"our desires drive our thirst for freedom" The Anarchives Volume 2 Issue 13 The Anarchives Published By The Anarchives The Anarchy Organization The Anarchives tao@lglobal.com Send your e-mail address to get on the list Spread The Word Pass This On... --/\-- ~|~ / / \ \ /^\ ---|--/----\--|--- semiovirus \/ \/ \,/ /\______/\ | ________________________________________________________ From: Mark Burch Here is the first edition of Semiovirus. I didn't write this article. My friend wrote it. My critique of digitalism will follow once I an through with it. Mark ________________________________________________________ SEMIOVIRUS, Volume 1, No. 1 October 4, 1995 On Post-Nuclear Condition by a Renegade Rasta-Taoist-Ninjah Two things are clear to me now. 1) At the core of capitalism, there is an act of postponement, deferment, delay, or 'libidinal economy', difference, whatever you name it. It all comes down to an act of not to be here and now. You are asked to suspend your pleasure for anywhere/time other than the here and now. And 'work' stands between your desire and your pleasure. We exchange our time with the resources for the possible gratification in the future, suppressing the idea that we might be dead by tomorrow. The economy (from its conceptual foundation, practical activities, to its mythology) is founded on this space created by the collective deferment. Interest, Profit, Investment... All those nourishing elements for captial generate from nowhere by this space. It is a very fragile space, indeed. That is why economy is wrecked right now. It has nothing to do with anything that the Wall Street or Tokyo says. It has to do with the crude fact that more and more people are becoming aware of the whole fallacy, the stupidity of the entire conceptual design. More and more people start retaining their life time and space to live here and now and maximize their existience in the most positive way. Of course unless we make up some good scams or have access to a large piece of arable land, the spector of "work" comes back to haunt us. Nevertheless, there is no turning back. Instant gratification? Not really. Because instant gratification is still a zero degree of postponement. It is postponement nonetheless. You don't need instant. You only need gratification. Exchange without delay. A constant potlatch of the life energy. 2) Deferment, delay, postponement... If you translate these into the spatial language they well be distance, aloofness, and that infamous word, "alienation." Capitalism thrives on the spatial gap between our sense and our existence. Our raw experience is from the very beginning of our life time, discredited. It needs (so they say) so be mediated or pre-mediated by the institution, media and school. Prescribed imagery premeditates our perception. Benjamin's "loss of aura" in the mechanical art is indeed a serious question. Aura is not metaphysical: It is mediation that is metaphysical. The only reason we cannot seriously talk about the loss of aura in the age of cybernetic reproduction is simply because the metaphysics of the simulation has taken over our life space. But it requires so much effort in maintaining the metaphysical robe. Specifically, it requires a constant effort to purge out the intrusion of entropy thereby an artificial order can be maintained. But Entropy intrudes anyway and Chaos takes over anyway. No matter how many nuclear bombs they detonate, the world of simulation is crumbling everywhere at this moment. From the cracks, people come forward and demand life without mediation. -------------------------------------------------------------- To receive the Anarchives via email send a note to Majordomo@lglobal.com with the message in the body: subscribe anarchives To get off the list, send to the same address but write: unsubscribe anarchives Also check out: