I want to get rid of the ‘burden of proof’ mentality. If only one side in an contract ‘negotiation’ has a ‘burden of proof’, then it is not a negotiation. Rather, both sides should be seeking to prove their case (which also implies that an invalidation of the other is not always a valid proof). In contracts, both parties have the obligation to settle any foreseeable misunderstandings prior to the actual signing of a contract. We see this when one buys a house: in most circumstances, there are multiple inspections of the house (from both parties) in order to negotiate the contract. However, in the mass-marketed consumer world (e.g. insurance), we don’t see this: the contract is pre-arranged in bulk (sometimes even just fill-in-the-blank forms) and the seller places all responsibility on the buyer. The worst part, however, is that when a buyer requests any kind of negotiation, it is rejected under the excuse of ‘free market’ capital — that there are ‘better’ things the seller can be doing so take it or leave it. That’s a complete failure of negotiation, and it’s not the only case (e.g. we also see this in software EULA as well).
I’m a big fan of Sci-Fi TV. One of my current favourites is the canceled-but-still-bleeding series Dollhouse. In one of the recent episodes (2×05), there was a good segment that reveals a lot about identity construction (OK, so I think the whole series has been playing with that). So, I posted that clip to YouTube for your viewing pleasure. Before getting to the video, I want to frame the scene (which will contain spoilers).
The past as such does not exist. It is not real. The past is the history of a memory; it is the excess of one’s experience of an event. It would be inaccurate to think of this a recollecting an immutable action (one that can only be interpreted in one way for all time) because as memory is the excess of one’s experience, the experience itself is of a virtual event (i.e. an event is always mediated prior to experience). The memory of the event is always a virtual history in which one remembers what one saw (again, a mediation!). We never have unmediated access to the event (or to the object of our relations) itself.
When one writes of past events (which is all what one can write of), one is actually organising and recollecting memory in the present. The act of remembering is a repetition of an unlived future, it is the consolidation of memories into one crystal moment of eternity. We can speak of major world events such as May ‘68, 9/11, Pearl Harbor, etc; however, in doing so, we are contracting a multiplicity of memories and interpreting them through other memories (e.g. events that have occurred between ‘then’ and ‘now’) to create a singular, transitory excess of experience. These memories have been long forgotten as mediated memories — metaphors understood by analogy and, to borrow a term from web technologies, ‘tagged’. There is a reason why one’s life can ‘flash in front of’ one’s eyes, and this is because memory is always incomplete and fragmented. One’s entire life does not play back in its entirety when it ‘flashes in front of’ one’s eyes; it is contracted into one crystalised moment that is never repeated.
In an op-ed article a few years back, Zizek mentions the following story:
During the Seventh Crusade, led by St. Louis, Yves le Breton reported how he once encountered an old woman who wandered down the street with a dish full of fire in her right hand and a bowl full of water in her left hand. Asked why she carried the two bowls, she answered that with the fire she would burn up Paradise until nothing remained of it, and with the water she would put out the fires of Hell until nothing remained of them: “Because I want no one to do good in order to receive the reward of Paradise, or from fear of Hell; but solely out of love for God.” Today, this properly Christian ethical stance survives mostly in atheism.
From the perspective of social change, Christianity — especially that in America — has largely lost its humanitarian mission to the world to show love. This isn’t to say that American Christians do not participate in mission work or give to humanitarian causes. However, Christianity has done so largely to ’save lost souls’, or out of a fear of some kind of tormented Hell. The pockets of people that do humanitarian projects solely because of some profound ‘love’ or for humanitarian reasons happen to largely be nonreligious. Christianity has been succeeded by the post-Christian, secular world which has promoted ‘Christian’ values better than the Christians. To put this in a more provocative way: in order to love humanity because of divine love, one must be an atheist.
Time is chaotic. It is always the same yet never itself. Every instant of time is a repetition of the infinite possibilities of every moment. Take, for instance, an overflowing cup of water. It is always a cup of water, yet the water is never itself. Any particular molecule of water is of an indeterminate location, never the same sequentially and never the same sequence in any given repetition of time. In the infiniteness of chaotic time, we are everything; we have already become everything. We are always the same, never ourselves.
Going further, the excess of this repetition is the pure motion of fate. Yes, we are always the same. In every repetition–is this the tenth? Thousandth? First?–in every repetition, we become the same, we choose the same. That is our fate; to always return the same yet different, us but never ourselves.
