Pensword Press

Confront Your Self

all lives matter

the reactionary white slogan “all lives matter”. ideologically, it signifies not a universalism, but the eradication of the particular within another. It’s not about “all lives” but the consumption of any difference by the ideology of whiteness. It’s a call to keep ‘blackness’ within the bounds of Amerikkkan ideology, where the 'blackness’ of “black lives matter” a declaration of subjectivity, is being treated like what it is: a slave escaping. By negating this subjectivity, whiteness is declaring, “no, you are NOT black. You are just a life. And ALL lives matter. You do not have the right to break away from this project. You are a part of it. We don’t give you permission.” It’s like a shark trying to keep food in it’s belly.

“All lives matter”, it’s a painting of the world in a grey. It betrays the assumption of whiteness itself as a universality, in this way mirroring the drab false globalism of 21st century capitalism, a capitalism that transforms the world into Mcdonalds and Walmart. “All lives matter” is the chant of TNCorporations.

It isn’t a universal. It’s a false universal.

Your Privilege Politics Aren’t Helpful

What is the scientific, or at least verifiable, qualifier for the ‘recognition’ of ________ privilege’?
How are privilege politics simply not reducible to a reliance on the self-appointed ‘arbiter’ of the Truth?
This takes the form of:
a relationship of 'faith’ between the arbiter and the condemned (e.g. “I believe that you recognize your privilege, now”)
b) an admittance of epistemological incompetence (e.g. “I can never know your oppression, so I need you to verify my own admission of eternal ignorance”)
c) self-castigation (e.g. “please forgive me for my privileges.”)
Again, all of this is a reliance on a presupposed clear-sightedness of the self-appointed ‘arbiter’. It is an assumption that a judgement is even possible in the first place, and in the second place, only by the those in judgement (I’m the REAL person from ________ group).
I’m not saying that ‘privilege’ isn’t real, but that the concept, and how its used, often is expressed in an idealist manner.
Then people are too scared to critique the ritual, at the risk of being accused of having X privilege, and that X is supposed to be the reason the person simply can’t understand the privilege (sin) in the first place.

leave the states to china. miss states. leave china to korea. miss china. 

does this mean that if i leave me, I’ll finally give a shit about myself?

The middle class is the allotment of entertainment potential and social status to a select few who in exchange become willing to defend the asylum that is capitalism.

The real arguments against the use of drugs cannot speak their names. That pleasure- inducing substances may dynamite the lives of individuals and their families is true. But since when has an advanced and still burgeoning society ever cared about individuals and families? They allow whole segments of their populations to founder without a wince. And these are the segments in which drug use is most penetrant. They also include those persons who are of the least benefit to a society’s economy and would not be missed were they all to overdose themselves in a single day. These individuals and their families do not exist for a society in the first place, so their death has no meaning for the status quo. What does have meaning for the happy, productive social beings who want to survive and reproduce, who want to keep existing, are these facts: (1) being on drugs is the closest one can come to being dead without actually dying; (2) drugs do what every form of pleasure does—they satisfy a need—only they do it better and without the intermediary agents and activities that bring profit to a society, such as popular entertainment, interest in one’s work-life, spending earned income on a new car, etc. No question that these agents and activities are non-chemical counterparts of drugs. They keep people’s minds off the MALIGNANTLY USELESS nature of human existence. They also net the big money and deliver it to the right people—those who exist, those who are driven to survive and to produce more people like themselves. Anti-drug programs are directed at these people, not at those who are officially dead to a society and who remind its members, those who really exist, that drugs are next-door neighbors to death and do not contribute a cent to Project Immortality.

—Thomas Ligotti, Conspiracy Against the Human Race

If you act happy, then you will become happy—everybody in the workaday world knows that. If you do not improve, then someone must assume the blame. And that someone will be you. We are on our way to the future, and no introverted melancholic is going to impede our progress. You have two choices: start thinking the way God and your society want you to think or be forsaken by all. The decision is yours, since you are a free agent who can choose to rejoin the world of fabricated reality—civilization, that is—or stubbornly insist on … what? That we should rethink how the whole world transacts its business? That we should start over from scratch, questioning all the ways and means that delivered us to a lofty prominence over the amusement park of creation? Try to be realistic. We made our world just the way nature and the Lord wanted us to make it. There is no starting over and no going back. No major readjustments are up for a vote. And no nihilistic head case is going to get a bad word in edgewise. The universe was created by the Creator, goddamn it. We live in a country we love and that loves us back. We have families and friends and jobs that make it all worthwhile. We are somebodies, as we spin upon this good earth, not a bunch of nobodies without names or numbers or retirement plans. None of this is going to become unraveled by a thought criminal who contends that the world is not double plus good and never will be and who believes that anyone is better off dead than alive. Our lives may not be unflawed—that would deny us a future to work toward—but if this charade is good enough for us, then it should be good enough for you. So if you cannot get your mind right, try walking away. You will find no place to go and no one who will have you. You will find only the same old trap the world over. It is the trap of tomorrow.

—Thomas Ligotti, Conspiracy Against the Human Race

I wish we’d all find out the matrix was real. Or that the Moon was really a space station. Or that the center of the Earth was quantum tunnel to another world. Or that suddenly we could communicate through telepathy. Or that we could see Truth through the mind. Or discover a means of transmuting our blood into kinetic energy. Or crafting our bones and muscles into material harder than titanium. Or flight. Lazer vision. Super speed. Spiritual fate. Grand destiny. Adventures of villains, triumphs and tragedy. Spectral sexual encounters of another dimension. Vampiric conspiracies with a consequence of immortal life and love. 

I desire supernatural release from boredom and metaphysical suffering.