Sports, Emptiness, and Global Capitalism
Today I saw some pre-game nonsense about LeBron James during which they said "greatness needs a moment". At the time I just yelled at the tv that they should shut up and think about politics, where there actually are moments, as opposed to sports where moments are manufactured, where things are layed out in games, and where every year comes anew a chance for triumph or redemption.
Meanwhile, I was also thinking about the feeling I got a few days ago (spurred by a recent preparation for a fast that I ended up not doing) an emotional refocusing on what is valuable to me and as such a letting go of what is not important, which, here at home in Ann Arbor is particularly damning, as I am only here for a few weeks and have no particular purpose excluding seeing my friends, and family. Or rather when avoiding that which I prefer not to do, I become conscious of how empty my life really is, bringing forth two meanings/memories: 1) the soullessness of capitalism, and 2) in middle school, particularly 6th and 7th grade, standing statue-like in the middle of the room, or lying apathetically depressed on my bed, staring out the blinds at the street lights, thinking of suicide, and becoming sick, and not going to school the next day...and for me, these notions speak to one another.
After watching basketball and messing around on a court in real life with some friends, I saw The Constant Gardener which was not a particularly good movie, but re-alerted me to the international division of labor and the exploitation we gain through this relationship. Or rather, as in racism, white people are the problem. One of the most stereotypical things the movie did was to have us identify with the soon-to-be heroic white male, who, through matyrdom, saves the day, reveals the truth uncovered by his murdered wife, thus reasserting his purity, and by extension our purity. Yes, white people do bad things, but here, here, is a hero, but an ordinary guy, not a silly political type or a feminist or anything like that...an average joe who in letting the truth actually cares about something, and dies for it, and cleanses things, and us; though the focus remains on a specific, as opposed to systemic, problem in the sea of troubles that is Africa.
This brings me, again, to the question of purity, its dubious value, as made clear by its being the lynch pin of conservative thought. This made me think of what I call "starting a new religion" or perhaps more accurately a new organized faith (as I am an atheist), to realize a counter-movement (physical, economic, and cultural) that creates a better way a living...but was this motivated by a search for purity? It is these circles that worry me though I like to think that while purity and resistance are the core, false obsessions of rightist and leftist politics, struggle, (properly understood as creation) allows us to go beyond such desires by being invested in the world, in our communities, in people we know, in a way that is positive, that is based in possibility for joy not cleanliness, and that is based in using power well, not only in fighting power...though perhaps if these two negative obsessions (purity and resistance) are tied inextricably together they can be a tool for our politics.
I find particularly appealing the notion of carrying all my possessions in one bag, and in creating a group of people who donate all they own to a collective when they join it, to form an ever-expanding private-public space (that is not government but open to 'all') to create and model a new, non-materialistic, welcoming, and joyful (etc) way of life.
And thus we need to go beyond sports, which seems to be more than anything a popular worship of the white male as super-subject, and to manufacture in our own lives the moments that are constant, the games that we are playing, and to, as it were, choose something to invest ourselves in, because my quest to become an atomistic individual, completely pure and free, ends only in emptiness (of capitalism) and thoughts of suicide. Or I suppose we can ask with Zizek (in the 6th chapter of the second edition of Enjoy Your Symptom!) why we feel the need to feel (as in The Matrix) that we are powerless, trapped in little atomic units, controlled by a machine we don't know exist in a reality that is not real? And that my friends is enough before bed.
Meanwhile, I was also thinking about the feeling I got a few days ago (spurred by a recent preparation for a fast that I ended up not doing) an emotional refocusing on what is valuable to me and as such a letting go of what is not important, which, here at home in Ann Arbor is particularly damning, as I am only here for a few weeks and have no particular purpose excluding seeing my friends, and family. Or rather when avoiding that which I prefer not to do, I become conscious of how empty my life really is, bringing forth two meanings/memories: 1) the soullessness of capitalism, and 2) in middle school, particularly 6th and 7th grade, standing statue-like in the middle of the room, or lying apathetically depressed on my bed, staring out the blinds at the street lights, thinking of suicide, and becoming sick, and not going to school the next day...and for me, these notions speak to one another.
After watching basketball and messing around on a court in real life with some friends, I saw The Constant Gardener which was not a particularly good movie, but re-alerted me to the international division of labor and the exploitation we gain through this relationship. Or rather, as in racism, white people are the problem. One of the most stereotypical things the movie did was to have us identify with the soon-to-be heroic white male, who, through matyrdom, saves the day, reveals the truth uncovered by his murdered wife, thus reasserting his purity, and by extension our purity. Yes, white people do bad things, but here, here, is a hero, but an ordinary guy, not a silly political type or a feminist or anything like that...an average joe who in letting the truth actually cares about something, and dies for it, and cleanses things, and us; though the focus remains on a specific, as opposed to systemic, problem in the sea of troubles that is Africa.
This brings me, again, to the question of purity, its dubious value, as made clear by its being the lynch pin of conservative thought. This made me think of what I call "starting a new religion" or perhaps more accurately a new organized faith (as I am an atheist), to realize a counter-movement (physical, economic, and cultural) that creates a better way a living...but was this motivated by a search for purity? It is these circles that worry me though I like to think that while purity and resistance are the core, false obsessions of rightist and leftist politics, struggle, (properly understood as creation) allows us to go beyond such desires by being invested in the world, in our communities, in people we know, in a way that is positive, that is based in possibility for joy not cleanliness, and that is based in using power well, not only in fighting power...though perhaps if these two negative obsessions (purity and resistance) are tied inextricably together they can be a tool for our politics.
I find particularly appealing the notion of carrying all my possessions in one bag, and in creating a group of people who donate all they own to a collective when they join it, to form an ever-expanding private-public space (that is not government but open to 'all') to create and model a new, non-materialistic, welcoming, and joyful (etc) way of life.
And thus we need to go beyond sports, which seems to be more than anything a popular worship of the white male as super-subject, and to manufacture in our own lives the moments that are constant, the games that we are playing, and to, as it were, choose something to invest ourselves in, because my quest to become an atomistic individual, completely pure and free, ends only in emptiness (of capitalism) and thoughts of suicide. Or I suppose we can ask with Zizek (in the 6th chapter of the second edition of Enjoy Your Symptom!) why we feel the need to feel (as in The Matrix) that we are powerless, trapped in little atomic units, controlled by a machine we don't know exist in a reality that is not real? And that my friends is enough before bed.
posted by DB at 12:35 AM
3 Comments:
Agggghhhhh! IT'S IN MY BRAIN!
To be trapped or controlled is to have cease our fluid liberty of atomic individualism.
Though it is true that empty selfish (in the memetic sense) thoughts can lead us to suicidal desolation, the reality of individual existence is one of explosive life. Rather than the fractal death of following a scripted "individualism."
I am very happy to have gotten such an interesting response (already) though I am not yet sure understand precisely what it is trying to say.
That being said, I think what is going on (and it'd be great to have a further comment from this commenter) in the comment is a warriness of a certain critique of individualism I have put forward.
I agree completely that the reality of individual existence is of "explosive life", however, this is so in relation not to a identification with the pure separate atomic existence, what I would call the emptiness of capital, but rather in a series of relationships within the world; my view of a scripted individualism is precisely the false separation of the self from its surrondings as well as from its fractured nature, like a separation of a person from their desires, for example. Therefore we may be on the same page, we may not be, but thank you for the comment, in any case.
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