Slavoj Zizek on Religion

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• slavoj
• zizek

[JRHhhify]

it's interesting to listen to this with a live audience laughing in the background.

[ZialusPT]

zizek at his best

[churchjamespeter]

@ratsmokedevil no thanks

[ratsmokedevil]

Viewers, make sure you watch the entire lecture to understand what it is he is talking about in full context.

[sputnikpanicpuppet]

@poitrenaud @VintageburstStandard

There are two aspects of the same idea here. One is the objectivity of belief (an object can believe for me) and the other one is the "coaxing" - for Zizek, the symbolic (not just religion, but any sort of ideology, any sort of social system) becomes a system that makes sense only through a traumatic injunction that doesn't make sense. It's all somewhere in the first 75 pages or so of his book "The sublime object of ideology" if you're curious.

[controverter]

This view seems strikingly similar to Daniel Dennett's idea that in modern society, most religious adherents simply "believe in belief" because they think belief itself is good, rather than holding to religious beliefs because they think they are categorically true.

[rhinathelma]

Well, I didn't think of it in terms of Z himself as the monk, just saying that Douglas Adams who wrote Dirk Gently's was on to the same notion (no need for you to belive if someone does it for you) with another funny example (the robot monk) - but now that you mention it, yes, if one just watches philosophic YT-clips to reassure oneself that someone else is doing one's philosophizing, then I guess Z is the deluxe HegelioLacanian machine of choice. The difference is that he's got us believing...

[Npowell01]

cont...

The "Electric monk" you mentioned is a touching metaphor, but it could also represent using-- say, youtube-- to expose your self to "electric monks" like Slavoj Zizek up there (I mean up in the scrollbar sense). This brings perspective and education to people in a manner never before achievable in history, to those willing to pursue it.

Again, most don't. Foraging for knowledge in this new garden of knowledge called the internet is tedious, boring, or frightening for most people.

[Npowell01]

@carlmalmberg

There is a lazy use and a productive use for any item. Yes, in ways technology weakens us by removing a tedious task which we previously had to perform, thereby making us less appreciative of hard work, etc., etc., But it also opens up opportunities for new discoveries that can be made in times previously occupied by a task. Most people don't take advantage of it, and this is not the fault of technology.

...cont.

[carlmalmberg]

Like the monk from Dirk Gently's...

"The Electric Monk was a labour-saving device, like a dishwasher or a video recorder. Dishwashers washed tedious dishes for you, thus saving you the bother of washing them yourself, video recorders watched tedious television for you, thus saving you the bother of looking at it yourself; Electric Monks believed things for you, thus saving you what was becoming an increasingly onerous task, that of believing all the things the world expected you to believe."