Schadenfreude

Eros

Incognito

Video-sketch, later to be included in the compendium ‘Radical Insecurity’ (work in progress)

Daniel O’Reilly, 2011

On the fear of debating the subject of ‘Eugenics’

Summary: a short essay outlining not any particular eugenic theory, but a critique on the fear of discussing eugenics post-Nazi Germany. Brief outline below:

Eugenics means ‘well-born’ (Grk). Let us ensure our debate, also, is well-born. A sufficient, concise definition of ‘Eugenics.’

1)     Eugenics is a branch of technics. The one will not proceed without the other. The relation between bodies and technology is already well-established and ‘improvements’ already take place widely. Therefore, to fear any debate about eugenics is to leave eugenics entirely in the hands of scientists; despite our lack of debate, scientists have made eugenic developments, a number of which have been endorsed by governments. Without debate, can we decide?

2)     Eugenics and ‘Nazism’ are not essentially tied. We may as well condemn ‘neoclassical architecture’, ‘vegetarianism’ or ‘romantic painting’ by the same token. If the stigma of Nazism is forever associated with eugenic thought and is therefore never thought without fear of castigation, (or, more likely, internal censorship prevents constructive thought,) then eugenic debate will be stunted and will not develop at the same speed as eugenic science. Presumably this would be the more dangerous/foolhardy option? Fear of Eugenics is bad-faith – demonstrate how eugenic processes are currently developing – and how neglecting to engage with this subject means that we are more likely to become part of a eugenics programme without knowing it.

3)     How are eugenics and morality tied? Look at Christian ‘eugenics’ – the breeding programme excludes incest, is always exclusively heterosexual and demands the birth of children. Children are bred into Christian morality, which defends the Christian eugenic programme. Contrast with Greek sexual relations. We are not so strict any longer – but does that mean we do not have a eugenic model, (if only a hangover from the Christian model)? Which breeding programmes are employed in late-capitalism/consumerism? What are the benefits or dangers? Nietzsche and cosmopolitanism – against the anti-semite.

4)     The concept ‘improvement’. Who is to judge what constitutes an improvement or a desirable human future? Who is to judge what constitutes a defect? Is that really the only avenue for eugenic development – that of physical, naïve ‘improvement’? Hence my argument that there should be real, constructive and fearless debate about eugenics, and philosophers should be encouraged to enter this debate. Will ‘purely’ scientific criteria suffice? How to defend against prejudice dressed up as scientific criteria? And would ‘moral’ debate be out of place or any less subject to error?

5)     Racial discrimination. Is ‘Eugenics’ a synonym of ‘Racism’? Discuss, and in particular, focus on bad faith, ressentiment, portrait of an anti-semite. Must eugenics be a consensual process, and be non-judgmental of groups? Must it be defined exclusively on an individual basis – and could this be said to be eugenics?

6)     Benefit of debate. If we open up the discussion, we will be better equipped to define what constitutes race, improvement and ultimately, Man.

 

Manorexia

When I started this project I made a great deal of initial investment, but recently I started losing interest on it, and I really don’t understand why. I never sought to accrue any capital. I just wanted to speak. Because somehow, I have forgotten how to speak, or if I have not forgotten altogether, it is only that I speak on the inside where words act against themselves and their author.

I have been sitting here for thirty-one years now, forgetting how to speak. Not the actual words themselves, but their discharge. This is not proper forgetting, however. My speech is merely inaudible, that’s all – a sub-vocal movement of the larynx, where words produce no witnesses. I do not need to speak. The whole world speaks for me so that I can say ‘nothing’ – and not even that. No thing. But I do remember; I have the most prodigious memory! I can remember each and every occasion when I took offence – and I remember these things because I did nothing. I remember how I did nothing; I remember the exact circumstances why I did nothing. A great many memories of nothing. And this process has made me ever so sensitive! The slightest trace generates a painful sensation and registers a memory. My consciousness is but a machine for the manufacture of such pains, a ‘squalid workshop’, if you will. It positively reeks of productivity – it smells of a productive man…

