I FOR ONE find the non-sustainable (i.e. doomed) nature of our social/economic system troubling.
I also share Slavoj Žižek’s concern about the West adopting some Chinese authoritarian version of capitalism. Though being a United States of American, (I’m not a patriot, I was just born here,) Your Montag has the luxury of harboring this concern while already living under an authoritarian capitalism.
That said, Žižek graciously provides a sort of Stump Lane “mission statement,” if you will:
…what can the left do? What can you effectively do? … It’s fashionable to make fun of Fukuyama, End of History, but even the majority of today’s left is effectively, if I may make an adverb, Fukuyamaists. Basically, isn’t it that most of us leftists silently believe capitalism is here to stay, parliamentary democracy is what we have, so the problem is simply how to make it work better? Our ultimate horizon is, again, in the same way as we were talking about socialism with a human face, global capitalist democracy with a human face. And for me, the key question is, is this enough?
…the left, around thirty years ago, simply stopped [asking] certain questions. I remember when I was young, we were still debating: will capitalism last? Will the state go on? Now, we accept all this. Maybe … the time is coming to start asking these fundamental, tough questions again, but, of course, fully learning the lesson of the past.
[Democracy Now!: World Renowned Philosopher Slavoj Zizek on the Iraq War, the Bush Presidency, the War on Terror & More]
Stump Lane 