(d)anger
There are moments when life seems entirely impossible. All the crazy dreams of rebellion disappear. The desire to revolt against the society of the civilized is lost to futility, the open but empty hand.
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How Nice To Be Civilized!
Des Réfractaires
Assassinations, massacres, rape, torture: these crimes committed on the soil of what was once Yugoslavia are not the acts of uncontrollable savages; of educationless brutes.
No doubt as children they respected the family order; are now more or less faithful followers of religions; earnest sports spectators; content with television. In a word, civilized folks; normal people doing what society expects them to!
Each crime demonstrates the success of diverse processes of domestication which have come to be grouped under the heading of Civilization.
The killers, rapists and perpetrators of massacres have exceptionally well internalized today’s world’s fundamental logic: to survive, other people must be destroyed! This mutual mangling takes different forms, such as economic competition or war. But the result is always the same: some must be trampled in order to give others the impression that they are living more and better. Being civilized signifies not taking your own life and those of others into consideration. It means letting your life be used, exploited and dominated by the always-superior interests of the collectivity where fate decreed that you would be born and live your life. And all for the financial etc. gain of the authorities of the collectivity in question. In exchange for this submission one is granted the possibility of being accepted as a human being.
Being civilized, as well, signifies sacrificing your life, and those of others, when those in power attempt to solve their management problems with wars.
Aside from a variety of benefits they offer, wars represent a very efficient means of directing feelings of frustration against people who, designated as prey, can then be oppressed, humiliated and killed without qualms. Those who suffer, as with those who take pleasure in making others suffer, become nothing more than instruments of the conditions of social existence, conditions where lives are only important in relation to the use that can be made of them.
Preparations for the Next Riot
Adam Bregman
For a moment there during the L.A. Riots there was jubilation as people showed they could take the streets back from the police, if only for a night or two. Poor people were able to attain things they could otherwise never afford. Capitalism’s excess products that forever waste away in the stores to be bought or always to be replaced by another on the shelf were liberated for use or for poor people to sell at swap meets for much more reasonable prices. Reporters on the scene were alarmed to see looters smiling and laughing. What isn’t fun about liberating free stuff from overpriced stores? People felt free. The crowd turning over and setting on fire the police car downtown was laughing, cheering and howling because they were having a blast and it was a crowd of mothers and their children, every race and age and every kind of folk you’d meet in this diverse city.
Communities may have come together to clean up afterwards.
Continue reading Preparations for the Next Riot