Demanding the Impossible (2 page)

Let’s see what is now happening on the internet. We get, more and more, to serialize our lives: we go to see the same movies and we watch the same news. People describe it as movement toward the clouds: cloud computing. We no longer need a big computer to play video games, like the one I have in my room to have fun with my son. A decade ago, a computer was a big box on one’s table, and downloading was done with floppy disks and USB sticks; today, we no longer need strong individual computers, since cloud computing is internet-based – i.e., software and information are provided to computers or smartphones on demand, in the guise of web-based tools or applications that users can access and use through a browser as if it were a program installed on their own computer. In this way, we can access information from wherever we are in the world, on any computer, with smartphones putting this access literally into our pocket.

Everything happens out there. Are people aware of how this will standardize everything? We will only be connected to one single provider, like Google or iTunes, but we are limited to their choices. Our struggle should thus focus on those aspects that pose a threat to the transnational public sphere. Part of this global push toward the privatization of the “general intellect” is the recent trend in the organization of cyberspace toward so-called “cloud computing.”

So back to the point: I don’t like this approach which says that we have two extremes and we have to find a balance, because this principle, for me, is too abstract. For example, we may say that some countries have no democracy and, on the other hand, some have too much democracy. You can always say that we need balance. But the real revolution, for me, is when you change the balance itself:
the measure of balance
.

When I was very young, before the sexual revolution, it was considered that there were two different views: conservatives, who thought sex should be allowed only in marriage and, on the other hand, those who urged liberating sexuality. But what then happened? The balance totally changed. You cannot simply say that the old balance was lost and that we now have too much sexual freedom, but rather you should say that the very measure of what is extreme has changed. So for me this is the true revolution. It is that
totality
changed; the very measure of the extremes changed.

This is also related to your other question about social reform. The point is not that I think we need violence for social revolution. Of course I don’t like violence. But for me reform means changes
within
the existing order: you can say that we now have too much individualism, so we need more social responsibility. But this stays within the field. On the contrary, revolution is where the basic rule of society changes. This is why capitalism was a radical revolution. Because the whole notion of stability has changed with capitalism or even with capitalistic democracy: only with capitalism does a certain dynamics became a part of stability. If things don’t change, they fall apart. Capitalism changed the whole logic of social space. When you talk about stability today, it means the stability of dynamic development. It is a totally different logic of stability from that of pre-modern times.

How should we comprehend our responsibilities when faced with this new logic of modern capitalism?

SŽ:
Well, I am suspicious about the notion of a common good. I think there is no common good, which is prescribed, a priori, in advance, by nature. Even with regard to nature, what would be the common good? We might say nature needs to be balanced so that humanity can survive on earth. But we will have to define the balance. I mean, as we all know, nature is crazy. Nature has catastrophes all the time. Can we even imagine what happened when dinosaurs died out or when oil was created? We know now that the Sahara Desert was once a large ocean.

So nature is not balanced. Here I am very modern. Before modernity, people believed, to put it very simply, in a predestined order: that is, a kind of global harmony which we humans have ruined, so now we have to return to it. I don’t believe in this solution, especially with regard to ecology today. I don’t think there is any natural order. Natural orders are catastrophic.

To return to your questions, I am, in this sense, in favor of the
politicization of ethics
in the sense that we are not only responsible for doing our duty or for working for the good, we are also responsible for deciding what this good is. Well, even when some people urge that there is a sort of natural balance, isn’t this also a totally coherent
politico-ecological
decision? For example, some may say that the global population has grown too large – that there are too many people and we have developed too many productive forces, and so on. The point they make is that we should instead encourage infectious diseases so that at least two-thirds of humanity will die, while those who don’t should learn to live more modestly. This will be best for the earth and even for humanity. I, of course, totally disagree with this vision, but what can you say a priori against it? You cannot argue from an ecological standpoint. What will you say? Is it bad for the earth? No! It’s probably better for the earth than to say there should be food for all the people now living. Wouldn’t the best thing for the earth be to organize slowly so that two-thirds of the people will die? For the earth, this is probably the best thing that could happen.

Here is my point. We already made some
ethico-political
decisions. This is what I would like to emphasize: we are much more free and responsible than we think. Usually it is fashionable to say – old Marxists used to say things like this – that “we just appear to be free. You go to the store and buy whatever you want, but in reality you are manipulated.” It’s true, but we are also way more free than we think we are. If you believe in some kind of a destiny, it makes life easier. The difficult thing is to break destiny. We all assume that this explosion of development and industry is our destiny. Even the majority of ecologists argue about how to make industry ecological. They accept the primacy of industry. But I find all this problematic.

I think the first step is to accept the consequence of modernity, which is radical freedom not only in the good sense, but also in the terrifying sense that we have to decide. It’s totally up to us. This is what Jacques Lacan means when he says: “There is no big Other –
il n’y a pas de grand Autre
.” There is no agency on which we can rely. Whenever there is a crisis, people spontaneously look for some kind of a lost balance. All this started with Confucius, whom I think of as the original form of idiot. Confucius was not so much a philosopher as a proto-ideologist: what interested him was not metaphysical truths but, rather, a harmonious social order within which individuals could lead happy and ethical lives.