[burp] Mine is a voice separated from what it can say. Instead of verbal diarrhea – where the mouth is confused with the hyperactive anus – I have verbal anorexia. A mouth which denies, a stomach that rejects – all plumbed in to an arsehole that does nothing. But do not mistake this modified digestive tract for laziness; oh no. I am what is called a ‘productive man’ – a whole set of organs arranged around a principle of productivity. Such abstinence gives a productive man an ever-increasing zeal for his labour – to this end, we could indeed say that the most celebrated, industrious men of our age are complete arseholes…

A great retention of painful details, locked behind an unbreakable code of secrecy; that is the moral prejudice nay, the entire meaning of my being. To put it another way, I possess an encyclopaedic knowledge of my failure to act – ‘impotence’ they call it – and that scuppered discharge results in an asphyxiated anus-mouth. Furthermore, all the lineaments and sinews of my face have been trained never to betray this knowledge. And the resulting grotesque sculpted in my features, nothing but the circus animal who aims to please lest it be beaten. This emotion, if it really deserved a name, would named ‘despair’. I have noticed however, that it has a far more common name. It is called ‘happiness’.

Despite all this highly technical knowledge I possess about my soul there is however something that I feel compelled to do – something that I instinctively know would not be good for me. I don’t quite understand why, but I find the idea irresistible. I need to get rid of ‘the good’ – the idea, I mean. Quite why my instinct tells me to reject this basic moral unit is open to question, but somehow, I feel that asking this question would in itself be more valuable – or at least more interesting – than trying to be good. Trying to be good, as part of a daily regime, has all but ruined my digestion…

 

Video, Economy & Fetish (Initial considerations)

Two conceptualisations of the development of video in the production of motion-pictures:

i) Video is a purely economic development over film which greatly reduces waste, capital investment, storage, shipping and distribution costs. Thus film, as the material fetish par excellence of late capitalism, (having supplanted painting of that distinction,) is converted into a nostalgic form – indeed the word ‘film’ no longer refers to its material substance, but is a shorthand for motion picture. For the audience, there is no longer any need for a theatre: motion pictures can be plumbed directly into the home – the medium is deprived of its voyeuristic connotations – no longer must we sit in a darkened room, surrounded by people, watching the flicker on the screen. We may watch ‘films’ at home, without cost, or on mobile devices wherever we choose. We can produce ‘films’ at almost no cost and screen them ourselves on our social networks. The mode of production of the motion picture has been taken from studio, the powerful executive petit-bourgeoisie, the multi-million dollar deals, the ‘stars’. The industrial process of motion pictures, whilst still in existence due to its economic power, has ended – has been decentralised by technical development and now lies in the hands of those who choose to make and distribute motion pictures – budget is no longer a consideration of all-importance.

ii) Video is not merely a digital analogue of film; it is an entirely new medium with an entirely different mode of production. Inasmuch as the studios still shoot videos as though they were films, even printing videos onto film for projection, with evermore vast budgets and returns, screen them in cinemas and cast expensive actors in the lead roles, does not necessitate the correlation between film and video – perhaps this is more a mere antiquation or nostalgia for what has passed – the great ages of the motion picture. We should remember at this point how the motion picture struggled to free itself from theatrical forms in its infancy until such pioneers as Griffith, Murnau, Hitchcock, Godard, etc., demonstrated the qualities of film that are incommensurable with theatre – pure cinema, it was called. So we must see it with video. Our nostalgia for the great ages of the motion picture – its birth, its ‘purest forms’, its deconstruction and new-waves – most not be allowed to linger too long in the conceptual phases of video as an entirely different medium. We must reconsider the linear timeline, synchronisation between sound and image, the acquisition of footage, distribution and perception of the image in this new mode of production.  We must even reconsider the notion of audience, the division of labour and the mode of the spectacle that video, in combination with the internet, has created and how the form of the motion picture must be defined by these altered considerations in the medium.

