Ecological Guilt, Superego & Lifestyle Ecologism
The ecological guilt-mechanism that addresses each individual as a priori indebted to Mother Nature and demands constant personal accounting (recycling, diet choices) in place of systemic political demands.
In his words 1
“Those preachers of soon-to-come apocalypse are caught in a superstitious mechanism: if we talk a lot about it, maybe it will not happen.”14:24 The Limits of Hegel: Rabble, War, Sex and Marriage · catastrophism as magical thinking that avoids confronting the threat
The stories that teach it
the jokes and anecdotes he reaches for when he works in this idea, ranked by how many of its talks they turn up in; each card is one story, with every retelling on its page
Starbucks ethical consumerism
Buying a Starbucks cappuccino is sold as supporting Guatemalan organic farmers and saving the planet; the owner appeared like Anthony Giddens calling Starbucks an ersatz place of collective experience. The sin of consumerism and its redemption are packaged together in the same…
Shouting at the TV during football
Žižek uses the image of shouting at a television during a match, 'boys!', knowing the players cannot hear you, as an analogy for the meaningless performativity of individual recycling gestures.
Organic apples as ideology
Žižek confesses he buys organic apples not because he is convinced they are better but because it makes him feel good, as if he is doing something for Mother Earth. The purchase functions ideologically regardless of sincere belief.
Fukushima and Tokyo evacuation
Jean-Pierre Dupuy, Žižek's friend and theorist of catastrophes, reported that after Fukushima the Japanese government secretly panicked at the prospect of evacuating all 30 million inhabitants of the Tokyo area, illustrating the scale of trans-state action that contemporary cr…
coffee without cream / coffee without milk
A customer orders coffee without cream; the waiter says they have no cream but can offer coffee without milk. Even though the result is identical, the absent supplement matters, Hegelian negativity in a joke.
Brassed Off coffee invitation
A woman invites a man up for coffee; he says he doesn't like coffee; she says she has none, the double withdrawal of coffee produces erotic meaning far more charged than a direct proposition.
Where it comes up 43
47 moments located in the transcripts, click a timestamp to play from there