I’m not sure if I understand correctly, but a recent article on Zizek’s “Bartelby” politics, named after Melville’s scribe whose preference is “not to”, aims at turning from the meaninglessness of societies predicated upon the empty non-deliverables of enjoyment or pleasure, and opening up a “space” from which we might critique the aimlessness of social norms—- including our own commodification. That’s liberation?

My personal preference is not to.

The ‘senseless drive’ of regimes and power to which the authors refer, looks a whole lot like the ultimately pointless pursuit of pleasure (or libido) which according to Freud, drives the individual. Of course, the Freudian point  or lack of point, here, is procreation and species continuation rather than personal meaning.

Similarly, finding meaning through attribution of specific goals to social organization— such as pleasure, life, liberty, and democracy—-  both judges and then finds wanting abstract global desires rather than defined deliverables.  When we despair at the emptiness of our belief in unattainable desire, we despair at the fictions we tell ourselves. The markets may dive for their “bottom”, but to date, electricity remains delivered, and for the most part, civil order remains: these are societal strengths, hardly aimless or without meaning. While they break down, from time to time, they also reconstruct. Our billing cycles continue.

Negation, of course, the saying “I prefer not to’ in the face of organization— even organization that doesn’t deliver a concretized and gratifying narcissistic pleasure such as a unit of intellectually compelling meaning— suggests Freud’s destructive impulse or death drive. Unfortunately, destruction through malice and malevolence may be easier to accomplish than consensual acts of loving, which are ultimately, the carriers of enduring pleasure.

To reduce pleasure to the potential deliverables of advanced society (commodities, comfort etc) is to turn from the hard work of transforming libido into lively action . Pleasure is, after all, an attainment of action; and loving as pleasure requires the action of  consensual work and art. True, selfish pleasure is attainable without the other’s consent: but may involve violence and oppression when co-mingled with destructiveness. And true again, organized society provides vehicles for all kinds of pleasure and destruction.

But to turn away with an “I prefer not to?” is to affect a conscious tantrum. It merely articulates at the social level, the idealization of the unattainable perfection we otherwise ignore (both personally and culturally) in other narcissistic pursuits. And with our narcissism injured, we say: We won’t play the game!

Maybe we need to consider how our notions of social engagement rest upon passive assumptions  of dependency in our political, social, and economic systems (as well as a strong dollop of culturally-endorsed entitlement in the provenance of the system) . Perhaps we wish the ‘system’ to represent meaning, when—like Cavafy’s “Ithaca”, it has only furnished a destination; and a destination which has formed as a function of millions of individual contributions. Knock one system down and try to build another one or cast your lot for the marginal improvements of evolution : but  trust human dynamics to succeed again in replicating within our social systems our fears, defenses, idealizations and derogations.

Thinking about the imperfection of social systems, though, I don’t believe that a preference “not to” corresponds to an invitation to something better: rather, it seems a studied form of denial— just one of the feints both systems and their members have in their defensive repertoire.

Rather, the study of systems— including the pointlessness of pursuing ultimate pleasure (perhaps made more poignant as we follow the markets down, down, down this week)— shows us how defensive postures, recognizable at the individual level, are also replicated at the larger system level. Denial or avoidance, of course, is a prime example.

Another is engagement; and while it is difficult to engage constructively, especially while we prefer not to, personal engagement itself and not a lusting after the false beacons of political non-deliverables, may be the ticket to a satisfying sense of personal meaning.

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