Speculum: Reflections on life's difficult bits

7/31/2019 Speculum: Reflections on life's difficult bits

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SPECULUM

Elias Chn

Reflections on lifes difficult bits


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FIRSTCHAPTER

We all knowwhat a

speculum is,

right?

Er, no


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WHAT IS IT to be alive in the

present moment? Our world

seems to be dazzled by form

and heedless of content; experiences once

lived directly are now lived by proxythrough television, films, magazines,

computer games

We are, for example,

invited to intrude on

others private grief as

the media stick their

microphones and

cameras into the faces

of those newly

bereaved or subject of

some horrendous

accident, as if this,

somehow, fulfils our

quota of feelings for

the moment. And thatis the news. Later we

are bidden to witness

the agonies of

overweight teens,

overweight adults,

people horribly

disfigured by

cosmetic surgery that went awry, and so

on, as entertainment. This, apparently,

assuages our guilt, reinforces our

smugness, and allows us to draw moral

lessons from the palpable idiocy, not to say

culpability, of others, as we let our own

grief and agony fade into the background

as noise, something we can, and should,suppress, for the greater good of a society


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that requires acquiescence and, preferably,

indifference to the everyday monstrosities

that exist in our own lives. Society? In

reality nothing more nor less than an

artificially created reality foisted upon

civilisation by a triumphalist and out of

control capitalism supported by ever moreirrelevant national governments who

increasingly lack the the power the stop it,

and in any case lack the will to do so. It is

panem et circenses, bread and circuses,

designed to keep everyone quiescent and

therefore safe. We are therefore inveigled

into putting our anger, our pain and our

distress into places where they will do no

harm, where they will pose no threat to a

status quo that can only survive in the face

of a widespread alienation from what is

happening to us every day. Indeed, are we

capable any more of feeling our own grief?

Our consolation for this major sacrifice of a

lived life is sublimation in the world of thecommodity, things replacing feeling and

experience, gadgets replacing curiosity


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with momentary novelty, and various

kinds of narcotics, from booze, to dope, to

the telly, to the manufactured lives of all

those Z-list celebrities cluttering up the

world with vacuity but softening theexperience of the agony of existence in a

world without meaning, a world in which

any meaning there was (and there was

precious little of it in the first place) has

been stripped away and replaced with a

consumer identity. Want to feel sad? Go to

a weepy movie. Want to feel heroic? Go to

an action movie. Want to feel angry? Go

and see a socially meaningful movie, or

better yet an anodyne documentary

carefully constructed so we cant identify

the real villains. We can feel anything we

want to, vicariously, so long as we pay for

it, and so long as it doesnt leak out onto

the streets, where it will quickly belabelled as a problem.

THESE DAYS we are no longer what

we are (whatever that may mean),

nor are we any longer what we do

or what we believe. We are, irrevocably,

what we own.

Admittedlythis is not

much of an

original

insight; many

have seen it

coming, or have noted its establishment in

the social psyche. But it marks a massiveshift in what we understand to be the

nature of what it is to be human. Those


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who own, those who are capable of

owning, and those who seek to own, are

the currently manufactured heroes of the

market. Conversely, those who do not

own, or are incapable of owning, arescroungers and parasites. Worst of all,

those who do not wish to own, or who are

actively seeking identities beyond

commodity relations, are the most

dangerous enemies of all, undermining

civilisation as global capitalism wishes it

to be understood. Authenticity, however

defined, and the seeking of meaning

beyond the ownership of stuff, especially

transitory tat with built-in obsolescence,

are to be shunned, execrated and vilified,

or lampooned as unrealistically idiotic,

because that way lies no profit. Unless,

that is, capitalism can find a way to render

them safe and profitable, in which casethey will be co-opted. Consider, for

example, the liberating effects of buying

new tatty furniture with a Scandinavian

design ethic. Or the liberation of driving

an over-powered car that has an

impossible top speed for safe driving on

any conceivable public road and a price

tag that only the highest paid parasites can

even hope to meet. This is liberation as

capitalism wants it; this is liberation as

lifestyle aspiration. And aspiration is only

legitimate when it turns a profit. The

aspiration for world peace, for equality,

and plenty, and simplicity away from the

rat race, are hopelessly idealistic,troublesome, and dangerous, unless, of


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course, one can buy them,

contrive to make a profit

from them, or find a safe

outlet valve for them

such as a pop concert.

