ICONOCLAST, n. A breaker of idols, the worshipers whereof are imperfectly gratified by the performance, and most strenuously protest that he unbuildeth but doth not reedify, that he pulleth down but pileth not up. For the poor things would have other idols in place of those he thwacketh upon the mazzard and dispelleth. But the iconoclast saith: "Ye shall have none at all, for ye need them not; and if the rebuilder fooleth round hereabout, behold I will depress the head of him and sit thereon till he squawk it."
-- Ambrose Bierce

Saturday, October 20, 2012

Nihilist Utopianism

The logic of ultra-leftism has led historically to an end-point where life that is lived in opposition to capitalised social forms is constrained by the accumulation of certain critical discoveries made by the ultra-left and which concern leftist organising. These compounded discoveries have reappeared historically as nihilist communist precepts. The following list of precepts will necessarily influence the passage of anyone seeking out a route by which they might leave this world. Therefore, whatever such lonely wanderers attempt as their method, they must, if they are to remain in good faith, keep foremost in their thoughts the following constraints: no factories; no beliefs; no hopes; no projection; no counter-transference; no first person plural; no recourse to transcendence; no positive role for ideas; no identification with the class; no long term projects; no positive visions; no propaganda; no accumulation of achievements; no transitional stages; no plans, no models; no venerated texts; no reductionism; no practical solutions; no substitutions; no expropriations; no representation; no formality; no future; no organisations; no category errors; no instrumentalisation; no self as living example; no lessons or lectures; no negotiations; no demands; no programme; no objectives; no fixed principles; no political organs; no specialised discourse; no history; no tradition; no final analysis; no allegiances. And above all these, no factories, no hopes and no beliefs. Then, what remains?

What remains? Well, that accounts for the nihilism, and for many, that list represents the totality of existence; it's been the message of every education or ideological apparatus, drilled in since before we called any civilisation capitalistic. Yet that other word persists past this massacre of the known: communism, something only guessed at or the subject of fantasy and certainly experimental (or deceptively intentional) error – it is currently a phantasm whispered only if the coast seems clear. Is it then a seed that can only sprout when nourished on a dung heap like any other organic poetry of blossoms and sex and infinitely generative entendre? That would make it a utopian seed, what with the destruction of the romantic movement in literature. What remains? Despair? Possibility! ... and a different sort of possibility than we currently imagine. It is a possibility without certain constraint, the certainty of a misery which is now guaranteed at a higher level of probability than the fifteen minutes of fame which has theoretically been allotted to everyone, if only as the caption on a grave-stone, just before it is erased to make way for a more privileged corpse.

Ah, but I didn't quite live up to the nihilist task by leaving hope unscathed. So be it, the list above maintains the category, only dismissive of error. The dismal truth of any category is only its divinity. Where truth is beauty and destruction means creation, hope translates to expectation, as any old farmer scrounging through the garbage pile can tell you, pointing to just the right scrap which, with minor modification, might just suit you. We may even find interest and voluptuous attraction there, a handy replacement for the lost consciousness destroyed in the nihilist conflagration, the consciousness which had only previously been aroused by our resistance to a world none asked to be born into. The only distinction between hope and expectation is the degree of faith one has in an outcome, and the grand commitment in the futility of resistance is more a matter of ideologic faith than any belief in possibility. The latter at least has some induction behind it: life goes on. If there wasn't the attached word, communism, we'd have to resort to "paradise", which is at most a blind faith if not literally death.

Everyday life, on the other hand, if only during remote moments, displays communing, communication and commonality. If a body had no pleasurable nutrition it would call it quits at the most basic biochemical level, no matter the overall ontological mood or position. In fact, everyday life was named for the latter quality – "common". At one time, mundane meant worldly and common meant free! Released from its constraints, utopia loses its place value, escapes the future and is transformed into nutrition for fantasy, a consumable which only grows with the eating. But of course, you still have to spread it around thickly. Contrary to Goethe's opinion, there are no hermits in utopia except the starving ones, and that is self-limiting if not relieved by occasional acts of kindness, where hermitage itself becomes self-limiting. Mutual aid is merely the fertilizer for community

The failure of archaic utopias was the annihilation of nihilism itself, when the assholes in the fairy tales were relegated to "fiction" and buried by cruel "reality" (they said "every thing's peachy"), unbeknownst that monsters are quite real, and without their situation in stories taken at least metaphorically, such that anyone has the potential to play the part and be recognised for the performance, monsters will not be eliminated but reduced in statistical significance. When everyone knows shit happens, only the toxic will be weeded from the garden or contained, not ironically, by communication. And a dandelion will then be just another wonderful flower suitable for any display or spirited beverage. There's no one more dangerous or sickly than the emerging adult after a childhood of over-protection or censorship and drillings into the head. A peck of dirt consumed when young has prevented more disease than all the vaccines, nasal sprays and moral education taken separately or in cocktail, and here's the moral of this story: "Even in Utopia, there be dragons".

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