Zizek says God is in pain

[ARW23]

It felt somewhat overwhelming to be in the same room with Slavoj Zizek
at the Palace of Fine Arts Theatre in San Francisco and meeting him in
person last night. Despite the subject (Starbucks, belief system,
occupy movement, toilets) his intensity and passion dominate. For me,
it has been one of those festive altered state of mind experinces and
when I arrived home at 1 AM I could not remember exactly driving home.
I guess, I was in Zizek's cloud. Great elate feeling.

Here is just one illustration of Zizek's explanation how the belief
system functions without believing that we believe supported by one of
his favorite anecdotes regarding Neils Bohr:

http://livefromthenypl.tumblr.com/post/20907300558/slavoj-zizek-on-kung-fu-panda-niels-bohr-belief

On Zizek's popularity: apparently Zizek is so popular in Buenos Aires
that they named Thursday evening at the night club after him, and the
club "confounds its public by refusing to stick to one fluid
ideology":

http://www.argentinaindependent.com/life-style/undergroundba/zizek-cumbia-for-the-middle-classes/

Apropos Slavoj Zizek and Boris Gunjevic (co-author) book: "God in
Pain: Inversions of Apocalypse" seems a wonderful dissection and
reconstruction of Christianity, Islam and Judaism where Zizek and
Gunjevic employ Hegelian and Lacanian analysis to show how each faith
understands humanity and divinity - and how the differences between
them may be far stranger than they first seem.

I have not read the book yet.

This from the cover of the book:

ZIZEK says God is in pain.
GUNJEVIC argues that St.Augustine can help us elude capitalism.
ZIZEK suggests that adopting an apocalyptic stance is "the only way to
keep a cool head."
GUNJEVIC tells us how theology is necessary for the revolution.
ZIZEK adds, the fiasco of God is still the fiasco of God."


At the end of the evening Zizek signs my book with the note; "See you
in deep hell"

I like it!

ARW23

[Psmith]

Cool post. I tried to read a bit of Zizek after hearing Shelly Brivic
talk about him last June. So much to read!

[ARW23]

On Apr 26, 7:57 am, Psmith <Ewagner...@aol.com> wrote:

> Cool post.  I tried to read a bit of Zizek after hearing Shelly Brivic
> talk about him last June.So much to read!

"So much to read!"

It feels like some people write much faster than you can actually read
them. Could feel frustrating for us, readers. At least that's how I
felt after an evening with Slavoj Zizek.

Apropos Zizek, no wonder some consider him the most dangerous
philosopher in the West whit his, often, razor-sharp logic.

Zizek says "God is in pain' and in chapter five of his book SZ argues
that "only a suffering god can save us" which comes as a proper
supplement to Heidegger's "Only a God can save us!"

According to SZ: "The key question about religion today is: Can all
religious experiences and practices effectively be contained within
the dimension of the conjunction of truth and meaning? The best
starting point for such a line of inquiry is the point at which
religion itself faces a trauma, a shock which dissolves the link
between truth and meaning, a truth so traumatic that it resists being
integrated into the universe of meaning."

Religion does not stand any chance with Zizek. Zizek finds God very
irresponsible in all the "divine" suffering of millions of innocents.
Somehow religion and God face Zizek's guillotine every step of the
way.

According to SZ, "the theological answers build strange succession of
Hegelian triads" and Zizek's tree examples of Hegelian triads in
regards to religion are brilliant ( not to say divine!):

1. The "legalistic" sin-and-punishment theory
2. The "moralistic" character-education theory
3. The divine mystery theory

I would ruin it if I started to interpret those three theories. Zizek
is brilliant in his Hegelian fashion and I think his theories have to
be read in the original version.

As I am also re-reading "The Black Swan" by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, for
some reason, I find a strong connection among Taleb and Zizek, and
when I read Taleb's words I heard Zizek's voice through them:

"It is also naive empiricism to provide, in support of some argument,
series of eloquent confirmatory quotes by dead authorities. By
searching, you can always find someone who made a well-sounding
statement that confirms your point of view - and, on every topic, it
is possible to find another dead thinker who said the exact
opposite." (page XXVII of The Black Swan)

Anyone else experiencing reading one author and hearing another
author's voice? (Or, am I hearing voices?)


ARW23

"Secular languages which only eliminate the substance
once intended leave irritations. When sin was converted
to culpability, and the breaking of divine commands
to an offense against human laws, something was lost."
- Jurgen Habermas, "The Future of Human Nature"

[ARW23]

When I posted my previous post the other night I took Jurgen
Habermas's quote out of context and it somewhat felt unfair to the
reader (if anyone is reading this), in my opinion, and it may be
puzzling what Habermas really meant by "something being lost'.

So here it goes, when Zizek tries to explain the paradox of "divine
suffering":

"One should therefore take the statement that ""the unspeakable
suffering of the six million is also the voice of the suffering God""
quite literally: the very excess of this suffering over any "normal"
human measure makes it divine. Recently, this paradox was succinctly
formulated by Jurgen Habermas: