(found on weheartit.com)
"The Situationists pronounced a commitment to living 'a life of permanent novelty.' They were interested only in freedom and just about any means to it were justified. The creativity of everyday people, which consumer capitalism and communism had weakened but not killed, desperately needed expressing...To the Situationists, you are--everyone is--a creator of situations, a performance artist, and the performance, of course, is your life, lived in your own way."
Freedom. Tastes foreign on my tongue. Why live your life according to the standards set by others? You were blessed with a beautiful body and a capable brain, and have hopefully been surrounded by smart, inspiring people (both living and in books) and have learned enough about life thus far in order to beat your own path and beat it well. "Debord developed some effective ways to break out of the mass-culture trance. One way was the
dérive. Literally 'the drift,' the
dérive was an idea borrowed from the Dadaists. The Situationists defined it is 'locomotion without a goal.' As a
dériviste, you float through the city, open to whatever you come in contact with, thus exposing yourself to the whole spectrum of feelings you encounter by chance in everyday life. Openness is key. You embrace whatever you love, and in the process, you discover what it is you hate."
As Adele sings, "I ain't lost, just wandering." Don't be afraid. Don't be afraid."The Situationists saw a world crushed by wasted potential. Mass mechanization, for example, was supposed to create vast stretches of leisure time in which people could create free flowing, imaginative lives for themselves. Instead people were allowing their leisure hours to be gobbled up by programmed entertainments...The Situationist solution:
Take back the show. Create your own atmospheres, ambiances, and situations. Build something 'provisional and lived.'"
If only the Situationists could see us now, our leisure hours defined by programmed entertainments. Our every waking moments spent in front of glowing rectangles. Mindless entertainment in order to unwind, we say. What if your life was so fulfilling you didn't need to unwind? And why would you want something mindless, anyway? Live and learn."Maybe only when you're shoved into a new pattern of behavior and make the commitment not to back out--when your hand is held to the fire or you hold your own hand to the fire--do the real gains come. When the trance is interrupted, you catch a brief, tantalizing glimpse of the way life could be...Stopping the flow relies on an element of surprise. Debord called this kind of thing 'breaking the old syntax,' and replacing it with a new one. The new syntax carries the instructions for 'a whole new way of being in the world.'"
Don't be afraid. Don't be afraid. "The American dream has devolved into exactly the kind of vacant obliviousness they talked about--a have-a-nice-day kind of happiness that close examination tends to disturb. If you keep up appearances, keep yourself diverted with new acquisitions and constant entertainments, keep yourself pharmacologized and recoil the moment you feel real life seeping in between the cracks, you'll be all right. Some dream."
That phrase: have-a-nice-day kind of happiness. It has become so impersonal, a nicety uttered without eye contact. It's become part of the routine. It's like the security guard in your building, or your favorite barista at the coffee shop: these are people you are dealing with. Real, live, breathing, thinking human beings. But do you even know their name? Vacant obliviousness. Prozac nation. Ingesting chemicals to keep the real world, with all its nuances and emotions and twists and turns, away. Why divert yourself from the utmost experience we have, life itself? Because we are all afraid. I am afraid. Don't be afraid."The new American dream is simply to approach life full-on, without undue fear or crippling self-censorship, pursuing joy and novelty as if tomorrow you'll be in the ground...There's no other way to discover what's at your core. This is what the new American dream is all about, and this is the kind of person the culture jammer aspires to be: someone who, to paraphrase Ray Bradbury, '
jumps off cliffs and builds his wings on the way down.'"
--quotes from "Culture Jamming," by Kalle Lasn, 1999.
