“Was not their mistake once more bred of the life of slavery that they had been living?—a life which was always looking upon everything, except mankind, animate and inanimate—‘nature,’ as people used to call it—as one thing, and mankind as another, it was natural to people thinking in this way, that they should try to make ‘nature’ their slave, since they thought ‘nature’ was something outside them” — William Morris


Friday, February 18, 2011

Hell, That Popular Intellectual Destination


Hell is such a seductive place. You feel totally vindicated there. Yet it draws you in, like an expert seducer: no matter how many others you kill, you are still thirsty.

You can see through everything, you can even see how trapped in Hell you are. This only serves to screw you further into the burning iron soil.

The trouble is, how do you find the exit? You are cynical enough to realize that Hell is just a state of mind. But it's so compelling, so dark, so real.

You pity the poor humans who can't see that we're all in Hell. Poor fools. Theodor Adorno was the best of them. Like a kind cynical old alcoholic uncle who knows he's an alcoholic and a nuisance, and knows he can get violent sometimes. “I'm really a peaceful guy,” he says, draining another shot down his throat. At least it's better than him holding an Uzi to your head and saying he's non-violent and he's not going to pull the trigger, not like those other Marxists, he would never use his weapon to commit violence. Saint Adorno. Something was wrong with him and you were a sinner to point it out.

Poor Adorno. He had to go. You killed him. Poor correlationist, stuck in his head, just another Hegelian headbanger. You know exactly what's wrong with Adorno and why he had to die. He's in hell, goddamit, rotting in Hell and he doesn't even know it! Poor guy, you say to yourself as you scoop out his brains, he had to die. To be exposed to the fires of Hell.
Out of the frying pan and into the fire. The pits of acid. The mind-fuckery of knowing for sure that you are so not the center of the Universe. The mystery of demystification. The sacred rite of reduction.

You know for sure that Hell's exit is your mind, but your mind is right. Totally and utterly correct. You are in Hell!



I was killed by Satan: Can you help?



3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Poor Adorno, I felt a wee bit sorry when I killed him--but only a wee bit.

John B-R said...

This, I take it, is an example of apoplectic irony?

Timothy Morton said...

-leptic, -plectic, -pleptic and antiseptic!