it is! I felt it and it was beautiful. It was the beginning of my main breakdown/breakthrough I think, experiencing freedom in such a free-less existence. “I was milk without the cream.”
However, discipline allowed me to just be black coffee for a short moment or two and it was nice. Xanax, used to give me this feeling also and it used to corrupt me with power and evil-ness.
What kind of freedom do I dream of? Usually the freedom of a man. And a man may say to me he doesn’t feel free, but I would reply that from observing a man’s life in comparison to mine, the man seems more free.
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Paradigm 1. FREEDOM AND LANGUAGE
Great artists, philosophers, and poet’s, especially poets, have a beautiful way of saying so much without saying the actual main point of the thing they are saying. This is usually in protest to something bigger than the person, poet, musician, artist, who is saying the beautiful metaphor non-main point thing (lol)
I was reviewing a Kanye West track called Promlematic, and one line stood out to me and made me ponder millions of words, it goes,
“I just fucked the world raw, she need a morning after……..But then the morning after……”
The multiple dots represent the time Kanye takes in-between singing the first line and the second line, as written. The second line he sings, isn’t as confident and powerful as the first line he sings. The second line is sung with an almost defeatist sounding voice. Like, things didn’t go as the way I wanted or WORSE, as Zizek is stating, they are going the way Kanye wanted.
Zizek toys with the idea that decisions have to be concrete, “do or die,” to embody true freedom. Although, freedom comes at a cost. That cost is called, massive responsibility. And not many of us are willing to take on the responsibility of our “freedom of choices.”
Kanye fucked the world raw, what did he expect? You do that, and if you are a fertile male, you are likely to knock the world up. And sure, you can ask the world to take a morning after pill, but what if the world leaves you hanging. What if the world decides, “nah, Im going to have this baby.” However, the world is your side bitch, and you are married man with four children waiting at home.
OR WORSE, as Zizek states, what if she does take the morning after pill (what Kanye wanted), because she don’t want to have your baby, then reports the incident as rape, because she never gave you consent to…..
You see where I’m going with this.
Many, many, paths….
I guess you can see how many words I already have got out of those two beautifully sung lines of language.
Zizek states that people don’t want the responsibility of freedom when push comes to shove. They really just want to be validated BY ANYONE, that the thing they are doing that is most comfortable (probably for their ego), is the right thing to do. Most people are unknowingly not free and never will be, brutally controlled by their ego. If you are controlled, you are not free. Even by yourself.
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Paradigm 2. CAN WE CHANGE THE PAST?
We change the past by constantly re-interpreting it through art. Contingency. The French revolution.
Zizek is saying that science has been pretty convinced that freedom of choice doesn’t exist. Most people’s choices are determined by something, usually environmental or nuture, aspects of our childhood and then into our adult lives.
Made stronger by Libet (1916) when he famously did an experiment using the scientific method, in which he would ask a random participant to push a button seemingly to their own contingency (random event, unpredictable in nature aka free will), and every time they did, there would be a slight pause in their brain half way to making the decision, and then the decision was made.
Libet, used this to prove that if a small choice like pushing a button is controlled by the neuronal processes of our brains before we make the choice, this cancels out any evidence any one human lives with free will. Because, it is the neurons in our brain making the decision not our free will. Zizek rebuts this, and I tend to agree with him.
Mostly because, I would think that a person’s neuronal processes is still them, therefore it is still technically a choice made out of THEIR free will, if no outside forces are controlling it.
Zizek rebuts somewhat differently. He uses the example of Shakespeare. Stating that Hamlet should not be seen as a work of art at face value, because we have been re-creating Hamlet for many years since Shakespeare first wrote it. The re-creation of this work, has added meaning upon meaning to it until today, we now have a piece of art because of the re-interpretation of it. But in the re-creation of this work, in all kinds of abstract ways across cultures, we are inevitably changing the past. I believe this is Zizek’s main point.
Concluding then that we can’t scientifically change the past, but we literally can. (Whatever that means).
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Paradigm 3. WHY IS FEMINISM SO DIVERSE?
This question is answered by Zizek, first using a joke as the leading metaphor to make his point. (uh oh). The joke is not at all funny, and It’s in some German film I never heard of.
It’s used to describe feminism’s “symbolic impact” on women, and feminists over the years.
A man walks into a café and asks for “coffee without cream,” and the waitress replies, something along the lines of, “we don’t have coffee without cream. This is because, we don’t have any cream. However, we have milk, so you can have coffee without milk?”
And I guess this is the punch line.
But how on earth does Zizek use this random, un-funny, yet slightly witty (if I have to say something good about it), joke, to describe feminism?
Well, very competently actually.
