Slavoj Žižek is Not Afraid of The New World
Google is just a privatized NSA; the powerful are continuously trying to control the weak. Slavoj Žižek may have some misgivings about our brave new world, but that doesn't mean he's going to buckle beneath the weight of unnecessary fears.
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Transcript - I have nothing against a company offering me to freeze my sperm, eggs or whatever. I just would like to see the context. In principle why not. I don’t buy this totally paranoiac attitude, you know, that this is just another means of control, manipulation and so on and so on. My God, we are entering a new era if we want it or not where having children and so on will be totally denaturalized. The problem is not shall we do it or not. The problem is under what conditions who will control it and so on and so on. To be even more precise I am not a fan of Facebook and Apple and so on and so on. I agree with Julian Assange who compared Google in a wonderful metaphor recently to just privatized NSA, you know. I agree with all these. I’m not saying that the solution is not simply to remain stuck. Then we are acting like old European social democracy. To remain stuck in the golden era of welfare state or era of human rights. We cannot avoid it. We have to accept that this is happening and will be happening more and more.
The way out is not simply to say don’t do it, to just prohibit it. If nothing else if we don’t do it, others will be doing it like crazy. So, you know, we have to confront the problem. But no basically I know of the great anxieties, problems, new forms of control but it’s also new forms of freedom. This is why I always emphasize that Internet and all this new digital stuff, it’s a very ambiguous phenomenon but it’s the field of struggle. New forms of enslavement but at the same time new incredible forms of freedom. We have to accept the fight with no nostalgia for old allegedly more authentic communities or whatever. I’m not afraid of this new world.
Read more at BigThink.com: http://bigthink.com/videos/slavoj-zizek-on-the-future-battleground
Follow Big Think here:
YouTube: http://goo.gl/CPTsV5
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BigThinkdotcom
Twitter: https://twitter.com/bigthink
Transcript - I have nothing against a company offering me to freeze my sperm, eggs or whatever. I just would like to see the context. In principle why not. I don’t buy this totally paranoiac attitude, you know, that this is just another means of control, manipulation and so on and so on. My God, we are entering a new era if we want it or not where having children and so on will be totally denaturalized. The problem is not shall we do it or not. The problem is under what conditions who will control it and so on and so on. To be even more precise I am not a fan of Facebook and Apple and so on and so on. I agree with Julian Assange who compared Google in a wonderful metaphor recently to just privatized NSA, you know. I agree with all these. I’m not saying that the solution is not simply to remain stuck. Then we are acting like old European social democracy. To remain stuck in the golden era of welfare state or era of human rights. We cannot avoid it. We have to accept that this is happening and will be happening more and more.
The way out is not simply to say don’t do it, to just prohibit it. If nothing else if we don’t do it, others will be doing it like crazy. So, you know, we have to confront the problem. But no basically I know of the great anxieties, problems, new forms of control but it’s also new forms of freedom. This is why I always emphasize that Internet and all this new digital stuff, it’s a very ambiguous phenomenon but it’s the field of struggle. New forms of enslavement but at the same time new incredible forms of freedom. We have to accept the fight with no nostalgia for old allegedly more authentic communities or whatever. I’m not afraid of this new world.