Cyborg Lite

Celebrities separate themselves into a separate realm from others, because they are overly 'normal.' Thus is it always with capital. It wishes to separate itself out into a ruling class, but presses others into resentment against these and into attempting to displace them. Where it wishes to posit difference or separation, or even a 'bellum omnium contra omnes,' it instead posits dependence and service to those who should be apart. These struggles do not themselves diverge from the norm in capital, but eventually this self-harming 'love' will tear it apart.

The more people in the West aim for publicity, the more they open themselves to attacks by terrorists or others. These people will often kill themselves after attacking, or use suicide bombing. This leaves few clear ways of preventing it. The very best is to have the supposedly notable celeb or singer constantly dependent on a network of others whom they are only vaguely acquainted with. These are the real 'stars' of the show - the more Westerners stand out, the more they make themselves targets, and then they only go further to court danger. People want to stand out, but they only hide their reliance. People like Christina Grimmie go through many hoops of capital's self-interested struggle, but they run after opportunities to be shot notably. It's like Western society is just a clumsy euthanasia.

To stand out in such a way when you are a walking target, is to stand out only through promotion and fancy lights. There is reliance on a vast network that could either fail or themselves harm you. It is unlikely that people being thrust out as targets and then thrown to the lions would be stable, socially, so there is likely some forgery there. Nonetheless that is their aim and general dynamic, so realistically in a system where all fight each other and forming systems within it is courting their failure, it's a venture only of worth for adrenaline and if your life didn't seem worth conserving in the first place.

Nonetheless, this is ultimately an extension of capital's tendencies if left unchecked. It has to be conceded in any case that for a society of mutual animosity you have many areas which rely on the absence of this. Hence, you have the conventionally 'religious' - those who would stint capital's own tendencies just to help make it functional. This religion is ultimately the worship of the society and people's real ultimate end, capital; nonetheless, it gives this the illusory guise of a transcendent being standing over capital. Capitalism is hence degraded by this piousness, somehow. Yet people have made recourse to figures of capital as a society of 'love' and universal 'collaboration,' that capital itself has no time for.

Against capital you also have a tendency of piousness and unifying sentiment, that would plunge us below capital but is forever limited by its lack of any ability to systematically consider society - or re-configure society on a systematic level. We can see this for instance in events around the British monarchy. Though blunted, these things run rampant. They would turn the whole of society into a collaborating household.

Although piousness fears capitalism, this fear merely serves to promote it and its lasting nature. Piousness ultimately wishes to be done with considering social systems, and instead find a substitute society in the domestic realm - where it can rest and ignore the social system. Capitalism, however, can rarely be strict in preventing tendencies which detract from its organisation, and hence gives way to many things which might seem 'foreign' to it. It distorts these actions, but leaves them in place. At the same time, they will not harm it completely, only leave it in place in an 'alloyed' or peculiar form. This is the extent of 'revolution' allowed by such tendencies. Capitalism is very open to the input and influence of those who would have members of it all 'collaborate' and operate in 'harmony,' who would have 'love' and 'enthusiasm' dampen the conflicts of this society, even as it functions in a quite different way. Hence, it remains hemmed in by these sentimental tendencies, which means that even 'capitalism' demands the establishment of a social control which it cannot provide.

Ultimately, a 'separation' founded on others continually interacting is a counterfeit separation. In this sense, it is symptomatic of capitalism. Looked at from the perspective of difference or distinction, capitalism appears limited and contradictory from the 'abstraction' of commodities onwards. This is the only appropriate perspective from which to criticise capitalism. It is difficult to 'fight' a society which continually abstracts from difference, without a firm insistence on it. Without this, one will instead inevitably be assimilated into it. Still, if it is 'counterfeit' it is because it is stolen from genuine separation and pretends clearly to be the same.

However, it is hence always fending off difference and opposition, because it could easily collapse into this again. Hence, the frequency of 'fads' and 'gimmicks.'

In any case, we are hence going to indignantly follow this with longer, intentionally tangential posts about capitalism - what it is, in what manner it constitutes a social system, etc. Hopefully you enjoy this exciting new direction for ZNS.