This blog has been in the works for quite a while, but its final impetus–along with its titular inspiration–was the untimely death of one of America’s greatest cultural critics, George Carlin, whose relevance will continue as long as humanity is in existence. “Screaming for the Dead” will be an attempt
to give voice to all those who–despite finding their corporeal forms now employed in the field of decomposition–have a similar relevance, as well as those currently making their way toward the river Styx, whether by way of war, religion, or merely their own stupidity and the wonderful gift that is natural
selection. Discussions of politics, philosophy, religion, and the intersections therein, will be typical fare, in the hopes of initiating and facilitating a much needed discussion with the blogging public at large. To say that our politics will have an orientation to the left is similar to suggesting that the current administration has a slight penchant for mendaciousness. However, as Steven Colbert so aptly stated in his address to the Whitehouse Correspondence dinner, “reality has a strong liberal bias.” Nonetheless, all views will be heard and considered, provided the views are articulated with rational thought and not mere knee-jerk reactions to statements the author of said opinions finds offensive. In the case that they fall under the latter category, they will be ridiculed endlessly, in the hopes of both entertainment and enlightenment. The two primary authors, Mr Z and Mr H, each have their own unique voices, which will sometimes speak for themselves and at other times be combined into what may best be described as the bipolar bastard child of comedy, philosophy, and a general distaste for the world as a whole.
What follows is a eulogy for George Carlin, and a typical example of the content we plan to post.
George carlin as Social Theorist and philosopher King?
Z
It has now been one week since the death of comedian and cultural critic george carlin. Note the noun in the preceeding sentence, death. It has not been one week since his passing, expiration or terminal episode. He is, in fact, definitely disceesed; he is no more!! He’s bleedin’ demised! He has ceased to be!!! Bereft of life he rests in peace!! He is an ex-Carlin!!
I must insist on carrying on so vociforously if only to squelch some of the unfortunate tendencies noted in the numerous tributes to carlin that have cropped up . Not only have some of them used euphemisms such as passed on or passed away, but, for the most part, they have dealt with his earlier work, in particular the infamous seven words you can never say on television routine. While it is certainly not my desire to denigrate the humor and social relevance of this routine–which did, after all, spawn FCC vs Pacifica Foundation, which placed carlin in the annals of legal history and increased the regulatory power of the FCC–it is my contention that his later work has much more to offer in the way of relevance to a discussion of the human condition.
It is obvious that his oeuvre is a constant deconstruction of our dependence on language as truth,as Carlin once stated in an interview, “By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth. If we could read each other’s minds, this would be a horror show. This stuff we call society would really be interesting. So we kind of shape our truths as we speak them. We fashion things to suit the occasion or the person or our own needs in the moment.” This position brings to mind Michel Foucault’s conceptions of power, language and truth. However, I believe, in Carlin’s latter years especially, he became a cultural critic whose bredth and insight is comparable only to Theodor Adorno. This is most notable in Life is worth Losing, his 2006 HBO special, in which Carlin transgressed the bounds of standup comic and attained the status of both a historian and philosopher. With what Nietzsche called “eyes to survey millennia,” Carlin laid bare humanities barbarism, reducing the humanistic hope of progress to something that could only be espoused by one obdurate to truth.
After an illucidation of what is refered to as “extreme human behavior,” Carlin explains, “Now in case you’re wondering why I have a certain fascination let’s call it, with torture and genecide, human sacrifice, nechrophilia–it’s because all these things go to show me but over and over and over, … what beasts, we humans really are, you know? When yuh get rahght down to it, when yuh get rahght down to it, … human beings are nothing more than ordinary jungle beasts, savages, no different from the Cro-magnon people 25000 years ago livin’ in the Pleistocene forests eatin’ grubs off of rotten logs. Our DNA hasn’t changed substantially in a hundred thousand years, we’re still operating out of the lower, reptilian brain, fight or flight kill or be killed, … Now, we like to think we’ve evolved and advanced, because we can build a computer, fly an airplane, travel under water, , we can write a sonnet, paint a painting, compose an opera, but you know what? we’re barely out of the jungle on this planet, barely out of the fuckin’ jungle. what we are, is semicivilized beasts, … with baseball caps and automatic weapons.” This conception of history as wrought with calamities perpetuated by human stagnation perceived as advancement brings to mind Walter Benjamin’s portrayal of the “angel of history.” IN HIS “Theses on the Philosophy of History,” Benjamin uses a Paul Klee painting, Angelus Novus, as his point of departure for thesis number nine. “This is how one pictures the angel of history,” Benjamin writes. “His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. This storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.”
This storm of progress is what Carlin saw as the inevitable result of mankind’s hubris and excess, made most manifest in contemporary american consumerism, itself a product of a highly developed system of religious indoctrination. In the same interview, Carlin states, “… the belief that there’s a man in the sky watching us, watching everything we do, is so ingrained: First thing they do is tell you there’s an invisible man in the sky who’s going to march you down to a burning place if he doesn’t like you. If they can get you to believe that, it’s all over. Before you’re six years old, they’ve got you thinking that, they’ve got you forever on anything else they want. There’s no real education. It’s an indoctrination training little producers of goods who will also be consumers of goods. Some will be on the producer side, and more will be on the consumer side. But you’re all being trained to be a part of this big circle of goods being pumped out and everyone buying them and everyone going to work to help make more of them for other people to buy.” This is the new stage of capitalism, beyond Marx’s analysis of its industrial phase, this is what is now being dubbed “consumer capitalism,” in which it is the consumer, rather than the worker who upholds the upper class’s prophets. In fact, in this society, the worker and consumer have merged into a single entity, creating the circle of production and consumption described by carlin.
This critique might seem banal today. At present, academia is rife with books on the dangers of globalization and inordinate consumption. However, this is not carlin’s primary target. For Carlin, it is the human condition with its propencity towards greed that has lead to our enslavement to the goods mentality. Our unhappiness is not merely due to the contemporary circumstances in which we find ourselves, but is rather an inevitable outcome that stems from human selfishness. Critics of consumer culture could never state such a truth without alienating the publications and publishers for which they write. Carlin, however, as an outsider, divorced from humanity, can calmly make such observations without fear of repercussions. With his ability to put all of life in a properly historical context, he can thus make the following astewt observation: “I’ve given up on the whole human species. I think a big, good-sized comet is exactly what this species needs. You know, the poor dinosaurs were walking around eating leaves, and they were completely wiped out. Let the insects have a go. You know, I don’t think they’ll come up with sneakers with lights in them, or Dust Busters, or Salad Shooters, or snot candy.”
For Plato, a philosopher was one who had emerged from the cave and seen the world as it truly was, in this case, the world of the forms, and was now charged with the obligation to enlighten those who still resided within the darkness of their world of shadows. Without adopting Platonic idealism, I believe it can be argued that george Carlin was one who had “seen the light,” and tried to infuse that knowledge within the culture in which he found himself. Unfortunately, when he was at his most brutally honest, he was rejected. Life is Worth Losing was often panned for its negativity, and carlin’s failure to provide his listeners with the usual jovial, sometimes silly, language games to which they had grown accustomed. while it is certainly true that his albums had grown progressively “darker”, particularly since 1992′s Jammin’ in New York, he had produced nothing that compared to the inescapability found in Life is Worth Losing. It is my hope that now, with his death, a greater appreciation can be cultivated for his penultimate gift to us. After all, one of the premisses of this blog is that the dead are the ones with the most valuable insights to offer.
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