#puddingandburger

[puddingandburger]

Fuck AirBnB and silicon valley 

[puddingandburger]

Emptiness, the motivator

[puddingandburger]

A confession on desire

Late the other night I arrived on a far-fetched conclusion that desire is pretty much the essence of all our actions and motivations. I could not stop thinking how this blog had come into being, driven yet again, by desire. Plus, it is not only the driving force of our project, but also a central element of the different sections we decided with Burger to decompose. Let me explain why.

Desire and the politics of late capitalism: The critique of capitalism is deeply rooted in repulsion with the obsessive desire to accumulate things we don’t have, and things we don’t truly need. This craving is an inward-looking, selfish one that focuses solely on the individual (no, there is no ethical capitalism). I propose here to turn our sight on the communist horizon: a desire for collectivism and a politicization of needs. In capitalism, desires are formed without a profound ideology or orientation, hence for the writers of this blog (I dare to say the plural), communism here reflects a logic in desiring, a system of allocating needs, to think collectively. After all, we should stand for the motto: ‘our left is communism’.

Desire and philosophy: My secret admiration of nihilism (which I now simplify as scepticism about what to want and desire) comes from the opposition of canonizing objects and people – giving significance to the wrong ideals. We need orientation in what to want, otherwise we’ll all end up in a glittering postmodernity that celebrates the spectacle, ephemeral, the en vogue aesthetics, ghettoizing the desire to solve and address genuine social problems rendering it to be just one desire out of the many. The science and philosophy section additionally formulates a critique towards the so-called ‘experience society’, where the confusion on wanting in the end leads to no other than loneliness, depression and indifference.

Desire and sex: In the course of evolution, contentment did not tend to foster survival, thus we are meant to stop having pleasure in our desires the very moment they are fulfilled, and look for new ones instead. Consequently, lovers need distance, so they can connect through this distance. The authors of the blog started practicing this only a while ago, opening up questions on how monogamy and capitalism is related to each other, and how dualogamy (©Burger) could be a system that eliminates capitalist co-optation and shows a way out for a communist understanding of contemporary relationships, which balances between both pleasure and struggle, bound to constantly desire the other but in the meantime question the exclusivity of the very same desire.

Finally, desire and gulag: It is indeed desire that gives direction and meaning to our life. Perhaps not in a universal, but a more restricted narrative sense. In our era, where uncertainty is so high that it is merely impossible to plan ahead, longing stands as the fundamental narrative of human actions, a longing that always needs to be represented and shared somehow. Therefore, the gulag section criticizes anything and everything that carries this extroverted nature of desire to pursue an endless quest for more, manifesting in narcissism, greed, and the rest.

To end this not-so-developed chain of thought slash kind-of manifesto, it will be quite an experiment to write here regularly. As a wannabe blogger, for myself surely. But as the saying goes: the proof of the pudding is in the eating.