你能避到幾時？

今天想起了The Sound of Silence這首歌。

就算被說思想左傾也好，我對現在的全球性Occupy xxx確是有點熱血沸騰的。

以前讀書剛剛接觸社會科學的科目時，我也曾經掉入「到底是資還是共/社好啊」的無聊框架(畢竟考試/presentation，就是喜歡拿兩個極端來比較)，到今天，說到經濟議題，還是經常出垷一種批評資本主義就被扣上共產主義者或社會主義者的帽子。然而，今天被標籤為資本主義的經濟模式，早就超越，或者不符合其本來單純的概念，例如其實比較像企業福利主義(雖然當事者不會承認)，或者是資本主義加上其他一些主義/思想的混合物。我目前的想法是︰單純的資本概念，其實還要加上其他思想配合才有一套完整的對所有決定的模範，單是資本概念和允許ownership的存在，並沒有為不擇手段獲利的行為和佔用public good背書，反而加上其他思想成「主義」(例如最大獲利是天經地義)時才會出事。這是我覺得制度不需要兩極化的一個想法，以後可能會再充實一下。凡是涉及ism的爭論，因為各人的詮釋都有出入，很麻煩。雖然用「主義」名詞總括各類人的想法比較方便，但單是要面對這些因為詮釋/解讀不同而面對的溝通障礙，令討論的時候要咬文嚼字，才能在論點上表達，很吃力。例如今天在FB留言，竟有人回覆我「所以我認為要維護資本主義和自由市場，以及對富人微重稅去維護公義」…

又在書和某些渠道見到一些討論，對於水和糧食短缺，仍然有人像背書一樣，說自由市場的無形之手可以解決這些問題、投資可以「鼓勵」生產的態度來回應，對他們來說，所有現存的交易都是自願互利，這樣是變相為屯積糧食和水源地的投機基金、向農民壓價甚至違背合約價的大採購商辯護…發生了這麼多事，就算是幾十歲的人，也仍然看不見這些理論的假設和現實的不符，把水和糧食當成普通性質的commodity看待…對於時間已越來越緊迫的現況，仍然有這麼多人對世界運作的認知跟現實脫節成這樣，我覺得真的很大穫。在要跟人爭論時，每提起容易令我火大的自由市場的議題，真的好悶。

雖然我從不喜歡老是有人以宣布末日來了的做法渲染自己的看法，感覺很唯恐天下不亂，但現在，即使不談經濟分佈上的貧富懸殊越來越嚴重，無論是經濟學、社運、環保、地理學及其他科學界，都有人指出現在的經濟模式只會不斷和加速透支地球有限的資源(看了《水資源危機》很憂心)，所以必須要有新的經濟模式取代現在的經濟引擎。這可不是頒布一兩個大經濟政策就可以解決的。現在不少人都知道以GDP計量經濟的缺憾(多和大就是美，例如浪費、沒效率和多病痛也是好事，對發展的意義跟人類真正需要抽離等等)，雖然有人能提出不要只看GDP也要顧及保育和在地農業等，但基本上仍有一種平衡的概念，多注意這個就要損失了那個，而現在主流的跨國經濟、貿易倡議及仲裁組織的做法仍然是以GDP為依歸(事實上很多有話事權的代表就是那些不良GDP份子有關的業者)，沒有一國願意承受一個經濟0%增長的報告對投資和貨幣價值的國際衝擊，高增值性行為仍然成為重心，這根本是一個不鼓勵人走新路的枷鎖，很多元素要單獨改變就一定會跟其他元素有所衝突，所以經濟模式要大調整，真的涉及很多層面的觀值觀和做法、以及權力分佈的改變。例如要改為不依賴將會枯竭的石油為原料的化肥和殺蟲劑，而採用有機耕作和減少使用大型農業機器，去挽救全球正在枯死的土壤和減少使用機油，意味著石油業的衰落、以及要改為農業更人力密集；要本來土壤水份不適合種高耗水作物的以色列、阿拉伯和印度停止大量抽取地下水，防止破壞含水層枯竭導致的地層下陷和地裂，又是相關農業的衰落，以及糧食供應的來源要改變，政府也可能會抗拒；減少/停止使用瓶裝水，防止破壞水文系統的循環，就即使少了水商品行業的大餅；還有IMF、World Bank等強迫發展中國家私有化能源和水資源，令相關行業的GDP增長，卻提高了國民基本生活的開支，為了防止濫收費而訂的最高許可回報率反而鼓勵了浪費。(這點我有親自見證某例，遲點再說) 以及，如果將來有人發明了又低成本又環保甚至可以在地生產，不必出、入口的能源，對GDP計量也是一種罪過… (還有一些…遲點在介紹書時再說……)

像下文所說的，正是經濟模式主宰我們的生活模式，也是生活模式影響/鞏固經濟模式和餵養那些players，而我們自身也是依附於此，所以除了表達不滿，還要有切實的個人改變，例如消除拜金主義造成職業和行業的階級觀念，注意飲食、娛樂方法、買的和穿的、崇拜/景仰什麼人物，etc，然後對政府或企業的要求也要考慮到那些永續性的因素，還要有接受改變的心態，例如購物選擇較少、沒那麼便利的生活。有很多人已經在為此努力，學者/科學家在提出和討論一些概念，前線工作者如有機農場農民和做環保工作的科學家也在默默做事，在城市裏的人們也應該要醒過來了，這不過是救自己而已。

Occupy Wall Street: The Wake Up Call

By: Slavoj Zizek

原址︰http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/3496710.html

On October 9, Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek spoke to Occupy Wall Street protesters at Liberty Plaza. The following is a transcript of his speech:

Don't fall in love with yourselves, with the nice time we are having here.