Note for secondary considerations:

i) A philosophic inquiry into linear temporality aganist non-linear production/distribution

ii) The concept of authenticity in a climate of ‘sharing’

iii) Dispensation with the division of labour (i.e. director, screenwriter, actor, etc.)

iv) What happens to sexual pleasure, i.e. voyeurism, fetish, in the viewing of motion pictures in the age of the internet? Are those pleasures sublimated still further or are they relocated in items such as webcams (portable keyholes) or hardware (and its virtual ‘speed’)?

v) Antagonism between social connectedness in internet video and social isolation/the independent author. (Remote locations against social networks.)

Initial Thoughts on Technics and Nihilism

If we consider there to be any credence whatsoever in Nietzsche’s concept of nihilism, which is at first the belief in nothing as though it were something, (i.e. God, Truth, Absolute Values,) and second being the way in which these highest values hitherto devalue themselves, (i.e. pursuit of truth in science leads to the denial of God’s existence, which leads to total moral relativism and the decline of absolute values,) must we likewise consider that our techne, our technological know-how and development, has been fuelled by nihilism, has a nihilism of values built into it, and will perpetuate nihilism? Will such technological nihilism devalue, by necessity, the value of Man?

Let us consider Artificial Intelligence. AI might be the panacea of humankind, of a humanity too exhausted to continue and which thus produces a labour-saving device to continue at our behest. AI as a symptom of exhaustion?

Well, not necessarily. Inasmuch as the dynamics of the Will to Power lead us to look at human reason as a major development in the way in which Nature perfects itself, (i.e. out of the unreason of Nature comes reason, and with this reason embodied in living organisms, Nature itself is effected by the products of reason – such as the invention of the machine – which in turn will inevitably lead to such processes as evolution being exponentially sped-up or even outmoded,) therefore AI would represent human reason, and therefore Nature, arriving at a method of perfecting itself exponentially more quickly.

But human reason has not perfected itself pure-and-simple, according to Nietzsche. Though we have been prodigious in our mastery of techne, the question “What for?” can theoretically lead to some embarrassing answers, and this may in turn be directly connected to nihilism. For instance, if a ‘slave revolt in morality’ is an accurate description of what has happened since the time of Socrates until the present day, and if this has lead to the negation of the values of life in favour of Absolute Value [God], and this in turn has lead to the negation of God as a value – and consequently leads to the devaluation of everything else, (meaning that, if God determined all values, and God disappeared one day, then He would take all values to His grave and man would either need to face up to his nihilism and his foolishness, or replace God with something else just to fill the terrible void – perhaps the current avatar is the theory of Natural Rights?) then our ‘What for?’ is a question to be asked in fear and trembling.

But of course, our ‘What for?’ is not asked with existential gravitas. The void of God, of Truth, of Absolute Value, is not acknowledged. Even so-called ‘Christians’ feel comfortable with re-interpreting God’s presumably perfect laws, (i.e. adultery, gay priests, homosexual marriages, birth control, capital punishment, equality between sexes, etc,) in order to suit the times – as Kierkegaard so rightly observed – and refuse to acknowledge the resulting moral relativism that issues as a direct consequence of this. (Many ‘modern’ Christians do not even consider it a little presumptuous to reinterpret God’s laws.) What I mean is, if we substitute one ‘Absolute Value’, does this not necessarily entail the relativity of all value? And is moral relativity compatible with our culture and our societies? Of course not. A table of  semi-stable laws are drawn-up and enforced by authorities who are free to change them. Nothing sustains these values but the institutions in which they are enshrined – and of course, the fact that the world’s leaders also happen to still be religious…(moral relativism is still instituted by the quasi-devout hypocrite.)

