Rethinking
I've been reading Žižek lately - not terribly familiar with Lacan so a lot of what the man has to say goes over my head and I have to look up definitions and positions and such, but overall I like him, with one exception being his references to and utilization of classical music to explain a point. These references are sometimes muddled and - as with Shostakovich - completely contradicted by evidence he either ignores or is ignorant of. But whatevs, you know. The people that he intellectually demolishes are smarter than I ever have any hope of being, so I have to really nitpick here.
Anyway, I stumbled across this article which he wrote shortly after Obama was elected. I wanted to highlight this paragraph which sums up his views on Cynicism:
The position of the cynic is that he alone holds some piece of terrible, unvarnished wisdom. The paradigmatic cynic tells you privately, in a confidential low-key voice: “But don’t you get it that it is all really about (money/power/sex), that all high principles and values are just empty phrases which count for nothing?” What the cynics don’t see is their own naivety, the naivety of their cynical wisdom that ignores the power of illusions.
This resonates with me because, while I haven't undergone a religious conversion - or maybe reawakening is a better word - over the past several years like a few of my friends, I have definitely experienced an abandonment of a lot of anger and cynicism which I now see to have been rooted in precisely the kinds of thought processes that, as a cynic, I professed to abhor: naivety, delusion, and all that. Obviously, I use the word "experienced" specifically because I believe that this shift in focus is akin to a spiritual experience, an unveiling of sorts which has made me perhaps a bit more frightened of the future but also more hopeful. Or, you know, maybe the mood stabilizers are working in earnest.
Anyway, just thought I'd share.
Anyway, I stumbled across this article which he wrote shortly after Obama was elected. I wanted to highlight this paragraph which sums up his views on Cynicism:
The position of the cynic is that he alone holds some piece of terrible, unvarnished wisdom. The paradigmatic cynic tells you privately, in a confidential low-key voice: “But don’t you get it that it is all really about (money/power/sex), that all high principles and values are just empty phrases which count for nothing?” What the cynics don’t see is their own naivety, the naivety of their cynical wisdom that ignores the power of illusions.
This resonates with me because, while I haven't undergone a religious conversion - or maybe reawakening is a better word - over the past several years like a few of my friends, I have definitely experienced an abandonment of a lot of anger and cynicism which I now see to have been rooted in precisely the kinds of thought processes that, as a cynic, I professed to abhor: naivety, delusion, and all that. Obviously, I use the word "experienced" specifically because I believe that this shift in focus is akin to a spiritual experience, an unveiling of sorts which has made me perhaps a bit more frightened of the future but also more hopeful. Or, you know, maybe the mood stabilizers are working in earnest.
Anyway, just thought I'd share.