occupytheplanet:

OccupyWallStreet reaches all seven continents. #OccupyAntarctica

callumalistairmacleod:

You might remember I posted an observation I had made a while back about the disintegration of language as a tool of freedom, with reference to George Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four” and its fictional language of Newspeak in relation to modern language. Anyone? No? Never mind.

Anyway, the following is a quote from Slavoj Žižek at Occupy Wall Street, that raises a similar point, although obviously making it a lot more articulately, being that he is among the most enlightened philosophers of modern times, speaking during a saga of (hopefully) great social upheaval, and I am a deluded little shit with a micro-blog.

Read on, you’ll enjoy it. He’s a clever man I swear.

“Let me tell you a wonderful old joke from communist times.

A guy was sent from East Germany to work in Siberia. He knew his mail would be read by censors. So he told his friends: Let’s establish a code. If the letter you get from me is written in blue ink, it is true what I said. If it is written in red ink, it is false. After a month his friends get a first letter. Everything is in blue. It says, this letter: everything is wonderful here. Stores are full of good food. Movie theaters show good films from the West. Apartments are large and luxurious. The only thing you cannot buy is red ink.

This is how we live. We have all the freedoms we want. But what we are missing is red ink. The language to articulate our non-freedom. The way we are taught to speak about freedom, war, and terrorism and so on falsifies freedom. And this is what you are doing here: You are giving all of us red ink.

There is a danger. Don’t fall in love with yourselves. We have a nice time here. But remember: carnivals come cheap. What matters is the day after. When we will have to return to normal life. Will there be any changes then? I don’t want you to remember these days, you know, like - oh, we were young, it was beautiful. Remember that our basic message is: We are allowed to think about alternatives. The rule is broken. We do not live in the best possible world. But there is a long road ahead. There are truly difficult questions that confront us. We know what we do not want. But what do we want? What social organization can replace capitalism? What type of new leaders do we want?

Remember: the problem is not corruption or greed. The problem is the system that pushes you to give up. Beware not only of the enemies. But also of false friends who are already working to dilute this process. In the same way you get coffee without caffeine, beer without alcohol, ice cream without fat. They will try to make this into a harmless moral protest.”