Wednesday, January 6, 2010

We should become more artificial, says Slavoj Zizek



Philosopher and theorist Slavoj Zizek talks about a new view of nature in the 2008 documentary 'Examined Life', with his powerful Slovenian accent and industrial outfit. The main points I took from this excerpt:

- ascribing meaning to catastrophical events is comfortable because it takes the matters out of our own hands, for example when we say it's a punishment by god or nature.
- nature is not a harmonious organism that we can disturb. There is no nature.
- ecology makes us realize that the world we have now is the best possible world
- ecology is taking over the role of religion and is becoming a conservative ideology
- we are not wired to believe in catastrophes, until we experience them.
- but: we do not need to reconnect with what we think of as nature, but instead even cut off our roots with nature. In other words, we should become more artificial.
- the challenge then, is to find spirituality in an abstract technological lifeworld
- we should not idealize what we love, but love things in their fullness.

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