/lit/ - Literature

>>13597010

Land talks about Exit; there's room here to discuss a sub-phenomenon of this, which is, Withdrawal.

we all got *addicted* in the 90s and 2000s, whether we wanted to or not. the word for everything was Viral, and before that, it was the coke-fueled 1980s, the great age of Deregulation, and before that the 1960s and 1970s, the Age of Aquarius. in a certain sense, we're all on fucking drugs today. and the drugs aren't working anymore. the phenomenon of heroin itself should present a considerable challenge to any attempt to render the consumer society in either a purely rational or purely affective sense. we have learned how to make things which override our judgment, things to which we can say No as much as we want, but the body says Yes. a free society, it is true, has to keep an open mind, and as i have said earlier, i am pro-psychedelia (and pro-empathogen also).

the more serious to be asked here is about intellectual history. we are *addicted* to Capitalism, and it seems to me that that is near to the root of a lot of other philosophical questions. capital is the computer which processes desire, but we are wed to this thing now, and it wasn't really a conscious or volitional choice. it just kind of *happened* this way, and for most of us - myself included - it is the result of economic decision-making that not only happened before any of us were born, it will have consequences that more or less determine the way our lives are lived today, and will presumably go on doing so far into the future. we are fucking *stuck* with neoliberalism, in other words, because it is an alternative to 20C totalitarian politics - and yet neoliberalism is fucking shit and destroys everything. if there is one bone to pick here with Peterson it is that people *do* in fact have a very real right to bitch about Capitalism, not all of the problems of which are soluble by way of Jung or by imagining running one's fingers through the angelic curls atop Steven Pinker's head.
>brb, going to fap

this picture sucks and he looks like a doofus here but in general Based Han has the right idea. the system runs on drugs and intoxicants, pleasure and simulation, and i don't think it's too much of an exaggeration to say that it is very much like the Matrix in which a) there is no Chosen One to save us, and b) *the steak doesn't fucking taste the way it used to. the problems of the Matrix were solved by the presence of a Cosmic Hero (Neo) and also an appropriate villain (Smith). unfortunately, the fact remains that Smith was the actual hero of that story, and Neo is an illusion.

so a full-scale Exit is probably not likely, but perhaps Withdrawal is. here's a line i am also fond of:

>I do not ask that you place hands upon the tyrant to topple him over, but simply that you support him no longer; then you will behold him, like a great Colossus whose pedestal has been pulled away, fall of his own weight and break in pieces.

this works for me.

>it's a byung chul han thread
>fuck yeah

based king of burnout

>>11115924
nah. just good old-fashioned continental philosophy. terrorism is for weenies.