FOR MANY,

perhaps most

people who are

in work, each day

comprises a series of

dispiriting encounters

with what passes for aproductive or legitimate

occupation. But producing

what, exactly? And how

legitimate? The answer to the first

seems simply to be producing whatever

will make money, regardless of whether it

is necessary or even desirable. This seemsalso to be the criterion for the second,

legitimacy, although the state, which

presides over spectacular society, is very

careful to exclude certain activities from the

class of legitimate occupation, such as drugs

peddling and organised crime. These

activities are solely the province ofthe state

(and its chums in business) which doesntwant any uppity freelance entrepreneurs

muscling in on its territory, unless they pay

the right people for the privilege. What is,

after all, a legal license to sell, say, drugs,

except a form of protection money paid to

the state, which then legitimises any

outrages perpetrated on the powerlesspublic, i.e. those who dont have a pass card

to the sanctums of the oligarchy?


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Nevertheless, those with lots of money are

still treated with respect irrespective of how

that money was made in the first place. A

self identified Mafia Don, for example, is

unlikely to be turned away from even theposhest of places just because he made his

money by dodgy methods. Nor

will he be turned

away from the

m o s t

respectable of

cabals within

the government

or big

business, just

so long as he

is discreet about it and doesnt bring

too much embarrassing publicity with him.

It just might be related to the extensive range

of extreme responses he might have at hisdisposal for retaliation if upset, but this is

true of all wealthy people, whether or not

they have a penchant for the direct methods

of the concrete welly or the more indirect,

and therefore more sinister methods of

litigation. As to organised crime, that really

depends on how the crime is committed and

whether it gets noticed. For example the

crimes of Enron were only regarded as such

once they were found out and couldnt be

hushed up any more. Similarly with the

banks and bankers who precipitated the

worldwide financial crisis that the poor

people of the world are now

expected to pay for. The plain fact isthat their crime was getting caught out. Had


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they not been

rumbled, had

Bernie Madoff not

made off with

everyones money,had Lehmann

Brothers managed

to keep their greedy

secrets secret a

while longer, had

RBS been more

careful with its

avarice, had

Goldbrick Sucks not

been caught out with

their all too

clever schemes

for defrauding

the public, and

had all thebarrow boys

working in the

City kept their

gobs shut, then

their crimes

would have

passed unnoticed,

suspected but

unnoticed. As it is

the cats out of the

bag and everyone

knows about it. All

this was presaged

by Nick Leeson,

r e m e m b e rhim? He

For

the

record

,fl

yzipsop

en

an

dclo

se

,

jus

tincaseyouwe

rewon

dering

fnordwas the creative

entrepreneur who

destroyed Barings Bank.

At the time he was

regarded, or at leastbilled as an aberration,

someone who was

simply out of control,

and not at all like the

more respectable bankers

elsewhere. But it turns

out he was in reality a

herald of what was to

come, a kind of John the

Baptist figure announcing

the good news that

we were all going to

get royally screwed

by all those

respectable bankers,in fact that we

already were being

royally screwed but

hadnt noticed yet.

What the bankers did

to us, and are still

doing, is by any

decent moral code,

criminal, in terms of

natural justice if not in

terms of the current

body of laws that are

meant to protect us all

(so we are told) but

which in point offact do a much


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better job of protecting the very rich, often the s a m e

p e o p l e who are happily ripping us all off and from

whom we need protection in the first place. C ur io us l y ,

h ow ev er , the great crimes perpetrated by the financial

s e r v i c e s sector have been scurrilously rebranded asnot - cr i mes . We have been told that the great majority of

bankers are really awfully nice chaps and chappesses

(mainly chaps) who are terribly sorry for what

happened, and that it was all the fault of a few bad eggs

rather than being endemic to the whole of the modern

banking system, indeed an essential aspect of

what modern banking is, which is to say corrupt

and avaricious. But the public had to be

appeased, which is to say, lulled back into a

stupefied torpor, so sacrificial goats had to be

found. And, joy of joys, they were. Now we the public are

being told by the powers that be that the demand for

justice (revenge?) has been satisfied and that

therefore we should all shut up and let

bygones be bygones. Somehowthey believe (or pretend to believe)

that by sacrificing ole Bernie to the

judicial system, and forcing Fred

Goodwin (Fred the Shred to his mates,

but Freddie the Shreddie sounds

better) to take a cut in pension, justice and

fairness have been restored and we should

all be satisfied with that. Bob Diamond, big

cheese at Barclays, meanwhile avers that

the banks have done enough grovelling and

that everyone should leave them alone. It

almost sounds plaintive when put that

way, but really the banks have done

nowhere near enough grovelling for the

damage they have caused. One sacrificialgoat, a few tut tuttings around the


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wine bars and a rich bastard being

forced to relinquish a piddling

amount from an obscenely large

pension pot is not nearly enough to

cut it, especially when it is now clear

just how much pain is going to be

suffered by the not-great (that is, notfilthy rich) to sort out the mess. As

a footnote to this, the

aforementioned Mr. Diamond was

recently awarded a bonus of 6.5m

(March 2011), which together with

his 2.5m salary and other perks

means he was given over 20m for

his work in 2010, and this just as

the rest of the UK population was

beginning to wonder whether luxuries such as

food might still be worth spending their money

on. Compare that 20m with the mere 4m that

Worcester County Council just announced it

had available to spend on community

projects. No wonder old Diamond Knickerswants everyone to avert their angry gaze

parasite par st, n. a hanger-on

or sycophant who frequents

anothers table: one who lives

at the expense of society or of

others and contributes nothing:

an organism that lives in or on

another organism and derives

subsistence from it without

rendering it any service in

return:

Chambers English Dictionary

Its all a matter of energy

exchange really. When anorganism simply takes energy

away from another without any

reciprocity, then that organism

is a parasite. The modern

entrepreneur likes to think of

himself or herself as a predator,

because that is a noble image.

But predators at least have thegood manners to ensure that

some of the prey species is alive

for the future, whereas

parasites have no such noble

intentions. Short sighted? Yes,

but thats the parasite mentality

for you.


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away from the banks. One wonders

what he did to deserve such

largesse, especially since Barclays

shares are worth only about one

third of what they should be, andare roughly at only half their

value of a year ago. Not that its

easy to sympathise with

Barclays shareholders, but if

this is a criterion of success then

one wonders what failure

looks like.

It beggars belief just how

arrogant these people

really are. Not content

with fleecing people of their

money whenever possible,

they crawl cap-in-hand to

their mates in government tobale them out when things get a bit sticky,

using, it must be said, money extracted without any choice from all the

citizens who actually have to pay all their taxes because they cant afford

clever creative accountants to help them avoid or evade tax liabilities, unlike

the banks who prefer to fiddle their tax liabilities whenever possible. They

then pretend that everything is hunky dory at their end and award

themselves huge bonuses again as if nothing were awry. Even RBS, which

on the latest estimation is technically still in debt to the country to the tune ofgrillions of quid, has just announced bonuses for its top people! And they

still want us to like them and trust them!

Handsomelookingdevil,inee?Butonlyifyouliketheaestheticsofthecorpse.

The modern banking system manufactures money out of nothing. The process is perhaps the

most astounding piece of sleight of hand that was ever invented. Banking was

conceived in inequity and born in sin But if you want to continue to be the

slaves of the bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, then let the bankerscontinue to create money and control credit.


