In Part 3, Zizek is still telling the tall tale of the Korean war hero.
Our reaction to this story, which is probably laughter, is in large part due to our misunderstanding of the Other, by my reckoning. We laugh because we imagine that the North Koreans believe this story is true in the same way that we might believe that Barack Obama was elected President. But, as Zizek points out, what if that is not the way they believe in this story? What if they do not believe in the divine stories of Kim Jong-il and Kim Il-sung in the same way Christians believe in the divine stories of Jesus of Nazareth?
In fact, we imagine they “believe” these stories as fact because that is the way in which Western belief has been defined and reported for centuries. But I will likely expand on that later.
Zizek compares the scene of the Korean soldier to the third act of Tristan and Isolde, where Tristan is mortally wounded and sings for many minutes despite the nearness of death. This is a somewhat weak comparison, but it can at least illustrate the point – a story that is reported as literal truth is not necessarily believed as literal truth by the reporter.
We know, for instance, that a story in The Onion is reported as literal truth (i.e. the news story is written exactly like a “real” news story) because its closeness to real media reporting is a part of the comedy. This is so much the case that there are many people who have believed that stories from the Onion were true. There is a website full of screenshots of Facebook comments by people who have mistakenly taken Onion articles as “true story” newspaper articles. But why does this surprise us? Aside from their outlandishness, the Onion’s articles look exactly like real newspaper articles. At what level of outlandishness do we question what looks otherwise like an authoritative source? Of course, that is why we laugh at the aforementioned website – we feel these people have failed that test of outlandishness, and that separation from us lets us laugh. (And there’s nothing really wrong with that, so long as we realize we could easily be the fools ourselves.)
Thus, we could imagine that the culture of the North Koreans sees these stories as the patriotic mutation of Onion articles. Rather than derive comedy from the stories, they see them as inspirational of their nationalism and the greatness of their people. In this way, what they appear to believe is not truly what they believe, but they will report that they believe the stories as fact or as truth.
Zizek continues with a critique of the relationships between first-world and third-world nations. This critique does hold some water, and may further expose our misunderstanding of The Other. What if – and I am not necessarily saying this is the way that it is – but what if the President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has stated that there are no homosexuals in Iran because of Iran’s cultural superiority is actually aware, perhaps subconsciously, that of course there are homosexuals, and that while he personally might find them disgusting or disturbing, it is nonetheless the proper thing that homosexuals be treated with the same rights as heterosexuals?
Naturally, there is a lot of dissonance there. But in the 21st century, we should not be surprised at all to find dissonance, but rather to expect to find it when examining the human mind.
If we accept that premise, suddenly we are faced with the prospect that all over the world there are fundamentalists with beliefs that promote hatred based on the superiority of their chosen culture, religion or nation who nonetheless are subconsciously or other subtly aware of their inferiority. In this scenario, there could exist moral, ethical or public policy stances which are brilliantly clarifying, such that disagreement with the stance is, at its face, a kind of insanity.
In this scenario, there are still millions who will stand in the face of that moral stance to defy or deny it. Their apparent beliefs are insane, but it is only a form of dissonance, which we must accept is nearly ubiquitous in human lives.
Now we turn this lens to the fundamentalists we are most familiar with – al Queda. Do these enemies understand the moral quagmire of their actions, but act anyway? I ask you – why not? We can easily understand an American soldier in World War II killing a German soldier and feeling the moral high ground in his actions. I find it patently ridiculous to claim that an Arab who sees his country and his culture as being under assault by Western culture and Western nations (and Western religion) could not feel the same moral high ground. And I likewise find it ridiculous for anyone to claim they’ve put themselves in that Arab’s shoes and not seen how the reasoning follows.
At any rate, I chose World War II because I am familiar from my own life and from interviews with soldiers who fought in that war and later came to question, “What did I have against that man I killed?” Or take the words of Muhammad Ali whose vulgarity spoke truth to power – “”I ain’t got no quarrel with the VietCong. No VietCong ever called me, ‘nigger.’” We can believe first and foremost that killing is wrong, but simultaneously believe that some killing is okay.
This isn’t a concept that is new or unheard of. It’s something that is discussed all the time, and has been discussed for as long as wars have been fought. But it is an example of multiple, different beliefs coinciding and interacting. With “justified homicide”, it’s just a set of conflicting beliefs we’re used to discussing.
Zizek goes on to talk about egoism and envy.
This is also a very good section because egoism and hedonism are things I want to discuss at length in this blog. I will put what Zizek says into my own words (and you can watch him if you want to hear his own words).
The danger of egoism or hedonism is not the love of the self. However, there is a stark difference between egoism and “the ego,” and it is the ego which causes all the trouble.
Freud talked extensively about the ego attempting to rationalize the desires of the id. Freud’s ego, then, develops defense mechanisms to deal with the pressures of the id, super-ego and the outside world. You can real all about that elsewhere.
But one function of the ego - the most dangerous function – is to experience feelings of inferiority. A negative expression of inferiority is envy. And, as Zizek and Rousseau have pointed out, envy is enormously destructive.
And so, as Zizek says, the moment the mind wanders from “I want to please myself” to “I want to prevent the pleasure of Being X” a vicious process begins and true evil emerges.
This is a digression, but it ties into beliefs because it ties into what those in the inferior position believe of those in the superior position, even if they agree with the principles of the superior position.
Zizek also critiques Rawls in this video, and I disagree with him here (of course, as a fan of Rawls). I won’t get too deeply into that now because it would be a huge digression, but I think Rawls’ can only agree that the logic of envy is destructive to social justice. I think you must take a step back and understand that resentment arises from the lack of social justice. The problem, as always, is how to implement a system of social justice in a world where resentment and envy are pre-existing conditions. I think, however, simply accepting resentment and envy as human faults is pessimistic, and undercuts the proposition of future systems of social justice. Rather, we must consider them foremost as results of a chronic and despotic inequality going back to the beginning of civilization.
That’s the end of Part 3! Now we’re getting into the good stuff…