The death of a social machine
Excerpt (Draft) from Special Article Part 3
The American Collective is a social machine and it is breaking down. As it breaks down, it and its human components become schizophrenic. You’re not crazy. The nation is.
The death of a social machine has never been heralded by a disharmony or a dysfunction; on the contrary, social machines make a habit of feeding on the contradictions they give rise to, on the crises they provoke, on the anxieties they engender, and on the infernal operations they regenerate.
Capitalism has learned this, and has ceased doubting itself, while even socialists have abandoned belief in the possibility of capitalism's natural death by attrition. No one has ever died from contradictions.
And the more it breaks down, the more it schizophrenizes, the better it works, the American way.”
― Gilles Deleuze, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia
Deleuze and Debord are among my favorite philosophers, along with Merleau-Ponty and Umberto Ecco. The French and the Italians do philosophy differently from the Germans or people in the English speaking world.
In my Special Article Part 3, I try to deal with the sheer irrationality of Western collapse, which Richard Wolf marvelled at in his talk with Lee Camp, which I posted yesterday.
The American Psychiatric Association has a diagnostic manual, DSM-V, for mental disorders afflicting individuals. if you are reading this—yes!—there’s a brand new disorder just for you!
Seriously, is there a DSM for nations?
How would you diagnose the US of A as it moves inexorably towards devolution? The “union” could become a federation, a confederation, of just new nation states, not necessarily following state boundaries. Who knows?
How would one diagnose Canada? The Un-United Kingdom?
Why is it that liberal democracies are neither liberal nor democratic? Why are political parties these days more like factions of one party? Why is it that….
Free election of masters does not abolish the masters or the slaves.
― Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society.
Hopefully, I can finish this before my birthday at the end of the month.
If you have any ideas, let me know.
To buy me and Ichi and Chappy a coffee click here!
Mass hysteria, national mental disorders have been well documented in history. Charles MacKay's Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds is a good example
As having worked in forensic psyciatry more than 30 years teaching about borlerline persnality disorder I alwas had the end words "just look at USA and you will see it clearly"
Yes there is adefinition in DSM and it is more eexplicit in every newer edition