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ALL OF THIS could have been simply ironic, but it is alas entirelyinevitable that institutions who do everything in their power toavoid paying their fair whack into the exchequer, that is to say,avoid making a fair contribution to the commonweal at large, and indeed

seem to avoid making any genuinely positive contributions to society atall (as opposed to the private bits of society inhabited by the megarich),

then beg for assistance from that same exchequer when they find

themselves short of brass. The narrative is very simple. To the banks

everyones money is theirs by right, and they will get it by hook or by crook. To

add insult to injury they then hike all their fees to their customers as well,

as if its all our fault that the mess happened in the first place. Sadly, the

truth is that it probably is our fault, because we always let them get away

with it. Of course they have armies of rich lawyers and accountants on


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their side to help them stave off any attempt to make them play fair, plus

all their chums in high political office, but they have been ripping us off

for so long now that most of us have become convinced, in a lazy

complacent unreflective way, that this is normal. But it isnt. This is

capitalism showing itself for what it really is: misanthropic; anti-social;dangerous; amoral; parasitical and self regarding. The rest of us? Just

fodder for the bottom line, and nothing more. And this is just the start. It is

going to get much, much worse as globalisation takes hold, because

globalisation is nothing less than letting capital off the leash of what few

restraints remain to hold back its avarice thus leaving it free to roam the

planet looking for plunder wherever and whenever it pleases.

Globalisation will render capitalism completely untrammelled by the ties

of community, country or territory, or even nature itself. This is the best of

all possible worlds for the capitalist mentality: capitalism as a metanational

phenomenon, rather than a merely multinational one. In such a scenario

people will no longer matter in the

slightest except in their capacity to be

exploited. At the time of writing this,

HSBC has just issued a bare threat to

the UK: stop trying to tax us or we willrelocate to somewhere else which is

nothing if not a scurrilous

invitation to allow capitalists, in

this case bankers, to do whatever they

please, outside the common law,

outside general morality, and certainly

beyond ordinary human decency. More

companies will undoubtedly follow

because at the moment no-one can stop

them, and they know it. Government

is becoming increasingly irrelevant

to the process as it becomes plain

that large metanational

corporations can (and invariably

do) hold whole countries toransom if they dont get their way.


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The overriding (false) metaphysic is that of competitive edge in their

wholly made-up sacralised market in which everything is monetised

and simple (social) values are either derided or trodden underfoot.

MEANWHILE BACK in the world of real bona fide people, as

opposed to life sapping parasites, life seems increasingly to be

more a matter of smoke and mirrors than actual living. Or

perhaps a better characterisation might be through the looking glass

because nothing is as it seems; image and appearance are everything,

substance nothing. Public life seems more than ever to be devoid of

integrity, and appears to be based on no discernible values except a crude

pragmatism that has abandoned all pretence of morality and ethics. This

presents no real surprise, however, since capitalism is essentially amoral,although often straying into the outright immoral. Life for most people

has no honour to it, not even as a struggle against the elements, each day

sapping vitality rather than replenishing it. Work, for the bulk of the

population, remains little more than drudgery, with little of joy to it, and

that despite the great promises of technological

advancement. Nothing, it

seems, has any genuineintrinsic value any more

except in terms of its market

value, not even people

themselves. In the world of

the image, only the image

matters; substance, reality are

mere chimera of a past world,

or of a world that never was.Like the prestidigitators that

they are, which is to sayfaux

magicians, the curators of the

image can slip and change

reality to their whims,

leaving nothing with even

momentary solidity.Everything is in flux, but at

the deliberate behest of those

Itisneithersafenorsensibletocarryawireg

arrotteinyourbra


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who control the magic lantern show that we all

now inhabit.

THERE ARE, of course, several venerable

philosophical traditions asserting that

everything is, quite naturally, in flux. The

Taoists, for example, and Heraclitus of Ephesus,

he of the river into which no-one steps twice,

spring immediately to mind. Their original

insight became in time a truism, because most

people find it relatively easy to assent to a

proposition such as even the mountainschange. But the whole idea has been hijacked by

the spectacle for its own advantage. It is yet

another appropriation made by the forces of

avarice. What was a relatively benign

observation on the state of nature has been

turned into an attack on people, especially those

who need to work to keep themselves housedand fed. In its current interpretation it is held to

mean, for example, that the idea of a job for life,

or a professional specialism, or the idea of

personal pride in ones work, have now become

moribund on account of natural changes in the

world of work, not that most jobs were ever

worth much in the first place except as a means

of buying food to keep barely alive. It is alsoused as an excuse for a constant changing of

order, leaving nothing to stabilise, even

momentarily, because stability has become

inconvenient to the spectacle, much as tradition

has. The deliberate and regular destabilisation of

life is intended to keep people in a state of

permanent uncertainty, always off balance, andtherefore permanently frightened and on the

defensive. This is a preemptive strike against the

BL

AN

K


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Verwirrung

Season of Chaos1st January - 14th March

Thesis (Tricylce)

