Good Manners in the Age of WikiLeaks - Slavoj Žižek

[davidpbrown]

I just watched The Dark Knight for the first time today, having also stumbled over this piece by Slavoj Žižek a few days back.

Good Manners in the Age of WikiLeaks - Slavoj Žižek (http://www.lrb.co.uk/v33/n02/slavoj-zizek/good-manners-in-the-age-of-wikileaks)

I didn't particularly like the film, specifically because the underlying morality was screwed up.

Glad I'm not the only one to question that..
The film’s take-home message is that lying is necessary to sustain public morale: only a lie can redeem us. No wonder the only figure of truth in the film is the Joker, its supreme villain.

I'll leave this here, while I ponder if it's the butler that's the real devil, for encouraging the nonsense.. the amplified clash between good and evil.

[davidpbrown]

This is precisely our situation today: we face the shameless cynicism of a global order whose agents only imagine that they believe in their ideas of democracy, human rights and so on. Through actions like the WikiLeaks disclosures, the shame – our shame for tolerating such power over us – is made more shameful by being publicised. When the US intervenes in Iraq to bring secular democracy, and the result is the strengthening of religious fundamentalism and a much stronger Iran, this is not the tragic mistake of a sincere agent, but the case of a cynical trickster being beaten at his own game.

A simpler, less deliberately complicated world might be a better world?..