What is to be done with the shady business of values in a world in which techne forges ever-increasing relations to life? Is it possible that techne can develop in a detached fashion from our moral and our axiological inadequacies? Would the Artificial Intelligence that we develop have our nihilism built into it? Would we instil cardinal, unassailable values into our machines, (i.e. the value of human life, the value of progress, the value of capital, the value of equality,) – values that have a shady background, values that are not in themselves unquestionable? Would we permit these machines the value of philosophy – of asking such difficult questions – and would we therefore permit them our ‘What for?’ Would we build our own exhaustion into a labour-saving device?

It would be awful to post a commentary like this without including some kind of hypothesis. Nietzsche did not reject nihilism – he considered it to be a necessary and unavoidable consequence of man’s institution of absolute, otherworldly values. I reckon that nihilsm ought to be affirmed – if not only because passive, covert nihilism, (the nihilism of the religious man, of the quasi-religious man, of the man that refuses to acknowledge moral relativism and abides by the laws of authorities without asking where their power of authority comes from,) constitutes a great refusal to look at the complexities inherent in any system of value or truth and imposes a false simplicity upon very complex, human matters. Affirming that values are not simple – and if they appear simple, it is because of a ‘compact lie’ – is a positive step toward independent thinking. If we are to posit values and become legislators ourselves, as Nietzsche envisaged might one day be possible – perhaps only two-thousand years from now, our systems of value must be challenged. Techne, which moves with prodigious alacrity, will necessarily develop more quickly than human values – and will come into ever-increasing conflict with human values. Perhaps this conflict will be the site where humanity can begin to posit new values – where a new nobility may be forged. For war has hitherto been the greatest stimulus to human advance and none of our systems of governance – democracy, socialism, autocracy – is conceivable without conflict. Moreover, the drive to develop more sophisticated technology was all born on the battlefield and the war office. Speed is governed by war. We must throw ourselves into the difficult questions that arise from our technological prowess. This will be a new value. A more outlandish value might be to develop AI to be a great adversary to humanity – one which leads to the greatest conquest and advance – one that creates a greater notion of triumph – of pride – than ever considered possible?

The word (parole)

Freedom of speech, Parole of speech, the word of Caesar (work in progress)

1.) Freedom of speech is much talked-about, but rarely exercised.

1.1) Theory. It is somehow complementary to the authorities that  the right to free speech should be discussed and lauded as a theoretical achievement in itself. It is written, it is inscribed in the declaration of rights, that it shall be so. It is universal.

1.1.2) We exercise our freedom of speech according to the freedoms extended to us, e.g. I am free to speak about anything I wish, so long as it does not harm others. Conditional freedoms such as these, though desirable according to altruistic idealism and ‘the good society’, enter a striated space in which the freedom of others must also be of our concern.

1.1.3) The paternal state regulates the ‘absolute’ freedom of speech and produces conditional freedoms to make this universal right a practical one. This entails the problem of how to define which conditions are fair and which are not and who is entitled to judge these things. The presumption is that total freedom of speech would be anarchy, that minorities would be oppressed, so it is more desirable to exercise a little repression across the totality.

1.1.4) It is a presumption that full freedom of speech would be anarchy. Example – the Wikileaks affair. When the radical use of freedom of speech is employed, as in this case, the paternal government uses its conditional laws to prevent that speech from occurring, or to deny that it is valid, due to legal complications. The free-speaker, always on parole, (on condition,) is reigned-in.

1.2.) Practical complication. Though we may have the right to speak, we may not have the power to be heard. I am writing words here on the internet – I am free to put these ideas across. But my word carries not so much media gravity of, for example, a Prime Minister, who has an agent of the media following him at all times, ready to broadcast, to inscribe, the word en masse to the receptive mass.

1.2.1) Practise. If the officer of executive power, (preside-nt/prime-minister,) wants an inscription to be scratched-out, then he is able to make it so. His domain is striated, is made from grooves, and those grooves are carved by the laws which may be interpreted by his administrative team. Thus if he says ‘remove that word’, it is performed.

