Re: [microsound] Anger/Sitting On Our Hands

[dbuchwald <dagmar.buchwald@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The problem is: what to do with the anger.  Up to now I have mistrusted revolutions for the very same reasons you've already given: the power structure afterwards will be equally cold and rational and run by those who are cold-blooded enough (not by those who rebelled).  Or as Hakim Bey put it:

"First, revolution has never yet resulted in achieving this dream.  The vision comes to life in the moment of uprising -- but as soon as "the Revolution" triumphs and the State returns, the dream and the ideal are already betrayed.  I have not given up hope or even expectation of change -- but distrust the word Revolution.  Second, even if we replace the revolutionary approach with a
concept of insurrection blossoming spontaneously into anarchist culture, our own particular historical situation is not propitious for such a vast undertaking.  Absolutely nothing but a futile martyrdom could possibly result now."

Instead Bey advocates the creation of a Temporary Autonomous Zone (T. A. Z.) "whose
greatest strength lies in its invisibility -- the State cannot recognize it because History has no definition of it. [...] [I]n most cases the best and most radical tactic will be to refuse to engage in spectacular violence, to withdraw from the area of simulation, to disappear."

"If the State IS History, as it claims to be, then the insurrection is the forbidden moment, an unforgivable denial of the dialectic -- shimmying up the pole and out of the smokehole, a shaman's maneuver carried out at an 'impossible angle' to the universe."

This is what working with the glitch COULD amount to.  (I hope that some hacktivists are sending some of their bugs too)

But will it be enough?

Dagmar

Store wrote:

> Mark Ragsdale schrieb:
>
> >Anger is the political sentiment par excellence.  Anger concerns the
> >
> >
> >>inadmissible, the intolerable, and a refusal, a resistance that casts
> >>itself from the first beond all it can reasonably accomplish--to mark
> >>forth the possible ways of a new negotiation with what is reasonable,
> >>but also the ways of an untractable vigilance.  Without anger,
> >>politics is accomodation and influence peddling, and to write of
> >>politics without anger is to traffic with the seductions of
> >>writing."--Jean-Luc Nancy
> >>
> >>
> >
> >Help us when our politicians feel they should have more to be angry about. I suppose politicians are feigning anger when they take the floor. Do they not already peddle influence in the name of justice? Do they not already compromise our environment in the name of *material* progress. Do they not harbor anger when taking out of the two sides of their confused aristocratic tongues.
> >
> what you are talking about concerning the politicians is NOT anger,
> imho, but plain lust for power. Anger is a feeling of the oppressed, a
> feeling that the counterparty doesn't need, as political leaders/the
> represantants of power need cold and planful reason - i.e. the golden
> calf of humanism - to cement the supremacy. Politicians getting angry
> mostly  show us the rare face of human beings dealing with the issues of
> inequity - or the show us the manipulative power of playing with
> emotions, the propagandistic values perfectioned by the fascist regime
> of Hitler-Germany. What made this power so horrendous was the cool
> calculation behind all the destruction, not blind anger...
>
> >To quote the Dalai lama- "anger is never productive unless you are angry about having anger".
> >
> >
> Yes, the Dalai Lama may be right if "production" means creation.
> Included in this sentence (or at least the reason why this quote has
> been made here) seems to be the presumption that destruction can't lead
> to something good. I think if you go a step further you have to admit,
> that every evolution is joined with the decay of older structures and
> that something new only can be built on the ground of something
> destroyed. (the musical idea behind "Einstürzende Neubauten", collapsing
> new buildings - by the way  - (and to get less off topic)).  In this
> way, destruction is also a kind of "production", and production in a
> postmodern sense means just that - the modulation of a current situation
> into a follow-up situation by putting in energy.
>     As an unjoined mass, lead by many different needs, feelings and
> interests, will never be able to steer its powers to a clear target, its
> only vector will be set by an emotional common sense or by a same enemy
> and by using this vector it will - in the eyes of history - always just
> clean the field of the past  and create a wide-open space, a vacuum that
> mostly gets filled by new more organised powers. These powers will then
> be represented once more by the eminent lack of emotionality and a
> highly organised structure that stabilizes their power - not by anger,
> but by rationality.
>     We see - the Dalai Lama may be a smart guy, but religion often leads
> away from reality and sets people on a path of pure belief, justified by
> such nebulous entities as "wisdom".
>     I rather prefer analysis. This will not lead to a change - not at
> all, as it just describes, what happens, but this description is then
> again just another part of the consolidation process of a system, a
> justification of the inevitable historical truth.
>  I am - like anyone else - afraid of processes of destabilization, but I
> guess most of us on the list somehow define themselves as "left" or
> system-critical and would applaud a profound social turnaround - or step
> up or whatever. That turnaround will definitely not be caused by us, not
> by people with a home-computer and a good job and a certain prosperity,
> it will not come along a reformatory path and not by the system itself.
> (The capitalist structures are  NOT pro-human.  They are built on
> concepts of exploitation of all possible resources, mind, work and
> nature. These structures eat up all energies just to convert them into
> more system-immanent dispositives) .
>    I sometimes feel as if I'm in the "Matrix" and maybe - as lots of us
> do - that explains a bit of the enormous success of that movie. It's
> warm and cosy and good in here, and a change means to drop out in an
> unsafe and unpredictable world. That is why anger and violence makes us
> so afraid though it's a good and clean and natural feeling/reaction to
> unjust things. (Moreover, we've been said to be wrong too many times
> when we felt that way. We're like pigeons in a skinner box, petted too
> many times when behaving peaceful. Petting feels comfortable. Freedom is
> something different but hell, who needs it when we have such good
> movies, music and ideas that gives us a rebellic feeling when sitting on
> our hands... )

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