What to do after you know what you’re doing
The paradox of our time, remarks Slavoj Zizek, is that we know exactly what we are doing, yet we are nonetheless doing it.
Not only do I think it’s true, but I think it puts us in a tremendously complicated mental position. It is probably the cause of much of the alienation that we see today.
It is no longer the case that a person is exploited, by his government for example, but that he carries out his day to day action in full awareness that the exploitation is taking place.
He walks the dog, has some breakfast, goes to work, comes home to eat dinner, and falls asleep, all without escaping the fact that he knows something is deeply wrong. He cannot be in anything other than a state of unease about this all. Every happens seemingly without his consent.
He participates. But the question is why.
I’m not generally one for the theatre, but in all my experiences of the stage, I’ve noticed that the actors are introduced at the end. I don't think this is a minor detail.
Our own perception now means that the actors are always introduced at the beginning. In other words, everyone acknowledges in advance that this is a play. Theatres and actors of course save the introductions until the end because they would like to maintain the illusion that the characters are real.
Now, every single interaction we have goes something like this. We acknowledge we are actors or members of the audience. We make it clear that we both know what we are about to participate in is a farce. We then go on acting like actors and the audience anyway.
There is an alternative. We could give up on acting. But I guess it takes a lot of courage to be the first person to drop the mask and tell everyone it's a play, even if they bought tickets to the show in the first place.
