For the most part nowadays we are living automatons, minds steered by a domineering yet translucent corporate hand reinforced by the pervasive digitization of existence. We fall on bended knees in worship to the altar of efficiency—the primordial virtue of a society in which we “touch base” with our mothers; “reach our emotional bandwidths” with our closest friends; and “circle back” to our roommates re: the dishes. This infiltration of corporate speech into personal relationships is symptomatic of a greater mental pollution; a flattening of the individual; a wobbling world. The way that we consider our own existence is changing: every interaction a transaction, every conversation a means to an end.

         In totality, these media make up a lifeless, homogeneous phantasmagoria of the Middle East composed of real and imagined images where cities and towns are military hideouts and civilians are either suspected terrorists or inevitable casualties. Culture and identity are not phenomena to be understood in and of themselves, but rather signifiers of unforgivable difference, of a looming threat. This compression of a living, breathing region into a map to be interpreted militaristically seems largely reflective of how the U.S. and its Western allies engage with the Middle East–a territory supposedly in perpetual need of intervention, where violence is exported and laundered in the name of protecting Us from an irredeemably foreign Them. 

The same plague of homogenization has befallen the cities of the imperial core. One can take a quick rideshare to an endless variety of bars and restaurants, but they all come to seem curiously similar. Like in the case of air travel, the purchasing power of the well-heeled has brought with it certain expectations. After yet another glass-walled, exposed-lighting, reclaimed-wood-table venue serving “contemporary fusion” takes on a new-to-you cuisine, the modern urbanite starts to wonder: is this all there is? Does the city have nothing else to offer?

TCW: There is no area of reality–every time you have anything with more than one person there is always nuance. And even in myself, I’m nuanced and contradictory.

CO: Even a mother throwing a baby out the window, there’s nuance there.

TCW: Every single issue you can think of, there’s nuance. Always beware of anyone who says anything like “this is actually really simple.”

CO: And anytime anyone says anything in an absolute. The only absolute that I believe is that there should be no absolutes.

TCW: Everything in moderation including moderation.

The Bureaucratization of The Libido

ZOE LARIS-DJOKOVIC

        Organized transgression has always existed. After going to Berlin for a few months I witnessed marshaled line-waiting for the opportunity to get whipped by a “dom” in a sex dungeon with a 20 Euro entrance fee, among other bureaucratized forms of transgressive sexuality. I believe, however, that it’s different than it was once before. These marshaled sexual encounters have become algorithmically commonplace, and in the information age we have the access to transgressive content without even buying into it, or choosing to buy into it, at any age.

       Roger: Think about what it means to live a human life if death is not something you have to worry about. It changes the entire nature of five thousand years of what it means to live as a human being–whatever, four thousand, three thousand or however the hell old we are. It’s very easy in the abstract to say “we should let people die.” But when it’s you, or your mother, or your father, or your baby it’s much harder. And that’s how AI is gonna fundamentally change humanity, by letting people live so long. I mean, also, this is a big problem I think for humanity: what are people who are two hundred years old gonna do? At some point don’t you get bored? Aren’t people gonna get bored? What are they gonna do?


CO: Okay, how are people gonna live to be two hundred.


Roger: With new organs, or you might be able to download your brain into a computer. One answer is your body fails and you redownload, and another is you regenerate new organs.

        Now, as prophetic as this might be, it only begins to point to the issue we now face, the latent contradiction of our free-time: that when we enter this mindless state of consumption, one that is supposedly passive, we are producing, we are working relentlessly to increase the value of these platforms: through producing our own content in our free time, consuming advertisements, and giving up our information. The passivity of our consumption is an illusion that comes at an extreme cost, for we search in our consumption for a meaning unrelated to production, to attempt to establish our freedom, but we neither truly escape production, nor find the satisfaction we seek out. 

        “I may be slightly autistic, like Rain Man, and that’s part of my superpower,” boasted Kanye West in a 2022 video, clad in a black ski mask which, coincidentally, makes it difficult to read or interpret his facial expressions. Kanye has a surprising foil in the writer Tao Lin, who regularly gets on Twitter claiming to have cured his autism. “I love that I cured myself of autism,” he wrote on March 28th. Just 9 days earlier, a Kanye-esque bout of accusatory flexing: “people like to question my view that I cured myself of autism.”