He is using the original black coffee as a metaphor for being a human woman. And the cream and milk, as all the variations of this woman, or of the different embodiments of what a woman can or more so, CANNOT be.
Meaning that Feminism IS always taking preference to focus on what could have been, but is not, time after time. This is symbolically, and literally, how feminists see their lives as women since becoming feminists. Feminists, tend to see their lives as symbolically a life, “without milk,” or, “without cream.”
I assume, he is concluding that this is not a productive way to be, and it is a form of self- imprisonment, Maybe, the reason why women, or feminists, have been getting more crazy and angry over the years, since attaining some freedom in the 1960’s. The being without mind frame, is seen as a loss, obviously, by the feminist. A loss is never satisfying for anyone.
Zizek goes on to use the example of scientists, who for the most part are determinists. Yet, the very nature in which they argue with each other and rebut each other’s ideas, is symbolically an act of freedom.
Freedom of speech and thought.
He doesn’t explicitly link feminist to this analogy, probably to stay on the safe side of all those angry women “without,” coming at him. However, I assume what he is concluding is that feminists are also able to freely express they are “without cream” or “without milk” etc. And by this fact, they are already exhibiting the freedom in which they continue to protest they are “without.”
This is a great philosophical conclusion, because it offers the audience a lot more interesting questions to ponder about women and feminism along with it. He also doesn’t conclude with any matter or fact answers with this feminist question. This is because, I assume, he is a male, and by restrictions of being a male when it comes to this topic, his “facts” about feminism shouldn’t really exist, let alone be expressed. So, he is smart by doing this and respectful to women and feminism.
However, I get the feeling he wants them to quit moaning now.
Do I agree?
I’d like feminism to progress further than is has already today. Feminism, has the theorists waiting to progress it, but most of the time feminism rejects these progressive theorists, thus failing to progress feminism. For example, theorists like Luce Irigaray and her Difference Feminism.
Feminism, has the opportunity to set women free with Irigaray’s hypotheses, and I’d go as far as saying, her tested theories on difference have been significantly measured and shown that this way of thinking about women and men, will work in solving the gender war, if we implement is more strongly in society. It will set women free, if they aren’t already free, which let’s face it, its Zizek’s stance.
However, this is not the pathway feminism is willing to take responsibility for yet. The feminist movement today would rather dwell on the past (but I do not blame them for this, but feminism does it in a conservative way and we need progression). Feminists preferring to take the #metoo style pathway for now, which is basically preferring to stay as an embodiment of “coffee without cream.”
And this is why personally, I no longer identify as a feminist.
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Paradigm 4. LIBERTY AND FREEDOM
HIEGEL - ABTRACT AND CONCRETE FREEDOM
Freedom is conditional. Which technically is again a contradiction to the notion of freedom of as we understand it.
Liberty is the ability to live “freely” within the society you belong too.
Zizek first makes a distinction between what liberty is and what Hegel’s “concrete freedom” is. Concrete freedom, is the freedom we mostly practice today. It is freedom lived under the rules of the law and of the social norms which the people set for themselves. It’s a somewhat controlled freedom, that most people enjoy.
Liberally, one can say things like, “I don’t like vaccinations because I don’t have the freedom to choose.” However, taking the liberty to have your vaccinations, is giving other people the ability to live freely in a world without disease and therefore, it is the right thing to do, free or not. This again, an example of concrete freedom.
A good and even more modern example of this freedom, is Jordan Peterson’s rebellion against the Canadian government, concerning transgender people and the laws that were introduced forcing people to refer to transgender people the way they want to be referred to.
(I assume either as man or woman, despite their assigned gender at birth. And I also not to be abused verbally, would be part of it, which I know Canada has had issues with when it comes to minorities in the past. The last government before that, was not treating trans people or sex workers well. She was making their lives very dangerous to live, by putting so many restrictions on sex work, we had an influx of Canadian girls come to Australia. (Sex work is a job a lot of transgender people were forced to do in Canada, because no one in 9-5 jobs would hire them, and back then there were probably no transgender brothels, so the streets where their first and last choice of hustle. This obviously comes with many dangers that escorts never have to face).
Peterson argues that this law takes away his freedom of speech and I assume choice. However, the bigger picture says to me, so I am restricted to not hate on a minority by law, well fine, I wouldn’t do that even if I didn’t have those restrictions/laws in place, so I can’t see the harm in it. I can only see the good that underlines it. However, it is of my opinion that the more restrictions put on people by law will cause more rebellion of that law. Restrictions = chaos, this has been demonstrated time after time. And it is of my opinion this is because if a corrupt system brings in restrictions on their people it is not for the good, and this essence of the corruption is felt by the people and causes resentment and therefore a chaotic system.
