Today's liberal-democratic hegemony is sustained by a kind of unwritten Denkverbot similar to the infamous Berufsverbot in Germany of the late 60s - the moment one shows a minimal sign of engaging in political projects that aim to seriously challenge the existing order, the answer is immediately: "Benevolent as it is, this will necessarily end in a new Gulag!" The ideological function of the constant reference to the holocaust, gulag and the more recent Third World catastrophes is thus to serve as the support of this Denkverbot by constantly reminding us how things may have been much worse: "Just look around and see for yourself what will happen if we follow your radical notions!" And it is exactly the same thing that the demand for "scientific objectivity" means: the moment one seriously questions the existing liberal consensus, one is accused of abandoning scientific objectivity for the outdated ideological positions. This is the point on which one cannot and should not concede: today, the actual freedom of thought means the freedom to question the predominant liberal-democratic "post-ideological" consensus - or it means nothing.-Slavoj Zizek, "Repeating Lenin"
Sunday, August 10, 2014
Denkverbot
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2 comments:
"Orthodoxies" [reducing life to rigid formulae generated and imposed by a hierarchical, authoritarian organization] of any and every kind should be regarded with extreme wariness. There never has been and never will be any ONE way to achieve "success" whatever that may mean.
This is why great pieces of so-called classical music are continually subject to a wide variety of 'interpretations" by soloists and conductors. In "classical" music the notes on the page are always the same, but the WAY in which are played varies tremendously, albeit within a generally agreed upon set of parameters established by "those who know."
It is the same with Biblical and philosophical precepts -- and systems of government.
Life is like running a farm. No matter how many times you've gone through the necessary routines and done the necessary chores you ALWAYS have to get up the next day and do them all over again.
Life is not constant, never static. Change (unending cycles of birth, growth, maturity, decline, decay and death) really IS the only constant.
Therefore, even though eternal, immutable Truth does, indeed, exist, we must renew our search for it every day. Full understanding is destined to remain forever just beyond our reach.
Never believe anyone who tells you HE knows how YOU ought to live.
:)
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