Carnivals come cheap - the true test of their worth is what remains the day after, how our normal daily life will be changed. Fall in love with hard and patient work - we are the beginning, not the end. Our basic message is: the taboo is broken, we do not live in the best possible world, we are allowed and obliged even to think about alternatives. There is a long road ahead, and soon we will have to address the truly difficult questions - questions not about what we do not want, but about what we DO want. What social organisation can replace the existing capitalism? What type of new leaders do we need? The XXth century alternatives obviously did not work.

So do not blame people and their attitudes: the problem is not corruption or greed, the problem is the system that pushes you to be corrupt. The solution is not "Main Street, not Wall Street," but to change the system where Main Street cannot function without Wall Street. Beware not only of enemies, but also of false friends who pretend to support us, but are already working hard to dilute our protest. In the same way we get coffee without caffeine, beer without alcohol, ice-cream without fat, they will try to make us into a harmless moral protest. But the reason we are here is that we had enough of the world where to recycle your Coke cans, to give a couple of dollars for charity, or to buy Starbucks cappuccino where 1 per cent goes for the Third World troubles is enough to make us feel good. After outsourcing work and torture, after the marriage agencies started to outsource even our dating, we see that for a long time we were allowing our political engagements also to be outsourced - we want them back.

They will tell us we are un-American. But when conservative fundamentalists tell you that America is a Christian nation, remember what Christianity is: the Holy Spirit, the free egalitarian community of believers united by love. We here are the Holy Spirit, while on Wall Street they are pagans worshipping false idols.

They will tell us we are violent, that our very language is violent: occupation, and so on. Yes we are violent, but only in the sense in which Mahathma Gandhi was violent. We are violent because we want to put a stop on the way things go - but what is this purely symbolic violence compared to the violence needed to sustain the smooth functioning of the global capitalist system?

We were called losers - but are the true losers not there on the Wall Street, and were they not bailed out by hundreds of billions of your money? You are called socialists - but in the US, there already is socialism for the rich. They will tell you that you don't respect private property - but the Wall Street speculations that led to the crash of 2008 erased more hard-earned private property than if we were to be destroying it here night and day - just think of thousands of homes foreclosed.

We are not Communists, if Communism means the system which deservedly collapsed in 1990 - and remember that Communists who are still in power run today the most ruthless capitalism (in China). The success of Chinese Communist-run capitalism is an ominous sign that the marriage between capitalism and democracy is approaching a divorce. The only sense in which we are Communists is that we care for the commons - the commons of nature, of knowledge - which are threatened by the system.

They will tell you that you are dreaming, but the true dreamers are those who think that things can go on indefinitely the way they are, just with some cosmetic changes. We are not dreamers, we are the awakening from a dream which is turning into a nightmare. We are not destroying anything, we are merely witness to how the system is gradually destroying itself. We all know the classic scene from cartoons: the cat reaches a precipice, but it goes on walking, ignoring the fact that there is no ground under its feet; it starts to fall only when it looks down and notices the abyss. What we are doing is just reminding those in power to look down.

So is the change really possible? Today, the possible and the impossible are distributed in a strange way. In the domains of personal freedoms and scientific technology, the impossible is becoming increasingly possible (or so we are told): "nothing is impossible," we can enjoy sex in all its perverse versions; entire archives of music, films, and TV series are available for downloading; space travel is available to everyone (with the money...); we can enhance our physical and psychic abilities through interventions into the genome, right up to the techno-gnostic dream of achieving immortality by transforming our identity into a software program. On the other hand, in the domain of social and economic relations, we are bombarded all the time by a You cannot ... engage in collective political acts (which necessarily end in totalitarian terror), or cling to the old Welfare State (it makes you non-competitive and leads to economic crisis), or isolate yourself from the global market, and so on. When austerity measures are imposed, we are repeatedly told that this is simply what has to be done. Maybe, the time has come to turn around these coordinates of what is possible and what is impossible; maybe, we cannot become immortal, but we can have more solidarity and healthcare?

In mid-April 2011, the media reported that Chinese government has prohibited showing on TV and in theatres films which deal with time travel and alternate history, with the argument that such stories introduce frivolity into serious historical matters - even the fictional escape into alternate reality is considered too dangerous. We in the liberal West do not need such an explicit prohibition: ideology exerts enough material power to prevent alternate history narratives being taken with a minimum of seriousness. It is easy for us to imagine the end of the world - see numerous apocalyptic films - but not end of capitalism.

In an old joke from the defunct German Democratic Republic, a German worker gets a job in Siberia; aware of how all mail will be read by censors, he tells his friends: "Let's establish a code: if a letter you will get from me is written in ordinary blue ink, it is true; if it is written in red ink, it is false." After a month, his friends get the first letter written in blue ink: "Everything is wonderful here: stores are full, food is abundant, apartments are large and properly heated, movie theatres show films from the West, there are many beautiful girls ready for an affair - the only thing unavailable is red ink." And is this not our situation till now? We have all the freedoms one wants - the only thing missing is the red ink: we feel free because we lack the very language to articulate our unfreedom. What this lack of red ink means is that, today, all the main terms we use to designate the present conflict - 'war on terror', 'democracy and freedom', 'human rights', etc - are FALSE terms, mystifying our perception of the situation instead of allowing us to think it. You, here, you are giving to all of us red ink.