Location of this promised land- the future.
The White-Heat of Technology- the past- has created leisure time or unemployment depending on how you see it. No one has to slave and toil to get food from the land when there are corporations to join, security and pensions. Education sifts brighter brains from the duller; the thetas and epsilons, from the alphas and betas.
The system should work, but something is wrong.
And now we need austerity.
There is nothing rational about austerity; it is a weird idea, a paradoxical idea that demands faith. It is also an inversion, not least of the truth. It isn't true that less is more. Nor is it necessarily true that less now means more in the future.
The doctrine demands that you agree that 'purity' of form and content is inherently better, more rational than complexity, ambiguity, shade shadow and flavour.
The concept of austerity as ascetism, abstinence, plainness and simplicity as the antidote to the perceived ills of our society is nothing new. Up-tight dictators the world over have found pleasure in proscribing austerity for others.
It looks to me as if today's austerity is an inversion. Anxiety in a community manifests in symbols (is the theory underlying at least one explanation of satanic panics). Governments from Greece to Spain have to cut and prune- destroy jobs and reduce 'security'- in a vainglorious attempt to restore the value of money.
I have no idea if it can work; I don't think that it makes enough sense to work...
But what I see is the desire for austerity feeding from anxiety about global warming -key phrase: an unsustainable way of life. Austerity is the fantasy solution to common social fears about deviance. Austerity becomes the myth of rescue, whilst remaining a strange, inverted image of the problem, but never a solution, inversions can never be the cure.
Meanwhile, greed and 'normality' will be maintained by austerity. As long as austerity is perceived as the antidote to greed, the original problems remain.
Ultimately the solution for global warming is science, radical changes in how things are done, and a focus on austerity is as meaningless as pretending that there is a real value for money.
This process of inversion is mistaken as shadow work. It is assumed that the inversion is a projection rather than what it truly is- a misunderstanding dressed in symbols embedded within the culture, a positive feed-back loop.
On the other hand, for those who believe... austerity will be seen to relieve ailments, heal social ruptures and reduce anxiety. The worrying thing about austerity is that those who believe in its value, see it as a cleansing of the community.
This is far more interesting though; Dan Simmonds talking about Drood.
