*Gettin' all Žižek on your medieval whatever.
"Žižek argues that “the dominant ideology is mobilising mechanisms of dissimulation and self-deception which include a will to ignorance”...
For Žižek, transformations are at work which call forth such a doubled effect:
"If this sounds apocalyptic, one can only retort that we live in apocalyptic times. It is easy to see how each of the three processes… refer to an apocalyptic end point: ecological breakdown, the biogenetic reduction of humans to manipulable machines, total digital control over our lives… At all these levels, things are approaching a zero-point; “the end of times is near”.
So there is no surprise that such profound tendencies towards paradigmatic change in the conditions of being human in the world call forth the twin ideological effects of blinkered conservatism and apocalyptic endism. In Žižek’s mind, there are four types of the latter: Christian fundamentalism, New Age spirituality, techno-digital post-humanism and secular ecologism. (((The Four Horsemen of Gothic High Tech philosophy. Interesting to see them as brothers. No doubt, from sufficient historical distance, they'll have a lot in common.)))
Note that Žižek is not employing the concept of apocalypticism pejoratively. The apocalyptic is a mode of experiencing time, and it may be, that confronted with a genuine prospect of catastrophic transformation, it is the most germane, while the linear mode of continued progress and development is illusory. ((("Most everybody I know seems to have died suddenly and horribly – yeah man, that was some mode of timely experience.")))
As with other political phenomena, apocalypticism in itself is a form rather than a content; an empty signifier which can attract to itself a variety of beliefs and imperatives.
To dismiss something as apocalyptic, then, is in itself a mode of disavowal. (((And so is dismissing guys for dismissing guys as apocalyptic. So there, man, GAME OVER!!!)))
What is certain is that a conservative stance (the Romanitas of the current aeon) is an impossibility. There is nothing to conserve. ((("Dark euphoria!" Bring the noise!))) Global capitalism relies on constant change and upheaval, and the drive towards accumulation brings destruction in its path. It is the nature of the beast.
So, a stance of denial towards climate change is – in its effects – a death drive, an imperative to maintain an illusion long past its necessary confrontation with the spectre of the Real. (((And this is different from the "power of the imaginary" in what way?))) Think Peak Oil, think the colonisation of the biological and the Commons by commerce, think the destruction of forests and species. All this is real, and it may well be that limits to growth are fast approaching. The end of non-renewable resources, a phenomenon whose timing is the only issue over the next century or so, is a fact....
