THE QUEST FOR AUTHENTICITY AND COMMUNITY, completely
denied and
rendered desperate, finds its home in Jonestown and Waco. The sense
of truly being alive and of belonging has almost nowhere to go in
the society whose two fastest growing classes are the homeless and
prisoners. Daily existence is increasingly that of despair,
depression, and derangement, punctuated by news of the latest
serial murder spree or global eco-disaster, consumed as horrible
entertainments in the emptiness.
DEBORD expressed the situation accurately: ``It
should be known
that servitude henceforth truly wants to be loved for itself, and
no longer because it would bring some extrinsic advantage.
Previously, it could pass for a protection; but it no longer
protects anything.'' Even the apparatus of oppression concedes
virtually the same point: Forbes, organ of finance capital, com-
memorated its 75th anniversary with a cover-story theme of ``Why We
Feel so Bad when We Have it so Good.'' In the Psychological Society
at large, in which the only reality is the personal, its hallmark
denial and delusion are challenged, almost ironically, by the
definitely impoverished realm of the personal. More and more
clearly, the choice is between craven servitude or a qualitative
break with the entire force-field of alienation.
IN A CULT everything that an individual has
is invested, the only
guarantee against the total refusal of that cult. How else, for
example, could it be endured that wives and children were offered
up to David Koresh and blind submission obtained rather than
revolt? Evidently autonomy and self-respect can be freely given
over when the world so thoroughly devalues them.
NONE OF US is immune from the horrors, commonplace and
spectacular; the immune system itself, in fact, seems to be giving
way, and this is not confined to AIDS or TB. The stress of work,
according to a March report on the UN's International Labor
Organization, is advancing to the point of a ``worldwide
epidemic.'' The overall situation is gravely worse than when
Nietzsche observed that ``most people think that nothing but this
wearying reality of ours is possible.''
CURRENT reality
has become impossible and continues to lose
credibility. We must be outsiders, never represented, investing
nothing in the death march we are expected to help reproduce. The
ultimate pleasure lies in destroying that which is destroying us,
in the spirit of the Situationists, who, when asked how they were
going to destroy the dominant culture, replied, ``In two ways:
gradually at first, then suddenly.''
-John Zerzan