No wonder that Confucius’ description of the disorder he sees in society around him ironically provides a good description of a really democratic society. Confucius proposes here a kind of proto-Althusserian theory of ideological interpellation: the ideological “big Other” (tradition), embodied in its apparatuses (rituals), interpellates individuals, and it is up to the individual to live and act in accordance with the title that makes him what he is. Confucius’ idea was that crisis happens when the original harmony is lost and then the idea is to restore harmony. I think that we should drop this. There is no harmony to which we should or can return. For harmony, we have to
decide
what we want and we have to struggle and fight for it.

What kind of values should we foster to help guide our ethico-political decisions?

SŽ:
What fascinates me are the events going on in Egypt. The West has been saying for years that “we want Arabs to become democratic.” This is all hypocrisy. Now we have had a democratic explosion, which involved, at the same time – at least till now – absolutely no Muslim fundamentalism. Nonetheless everybody is afraid. This is what always fascinates me. Here, theoretical analysis begins and this is often true in politics: you bridge something from very different sides.

In Slovenia, we have a proverb that, if you talk too much, you want something: you really are afraid that something could happen and you talk a lot to make sure that it doesn’t. It’s a little bit like this with democracy in Arab countries. Everybody was saying that they needed democracy, but everyone was deadly afraid that democracy would finally come about there.

This is maybe where you should teach me. When you say common good, I think of something like true political activity – and of course I don’t mean power struggle or corruption; rather, I mean the process of decision-making. In this political domain of judgments and decisions, we need what Aristotle called
phronesis
, a reflection, where you don’t have any advanced theoretical measure and cannot determine your priorities in a non-political way. Politics for me is not just a means to make decisions on religious, social, and ethical issues in an objective way. It simply is not true.

The lesson of politics is that you cannot distinguish between
means and ends (goals)
. We all know this was the big contradiction of Stalinism. They wanted communist freedom, but the way they went about it achieved the opposite. So again, for me, politics precisely means that everything is a matter of decision-making, not that you have this self-willful contingent decision. But decisions are to be made, especially today and not only with ecology, but also with biogenetics and all other issues.

It is clear that we have to decide everything. In a very short period of time, we will be able to do horrific things that not only influence physical appearances, by manipulating genes, but that also influence psychological properties. For example, a couple of years ago, I visited Beijing and Shanghai and met some people who were working for the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and they showed me a pretty horrifying program at their Institute of Biogenetics. They said: “Our goal is to take care of the physical welfare and also the
psychological
welfare of the Chinese people.” This means that they plan somehow to control even the psychological properties of the people. Here, the old religion doesn’t work. All our traditional wisdoms – you can’t apply them here. Because the basic coordinates are undermined.

Traditional ethics tells us that one should do one’s duty and work hard. But let me give an example of two students. One is lazy and the other works hard. In normal ethics, the good guy who works hard will win. But what if the lazy one takes some pills, which tremendously enhance his ability so that he then works just a little bit and beats the hard-working one? What will you do here? Will you prohibit pills? The ethical coordinates change here.

Jürgen Habermas – although I disagree with him – was aware of this, and his solution was simply not to do it. But I don’t think his solution works. Can you imagine how painful a decision this is? Let’s say I am a lazy student and you are a hard-working student. You work hard and I take a pill and do it much faster, without any effort, than you. Then you will have every right to feel like an idiot. Why did you have to go through all that ethical effort and hard work? What is the basis of our ethics? That you become free? As people like to say: “Freedom comes with duties. To be free you have to earn it by disciplining yourself and working hard.” But what if we have to change the very discipline and the sense of work? What if it can be influenced through some chemical means, even genetics? Everything changes. So we are in a totally new situation.

So again, if what you mean by the common good is an awareness that we have to decide what the common good is, then I agree with you. I just don’t believe that, with regard to where humanity is today, we still can apply the traditional Confucian paradigm that there is chaos so we should return to stability. We should decide what stability we want. And we don’t have any guarantee of any natural balance or social harmony. In this respect, I am a pessimist.

Speaking of our strikingly new situation, you once quoted Antonio Gramsci: “The old world is dying away, and the new world struggles to come forth: now is the time of monsters.” And in these interesting times, there is something right in front of us. Among all these so-called monsters, how do you analyze the rise of China, seen by some as the new monster?

SŽ:
I don’t know if this is true, but in Europe we claim that the Chinese have this proverb that if you really hate someone, the curse to fling at them is: “May you live in interesting times!” But when I was in China, they told me that they heard this from Western people. It’s typical how you attribute something to some people and then if you go to them, they don’t know anything about it. Somehow, historically, the “interesting times” have been periods of unrest, war and struggles for power in which millions of innocents suffered the consequences. And today we definitely live in interesting times – with danger and tensions.

Who knows what will happen with the growing chaos of nature and economics. This is what worries me: there have been big debates where some people started to doubt ecologists, claiming that they are just exaggerating global warming. But the point is just an easy answer: when you listen to the good ecological scientists, they warn that global warming doesn’t simply mean that it will get warmer everywhere, it means there will be more extremes. There is a prediction, which is paradoxical, that if global warming continues, there may be a new ice age in Western Europe. It’s a theory about the Gulf Stream: if it gets warmer, the Gulf Stream will no longer reach Europe. People tend to forget that New York is geographically at the same level as Spain. That is to say we, in Europe, have relatively warmer weather than people in the North. So global warming means a new ice age in Europe. This is madness.