First as Tragedy, Then as Farce

The Solution indicates the Problem

I love this video.

In it, Zizek suggests that the systems we have created around charity are contingent not only on 'working with' the existing capitalist economic superstructure which sustains inequities in the first place, but indeed, in a significant way, may well strengthen or support this very system!

I am reminded of this event:
I occasionally sit Zazen and do walking meditations at the Zen Open Circle, a Zen meditation/discussion group based in Camperdown on Friday nights.

One evening, the teacher Susan spoke about the non-duality of Good and Evil (something I believe Zizek is hinting at), and the importance of non-attachment to either extreme in this respect. Any idea of the Good is intimately dependent on an idea of the Evil, and the two are thus inseparable.

One of the group members then raised the question or paedophilia. About how there is no way, absolutely no way whatsoever, to think of a "paedophile" as someone with any redeeming qualities. Immediately, the group was triggered into this chaotic groupthink of uncritical agreement.

"Paedophiles are disgusting."

"Sick."

and so on.

Now, I have no love for paedophilia as such, but I feel far less hateful toward the "paedophile." In Buddhist terms, all phenomena are empty of their own inherent existence, and require the right causes and conditions before they can even arise. Concerning paedophilia, and this is a line of thought first brought to my attention by manoverbored, I started to wonder about the causes and conditions which sustain paedophilia, and the ways that we are complicit in maintaining these causes and conditions.

For example, here in the industrialised, Anglo-phonic "first world" (Australia, USA, as examples where the authors now live), if any of us WEARS SHOES, then the chances are very high that these shoes were made possible through the exploitation of child labour. The factories and, of course, the wider global economic structure that gives rise to these factories (for example through the outsourcing of labour from American shoe companies), have incredibly fucked up and problematic conditions which exploit the bodies of children.

Is this NOT paedophilia? If I wear shoes, does this not make me complicit in the tragedy of the exploitation of children's bodies for the purposes of my own (adult) consumption?

So what is Zizek's proposed solution?



Non-duality of Solution and Problem

From a Zen perspective, a first step is to break out of the victim-perpetrator dualism... Of course victimisation happens, and there are people who perpetrate victimising attitudes and behaviours that impact all of us very negatively.
At the same time, it is important to do the hard, spiritual labour of dancing between identification and dis-identification with the solution and problem, victim and perpetrator. There are no ultimate victims as such, nor ultimate perpetrators.

Thich Nhat Hanh clarifies this point in his poem "Call Me By My True Names"...


Call Me By My True Names
by Thich Nhat Hanh

Do not say that I'll depart tomorrow
because even today I still arrive.

Look deeply: I arrive in every second
to be a bud on a spring branch,
to be a tiny bird, with wings still fragile,
learning to sing in my new nest,
to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower,
to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.

I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry,
in order to fear and to hope.
The rhythm of my heart is the birth and
death of all that are alive.

I am the mayfly metamorphosing on the surface of the river,
and I am the bird which, when spring comes, arrives in time
to eat the mayfly.

I am the frog swimming happily in the clear pond,
and I am also the grass-snake who, approaching in silence,
feeds itself on the frog.

I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,
my legs as thin as bamboo sticks,
and I am the arms merchant, selling deadly weapons to
Uganda.

I am the twelve-year-old girl, refugee on a small boat,
who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea
pirate,
and I am the pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing and
loving.

I am a member of the politburo, with plenty of power in my
hands,
and I am the man who has to pay his "debt of blood" to, my
people,
dying slowly in a forced labor camp.

My joy is like spring, so warm it makes flowers bloom in all
walks of life.
My pain is like a river of tears, so full it fills the four oceans.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can hear all my cries and laughs at once,
so I can see that my joy and pain are one.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can wake up,
and so the door of my heart can be left open,
the door of compassion.