I
have suggested that the cynicism of which Sloterdijk writes could also
be called as both Lyotard and Eco spoke of it, “postmodern” —
“Discontent in our culture appears today as a universal, diffuse
cynicism.” (88)
 |
| Lyotard |
And Sloterdijk calls on Benjamin, where he always could also invoke Adorno or Horkheimer, but even Adorno knew that Benjamin would be a safer bet, just as today we could also invoke Foucault, more popularly, or more esoterically even today, the late Jean Baudrillard: thus for Benjamin, here for Sloterdijk, critics
have
long since blended together with what is to be criticized, and that
distance that would be created by morality has been lost through a
general muddling along in immorality, semimorality, and the morality of
lesser evils. Cultivated and informed people of today have become aware
of the essential model of critique and the procedure of unmasking
without having been shaken. (Ibid.)
And in the two decades that have come and gone between the time of this reflection, even before the world changed and references to the GDR cease to make any sense, and the shock of invoking Marx becomes something else again, Sloterdijk asks in a Nietzschean voice,
Who today is still an enlightener? The question is almost too direct to be decent. (Ibid.)
And he answers with his own directness, letting the reader know that we do not have to do with an ordinary critical text, or indeed, any kind of merely academic context.
When I am hit up for cash in a New York sidewalk I pay up, but at the same time, I know that I am using the best expedient to assure my imperturbability.
The same goes for an email asking me to add my voice to stopping the logger’s saw, to preventing the death of polar bears, wolves, seals, coyotes, and sometimes just horses and kittens. I always hit a key to respond and I do so although I know that in a world where industry has for nearly 60 years taken each and every new formulation (not merely every new invention) of hand-soap, hand-cream, sun-lotion, dish-washing liquid, etc. and rammed it down the throats of captive animals not until they sicken but until they die and not until some die but until enough of them, at least half have died (and it is nearly always a complete achievement by the time one gets that far), that in a civilization that takes it for granted that animals should be bled to death and hence merely stunned before being literally de-assembled, skinned, sometimes alive, legs removed, beheaded, cut in half and in pieces, etc., in a civilization that poisons prairie dogs so that cows grazing (corporately owned cattle on public lands meant for public use) should not, grazing as they are without supervision (today’s cowboys drive pick-up trucks and not ponies, and do not stay with their herd but round them up mechanically as needs be to take them to the feed lots and then to slaughter), so that as these animals scrabble for food on a range no one has planted for them, these cows do not break their legs by accident or in the stress of being herded together before going off to their deaths.
Thus the prairie dogs have to die and the black footed ferret likewise and so too anything that eats the poison meant for them or anything that eats prairie dogs, this will include coyotes and pumas, foxes, hawks and eagles, even the cowboy’s dog dies.
And I have not begun talking about Obama's use of wildlife and parks funding in order to fund the high tech slaughter of America's wolves, shot by morons.
Our civilization shrugs, wolves are 'dangerous.'
And if we take to the ocean, the shrug intensifies: so what about the fish, so what about the dolphins, the turtles, the whales, so what about the sharks? So what about squid (harvested at a massive rate, starving whales in the process, just because we can take it all and so we do.
When I am hit up for cash in a New York sidewalk I pay up, but at the same time, I know that I am using the best expedient to assure my imperturbability.
The same goes for an email asking me to add my voice to stopping the logger’s saw, to preventing the death of polar bears, wolves, seals, coyotes, and sometimes just horses and kittens. I always hit a key to respond and I do so although I know that in a world where industry has for nearly 60 years taken each and every new formulation (not merely every new invention) of hand-soap, hand-cream, sun-lotion, dish-washing liquid, etc. and rammed it down the throats of captive animals not until they sicken but until they die and not until some die but until enough of them, at least half have died (and it is nearly always a complete achievement by the time one gets that far), that in a civilization that takes it for granted that animals should be bled to death and hence merely stunned before being literally de-assembled, skinned, sometimes alive, legs removed, beheaded, cut in half and in pieces, etc., in a civilization that poisons prairie dogs so that cows grazing (corporately owned cattle on public lands meant for public use) should not, grazing as they are without supervision (today’s cowboys drive pick-up trucks and not ponies, and do not stay with their herd but round them up mechanically as needs be to take them to the feed lots and then to slaughter), so that as these animals scrabble for food on a range no one has planted for them, these cows do not break their legs by accident or in the stress of being herded together before going off to their deaths.
Thus the prairie dogs have to die and the black footed ferret likewise and so too anything that eats the poison meant for them or anything that eats prairie dogs, this will include coyotes and pumas, foxes, hawks and eagles, even the cowboy’s dog dies.
And I have not begun talking about Obama's use of wildlife and parks funding in order to fund the high tech slaughter of America's wolves, shot by morons.
Our civilization shrugs, wolves are 'dangerous.'
And if we take to the ocean, the shrug intensifies: so what about the fish, so what about the dolphins, the turtles, the whales, so what about the sharks? So what about squid (harvested at a massive rate, starving whales in the process, just because we can take it all and so we do.
Nor
does it end there, America continues its longest war(s). It is hard to
think of anyone who is not a European who is not disappointed in Obama, first generation, now into the Obama second term, just after the phantasm of the inauguration but already graced immediately following his election with headlines wondering, warning, that and of course, he will -- because he cannot but -- "blow" his mandate, again.
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