However, Peterson was more focused on his loss than the loss of others in his rebellion against it but this speaks to my point, the discrimination have even got worse once this law came in and this may have been the secret point of bringing in the law in the first place. Judging by Canada’s past governments, I wouldn’t be surprised.
Nonetheless, Peterson didn’t see the liberty in the implementation of this law, he wanted to exert his freedom over it.
But is true freedom when “called to action,” more important than the liberty of concrete freedom itself? I guess this all depends.
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Paradigm 4. FALSE FREEDOM
This is about “big brother” basically. The utopian Metaverse, Cryptocurrency, China ect. Zizek is not a futurist thank God, but he might be overally cautious about technology, he’s probably right about cryptocurrency. Cryrptocurrency, probably is this perceived anonymous currency option that they are using to highly regulate everyone.
Tech talk in philosophy does bore me at this point, I haven’t got to a place with it yet where it has sparked any interest in me yet.
AI singularity interests me, I really wanted to write a sci-fi about it called E.V.E. Where humans are Adam, God is maybe the Earth, the snake is still the snake, and the red apple is…..
I don’t know, P Diddy? It isn’t a book I will write.
In any case, Zizek doesn’t like where the economy is heading, he is very pessimistic about it and a self-proclaimed neurotic to the core. So, this is a typical opinion probably about “new things” by neurotic people. I am neurotic, but I’m not so much a pessimist, but more of an ACTUALIST. I might be a techno-pessimist.
ANYWAY.
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Paradigm 5. CYNICAL REASON
This paradigm reminded me of the step in NA that I was on when I decided to give it a break. It was step 6 and it is, We were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
Zizek explains, that cynical reason is when we know what we are doing wrong and how to fix it, yet we do nothing. Even going as far as to display in large ways that we know EXACTLY what is going on, publicly, yet we still do nothing.
This also reminds me of Q anon and that crew. The idea is there and the solution even, yet no one from that crew is winning a Nobel Peace Prize anytime soon. In fact, I foresee a lot more losing than winning from that crew in the future.
Zizek uses art as a scapegoat for this behaviour, he tends to pick on artists and poets, but there are much more obvious examples of cynical reason in the world in my opinion. Perhaps, that’s the white guy philosopher in him? I only say that because, Socrates picked on artists in The Republic. Philosophers tend to have issue with artists. It might come down to something as juvenile as competition. They are all men after all.
Not that women aren’t competitive, of course they are, but men are just lower in emotional intelligence is my point.
NEXT!
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Paradigm 6 – FALSE PEACE
Acts of charity will never be enough. Because it is a cure and not a prevention and obviously prevention is better than cure. Zizek also explains that it can be used as a means of corruption to hinder other cultures while benefiting from it.
We need to work together universally to put a stop to things like immigration, hunger, sexism, child slavery and dictatorship etc. We know this but we aren’t going to do it because power is more of a priority for most of those who hold the power, more than “peace.” If you haven’t awaken to this fact yet, well I don’t know what to say….
Im all for dropping out of university these days, if you want to, usually it is a better idea. But got those who think peace is the war on terrorism or Ukraine winning a war against Russia (say that sentence 10 times in a row before you have one more opinion on it), or allowing immigrant into your country. Please, go back to school. This is what Zizek would explain as false peace.
Peace = What is causing immigration? How can we stop that and so on. The root cause, not the side effect of the root cause. That’s too temporary to be crowned as an act of peace.
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Paradigm 7. VLADIMIR PUTIN’S PHILOSOPHY
Zizek says he is a danger to the world. Makes sense.
Any person or group opposing the American Government or system right now seems to be the more dangerous system now. It is becoming clear, that this could be part of the new world order’s plan. I have believed this about Donald Trump and his “fight” against the CIA. His very PUBLIC fight against the CIA that seems to make him more and more popular.
PROPAGANDA.
It is a beast, and it is coming for you, well it has come for you and now it’s your job to break free from it. Good luck because it’s basically impossible unless you get lucky and then when you break free from it, you got a chance in hell those around you also will, so there’s only so much you can do as one person, if anything. So, you must sit back and observe the destruction unfold before you. Or you can also, like Lenin, go away and, “Learn! Learn! Learn!”
This has been my choice, and I’ve accepted that I will be hated mostly because I see past the propaganda. I’ve been thinking about starting a propaganda style band for the west. Like Laibach, but for the west. Make humour out of the very serious and fucked fact that the west think we are not under a fascist regime.
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Paradigm 8 - THE WAR IN UKRAINE
“Not a cold war, now it is hot peace”
See video for the last thoughts. PODCAST W LE KITTY MURRERERERERERRRRR
vivian v xoxoxox
Copyright Danica Conwell 2024 All Rights Reserved
Music by First Aid Kit, M.I.A, The Knife
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