Example pro: Hilary Clinton, in a speech on Freedom of Speech:

“Now, in many respects, information has never been so free. There are more ways to spread more ideas to more people than at any moment in history. And even in authoritarian countries, information networks are helping people discover new facts and making governments more accountable.” January 21st,  2010

http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2010/01/135519.htm

Example contra: Hilary Clinton, in a speech on Wikileaks:

“In America, we welcome genuine debates about pressing questions of public policy. We have elections about them. That is one of the greatest strengths of our democracy. It is part of who we are and it is a priority for this Administration. But stealing confidential documents and then releasing them without regard for the consequences does not serve the public good, and it is not the way to engage in a healthy debate.”

1.2.2) Word contra action. “US to Host World Press Freedom Day”; announced during the same week as the above statement.  We promote freedom of speech because we say so. The word of Caesar is true because Caesar is Caesar. All other speech happens by Caesar’s parole; by the freedom he permits.

http://news.antiwar.com/2010/12/07/amid-censorship-efforts-us-announces-plans-to-host-world-press-freedom-day/

Inconsiderate entry

Paralysis. I never had this problem when I was at university – not being able to speak, I mean. But somehow I have boxed myself in behind a seemingly impenetrable barrier of timidity and misanthropy. A strange combination, but logically compatible. The timid person is unable to express himself to his fellow man and therefore grows resentful of his fellow man. But, to be fair, this whole ‘fellow man’ thing is trite. Wherefore the obligation to love and respect one’s fellow man? Just ‘belonging to the same species’ does not establish a concrete moral obligation. The idea itself appears to be a way of grasping power over the species, bringing as many bodies together in agreement with the principle in order to establish some vague notion of ‘humankind’ or ‘humanity’ or ‘the good society’. But humanity cannot be defined only by what we are willing to deny about it. Such as using the concept of the common good as a way of seizing power. If we all choose to believe that the common good is the best thing to believe, then we assert the privileged right of this particular will to power to dominate our own wills. In this way, large units of humans can be mobilized for creating a form of human reality which we ourselves have not formulated but are willing to take part in. And an analysis of the ‘good’ in that morality is altogether lacking. If it is established for the benefit of humanity, a common humanity, a utilitarian notion of humanity, its efficacy is quite self-apparent, even if the ‘good’ in that morality is not thoroughly well analysed but means only ‘to be free from suffering’. Personally, I am not sure that suffering is something so outmoded that it needs to be persecuted and made extinct. Wherefore that prejudice against suffering? Without suffering, the monumental human achievements in art would need to be denied. Perhaps in this respect, the ‘good society’ is merely a denial of what constitutes human reality and is therefore asserted as an alternative to the outmoded christian ‘good’ which now no longer holds the strongest will to power. Why is it, that when the dominant christian morality ceased to carry the full brunt of its power in human beings in the west, a nearby alternative had to be found lest that part of the species wasted away into despair? And of course, the problem of suffering was a thorn in the foot of the christian – and so too is it with us.

Timidness. Why have I sought to constrain my expression? Inasmuch as it is linked to the erstwhile ‘misanthropy’ asserted above, it may prove to be an unconscious strategy used to defend against angering the advocates of the ‘good society’. I am sure my comments above are not popular. This is most likely the reason for not seeking to express them. And my title of ‘inconsiderate entry’ should therefore refer to the idea that, having not made these expressions already, they are ill-formulated and inconsiderate. But one must begin somewhere. I have no desire to remain behind the deceptive veil of ‘timid-misanthropist’ I have already established, and this can only be drawn back by exposing myself, including all contradictions, errors and prejudices, to the public view. In that way I might move toward abandoning the notions of ‘common good’, ‘common man’, ‘humanity as such’, etc., and begin to assert, as I should like to, the Individual who is the mask and foil of all these things. It cannot be to any purpose to speak in generalised terms about ‘humanity’ – that is only another form of self-deception; the denial of the individual in favour of the abstract ideal. After all, what is more important; the ideals of humanity or the human being itself? Which is to serve which?