Yin

The point from which all societies

begin and to which they return. The

natural state of humanity. Eris, Isis,

Ishtar, Kuan Yin, Kali.

Zweitracht

Season of Discord15th March - 26th May

Antithesis (Tricycle)

YangAppearance of a ruling class. Leads

directly to discord.

Osiris, Yehovah, Zeus, Odin and all

other male deities. The all-seeing

eye.

Unordnung

Season of Confusion27th May - 7th August

Synthesis (Tricycle)Attempt to restore balance by

unnatural means, leading to

confusion. Loki, the Devil, Mercury,

Thoth, Raven, Coyote. Annihilation

of the biogram by the logogram.

Beamtenherrschaft

Season of Bureaucracy8th August - 19th October

Parenthesis (Bicycle)

The void. Deterioration. Great souls

held in restraint by inferior people.

Grummet

Season of Aftermath20th October - 31st December

Paralysis (Bicycle)

Transition back to chaos.

Bureaucracy chokes on its ownpaperwork and lack of integrity.

Many begin to deny the logoram

and embrace the biogram.

Hermaphrodite, union of male and

female.

possibility of opposition, preventing any

serious organisation of a counter movement

by forcing people into an isolated

individualism that undermines any vestiges of

solidarity, or even simple sympathy for others

struggling to keep some semblance of order in

a deliberately created chaos of everyday life.

This is a deliberately created image, however,

based on a wilfully false reading of Darwinian

Evolution and riding roughshod over all the

evidence, social, historical, anthropological

and biological, that human beings are social

animals who require sociality or conviviality,

as Illich puts it, in order to survive. Thespectacle has replaced sociality with a war of

each against all which will eventually see the

demise of humanity, perhaps even the planet,

if it is not challenged, and soon.

THE ATTACK on the basic social nature

of people all stems from the work of

various arch sorcerers of the spectacle,

mainly economists and their fellow travellers,

who claim that keeping people in a state of

uncertainty motivates them to work harder

(for capital, not necessarily for their own

wellbeing). That this is a self serving myth

based on no genuine idea of what actually

motivates real people is besides the point, forthem. They invoke the spirit of the fictitious

rational actor from the dark realms of


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sucking out of human

dignity, worth and enthusiasm for life.They make life miserable and therefore not

worth living.

IRONICALLY serial

killers, by virtue of the

fact that they actually kill

people as their adopted modus

operandi, are more honest abouttheir misanthropy than

serial reorganisers (albeit

with an understandable

desire to be relatively discreet about it). In

general they make little pretence of doing

good, except, perhaps, when they are

commanded by the inner voices to clean the worldup a bit. Serial reorganisers, in

contrast, trumpet their

activities as a moral good,

presenting themselves as the doers

of good works for the future

welfare of all, whilst never

failing to fall back on the vast

array of traditionally indirecttools of democratic tyranny

and injustice when

challenged. This is the

standard ploy of the

cowardly when faced

with their own perfidy. Whilst

claiming to be on the side ofprogress, when they are

thwarted or opposed, their


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invariable standard response is to

make immediate recourse to thecriminal law, or the threat of it, to force

through their decisions. Negotiation,

the approach favoured by civilised

well adjusted people, is seldom

considered, no matter how well

reasoned any opposition might be,

unless it is on the terms set by thespectacle itself, those which guarantee

success for power from the outset.

There is no authenticity or integrity in

any of this; the truth is that such

people serve only the progress of

capitals ability to exploit more

efficiently and effectively (a favourite

phrase of this species and its allies).

They are nothing more than bullies

using a very old ploy to camouflage

Thought you were one of the farmers, eh?


