“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


Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Mountain Lion Documentary

It was very interesting talking with Aneeta, the director, today. It seems very much as if we're on the same page about many things to do with ecology, lifeforms, the role of the human. How we don't so much need to insist that we are all Earthlings, and so on, but simply to drop a concept: that society is or has been (chiefly) human.

Moreover, Aneeta and I were on the same page about the role of movies in guiding people's minds. Žižek's idea about how films don't tell you what to desire, but how. For me it has to do with how to convince the American chicken.

It's that joke about the guy who is paranoid he's being persecuted by a giant chicken. He is cured in an asylum only to return a few weeks later white as a sheet and sweating. The head psychiatrist insists, “But you were cured.” The guy replies—“I know, but try telling that to the chicken.”

Americans in particular are in this position vis a vis ecological awareness. They think they know, but the chicken doesn't yet realize that she doesn't exist.