Manifesto #1

1) Toward an outline of our position.

We recognise that when the abstract concept is converted into a tangible work it must necessarily become subjected to forces that were alien to it when it remained in the scope of imagination. Just as when one puts ones feelings into words and finds how incapable one is of accurately expressing them there, the concept may become distorted or compromised by the factors involved in making a physical ‘thing’ – a work of art. But this must not seem a deterrent – rather, this should be its justification. The concept must be introduced to the world and not stillborn in the imagination where it becomes frustrated. The process of moving an idea from inside to outside, its enshrinement in technique and form, its encounter with the difficulties of expression, constitutes an encounter with the manifold factors of reality – an affirmation of reality.

Our concern for ourselves consists in breaking down the need for models of humanity – we do not present ourselves on this stage as an example to be emulated; rather as a model of non-emulation; as individuals who, in desiring not to follow or to be followed, set the ideology of human norms into contradiction and positively affirm the radical insecurity of the human being. We do not insist upon permanent states of being, upon the fixity of forms, moralities or aesthetics, upon the unhelpful binary of good opposed to bad. We recognise that the individual rests upon nothing that is secure; our self-knowledge is a constant wrangle with ever-shifting modes of self-deception, our self-expression consists in the struggle between what we want to say and are actually able to articulate, our integrity relies upon our being able to stake out new positions and in being able to abandon them according to our judgment and our desire to create unfamiliar situations. We tread familiar paths only insofar as we might strike away from them alone, or connect disparate paths together in order to confound their legitimacy; even to dogmatise the path of ‘the new’ inasmuch as its age belies its name. We see that the attempt to find some form of security, some stable body of rest, some final monument of knowledge, is a negation of our condition and a temptation toward the compromise of our integrity in favour of being sheltered by some stronger power than our own. The limits of our power must be defined by what we actually express.

We must overcome the demand to state, conclusively and all in one go, our position, identity, morality and aesthetic. We recognise that, as temporal beings, we cannot exist all in one go, and to make it appear as though we do constitutes self-deception. For the active individual in the audience, being of a rescinded concern for final definitions, will recognise that what the artist says in particular, and what he may later revise etc., will constitute his attitude toward understanding himself and his subject as particular things. Our need to approach the universal, to make final definitions about evolving subjects and to mass individual concerns into generalised categories must be recognised as a symptom of exhaustion, a subjection of the individual subject to superficial treatment and unhelpful classifications.

We delight in the examination of our own text with an eye to discovering the form and function of our self-deception – to read between the lines, as it were – and to discover again what we have said. We are concerned with our flaws inasmuch as they lead us toward more interesting tones of reflection and prefer that our audience reflect as we do on concerns of an ever increasing degree. And though it may be provident that we know our limitations so as to make the scope of our ideas more tangible and prevent them from straying toward the universal, we also comprehend that to know our limitations consists in deciding to discover them.

We must make visible what has previously been obfuscate in our understanding and must enlighten the reasons for its repression and, more importantly, be ready to articulate its content. In so doing we must reveal the text which informs and upholds the structures of authority which act on our understanding and must be prepared to stake our integrity upon the capacity to speak.

We anticipate that an individual in the audience will work as hard on the interpretation of our works as we have, for in so doing we will not make concessions in our work which might cloud its distilment and patronise the individual to whom we wish to address ourselves. In being specific thus about our own voice and the ear it seeks, we encourage sincere criticism of our work. Criticism demonstrates genuine concern and interest on the part of the audience inasmuch as it constitutes a demand for greater clarity of perception and must be valued as such. Criticism of the audience will be disposed in the same way.