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their misanthropy, that of claiming

that what they are about is

perfectly legal, whilst brushing

questions of the morality of their

behaviour under any convenientfloor covering. They make

extensive use of the law and of

contracts which are supposed to be

sacrosanct, until, that is, their

masters find them inconvenient;

they make expansive promises,

which are ignored just as soon as

they get in the way; they fall back

cynically on the rhetoric of a

future in which all will be well

for everyone, whilst caring nothing

about the people they destroy, the

values they destroy, the cultures

they destroy, and the communities

they destroy. Capitalism has formfor this kind of behaviour. If you

want a stark historical precedent

have a look at the treatment of the

North American Native Indians

who, in the nineteenth century,

finally found their way of life, land

and their dignity stolen from them

in just this sort of way. And it

continues even now.

The crowning cynicism of the

serial reorganiser is,

however, that such

creatures dont even seem to care

very much about what they aredoing; it is merely a job not a

vocation. From experience they

It is good to study history, if only to

appreciate how Power does not change

its spots, nor indeed its tactics very

much. Time and progress may bring

forth slight variations, but essentially

the way Power deals with the powerless

remains pretty much the same as it

always has. Lies, trickery and deceit are

the main weapons, supplemented by a

monopoly on the framing and

enforcement of the laws that are

supposed to work for the protection of

the commonweal, but only ever work

for the protection of property and the

welfare of the rich. Tricksy lawyers have

always been culpable in the process, ashave avaricious bankers.

Dee Brown (1970)Bury My Heart

at Wounded Knee. London: Vintage.

ISBN: 0-09-952640-9

Ifthisbo

okdoesntmakeyouangry,

nothingwill


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seem not to care if the outcome of their actions is positive or negative, just

so long as they win the plaudits and monetary rewards for being good pet

hounds for their masters, slavering at their feet awaiting scraps of bounty

from the masters table. It is a vast exercise in inauthenticity. Alas they areto be found everywhere, spreading their moral vacuity through the whole

fabric of culture and life itself. Its as if there is some mysterious spawning

ground in which they procreate well away from the anxious gaze of real

people. Their modus operandi is to

destabilise absolutely everything, and

then get out of the way before the

waste matter has an interface scenariowith the rotating air

displacement

apparatus, thus to

escape the

repercussions

of their

behaviour.

They are

amongst the

current street

fighters of the spectacle, the

heroes of the capitalist fantasy, but,

like all street fighters, once they

have reached the end of their

usefulness (and thus becomeinconvenient), they will be sacrificed,

just like their own


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victims, by those who currently

employ and applaud them. Perhaps

they should study some history and

look closely at what happens to

thugs who lose their usefulness topower by reading what happened,

for example, to Ernst Roehm and

the Sturm Abteilung, or to the old

revolutionaries who got in the way

of Stalin.

At the time of writing this (8th July 2012) BobDiamond has resigned from his position as CEO ofBarclays following a scandal in which Barclays was

implicated in fixing the LIBOR rate for personalprofit. What a shock. Apologists for capitalism havebeen heard on the radio (Radio 4 to be precise)declaiming This is not capitalism! One is forced to

ask, If not, then what is? The fact is that fixing theFree Market for personal gain is perfectlyconsistent with free market economics which, inessence, is about grabbing what you can and fuckthose who cant keep up. The current hand wringingabout loss of morality also misses the point;

capitalism is, as noted before, essentially amoral,perfectly happy to manipulate democracy andfascism equally, indeed it will thrive in almost any

kind of socio-political environment so long as the profits are available, and so long as people are open totemptation. But there is no point in being angry about this, least of all angry at Bob Diamond. This situation

was inevitable once Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Raygun endorsed personal greed as a good thing. As itis, Bob Diamond is little more than another scapegoat, along with Fred the Shred, for the perfidy of an entire

system, besides which he will hardly be left destitute. No doubt all the honest people stillin the higher levels of banking will be hoping that now Mr. D has gone they will beleft alone to carry on feathering their nests with other peoples money.

Speculum: Reflections on life's difficult bits

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