We do not desire the largest possible audience. We seek to address the individual who exists in the audience; we seek the particular and not the universal. Our communication exists on the level of one individual to another, and in so doing, we aim to discover the individual.

2) The concept of the ‘passive audience’ is to be overcome.

The individual in the audience is responsible for what he sees. Whether he wants to see as much as possible and confront his condition of being a human in the world who is free and who can choose, or whether he chooses to deceive himself as to his condition, responsibility, freedom or, indeed, chooses not to see much whatsoever; he is responsible for his choice and creates himself by choosing.

The individual in the audience must be responsible for what she brings to her seeing. She must recognise that what she brings of herself to her seeing, (her value-judgments, her perception of quality of an aesthetic or moral kind, her perception of flaw or error, etc.,) is the way in which she can perceive herself in what she sees. In effect, what she sees looks back at her. She must recognise that to establish a genuine relationship to what she sees, she must take an active role and be a participant in it. What is perceived is the stage of her involvement with her own life, and thus she can create herself by seeing.

The twofold nature of entertainment:

i)                    The active individual in the audience delights in entertaining possibilities, for this stimulates an examination of established values to determine their worth, enables new or unfamiliar values to be weighed and cross-examined, and widens the scope of active decision-making. An enhancement of life and an increased scope for self-mastery therefore becomes desirable and possible.

ii)                   The passive individual in the audience, who watches for entertainment or edification as an object in itself, seeks to confirm the beliefs he is already steeped in, delights in repetition, constricts his desire to what he already knows [but refuses to question the way in which he knows it] and nullifies his power of self-mastery in favour of sharing in the power of dominant values by consenting to their authority over him.

Critique of the minimum rigour of value-judgement: To value cultural objects as either good or bad, without defining precisely why they are so for us, and moreover, without examining what good or bad might mean for us, is useless. One might as well not value anything.

The active individual is not resentful toward the passive individual – resent is always a rejection of personal responsibility – but recognises her as an adherent of a worthy opponent. She will thus seek out the arbiters of that power to whom people are willing to be subservient in order to evaluate their authority by examining the form and content of their values. Furthermore, she will not resent the arbiters of power. Even though the active individual’s desire and power is marginalised by the dominant modes of culture, she recognises her capacity for self-mastery in overcoming them. Furthermore, in accepting ever-greater degrees of personal responsibility, she perceives new desires, new difficulties, new decisions, new degrees of self-deception. Life is affirmed. And she delights in this new vista, for it enables her to see what she has tried hardest to conceal from herself; her condition of being human.

The passive individual, on the other hand, passes his personal responsibility to some other authority in order to minimise the scope of his decisions and thus, his freedom. Through the unquestioning allegiance to the authority of dominant values and, with a clean conscience, he takes a passive role in the collective asphyxiation of culture in his desire for repetitive, stagnant values. This is a basic requirement of consumer culture. Inasmuch as he refuses to examine the root and origin of his desire, his desires can be easily dictated to him by the arbiters of value. He therefore acquires a feeling of power by taking part in, i.e. consuming, the dominant values of culture, safe in the knowledge that his culture is the strongest, (for it has the most followers,) and that he can more easily hide there, (safety in numbers.) The result is that culture retains its power over individuals through the illusion of security, through a denial of the human condition, and by the same token holds the power to command.

The active individual cares not so much for answers to pre-existent questions as she does for the creation of interesting and well-formulated questions of her own. She recognises that ill-formed questions elicit ill-formed answers which, although having a value of their own, not only posit an obstacle to her consciousness as an individual, but perpetuate an impotence to think and to act. To be able to ask her own relevant, specific questions is of paramount importance to her, and the resulting expansion of her perspective serves to make her questions more acute and gives greater definition and style to herself. This rigorous demand for honesty requires that she does not shun contradictions as mere flaws or failures of integrity, but sees them as points of departure into new ways of questioning.