Paul Virilio’s book The Administration of Fear shows us the conditions in which we must create.
The Courage to Create
It takes courage to create …
I’m reminded of the book by Rollo May that creating is a great act of existential courage: to bring something into existence from the depths of your soul. It is the result of an encounter with the world and the will, the desire, the drive to create Beauty from it. It is for this reason that creativity can flourish in times of hardship, and even terror.
Terror …
Dis-ease …
Fear …
The tools of tyrants.
What we encounter when we want to bring the transcendent into the disenchanted.
The world at large–the persistent and rapid change of everything, and the belief in nothing … Probably just a western analysis, for there are people all over the world who affirm meaning, who don’t experience the constant dialectic of massive change every day of their lives.
Nevertheless, we feel it–well, most of us feel it–here in the west.
The Administration of Fear
Paul Virilio …
We are facing the emergence of a real, collective madness reinforced by the synchronization of emotions: the sudden globalization of affects in real time that hits all of humanity at the same time, and in the name of Progress. Emergency exit: we have entered a time of general panic … (The Administration of Fear)
The question is does technological progress necessitate happiness, or hope? Is it all it’s projected and promulgated to be?
Again, Virilio …
The notion of promise has indeed suffered from the nihilism that has settled deeply into our modernity. Nazism led the way. As a Christian, I like to remember the following thought: A philosopher says to his interlocutor, “So you don’t believe in God?” — “No.”– “But you believe in everything else?” it is “everything else” that is coming to an end. Soon we will not believe in anything and nihilism will have reached its zenith. We will have entered what I call mono-atheism, the paradoxical faith of those who believe in nothing at all.
There does seem to be a sense in which we are in a time of rampant nihilism and what Virilio calls mon-atheism–the paradoxical belief in nothing–largely spread through social media. TicTok and Instagram can give you everything and nothing.
Which reminds me of Slavoj Zizek’s definition of ideology:
believing in something without actually believing in it.
But what about markets? Aren’t markets the gods that we all believe in? Virilio says no.
[Even the actors at the global financial world] are no longer confident. But confidence and competition are the cornerstone of capitalism. Why do they lack confidence? For a reason of biblical simplicity. Because confidence can never be instantaneous. It must be built, earned, over time. Instant confience like instant faith doesn’t work. You need to have confidence you need time to have fatih. It must be built. It has tempo and rhythm.
What is Hope in the Administration of Fear?
There’s no confidence in this world anymore. Covid killed confidence in governments, health care, corporations. Everybody lies. … And then the terror wielded to defend the lies and prevent the truth from breaking through.
What is there to hope in?
Virilio …
That is why liturgy, as an “act of the people,” is vital. IN a way, mon-atheism consists of not believing in anything of the ‘big’ at all. The time of philofolly will begin and spread, and along with it a kind of hyper-fascism.
When truth is an illusion; when eternal is collapsed into the market; when there is no more courage left to create, then there is nothing left but power–the will to power. Yes: the superman. A being that no longer acts according to Being Himself, but something that’s mutated beyond it’s original design specifications. A harbinger of evil.
Virilio …
As a conclusion, I would like to bring to our reader’s attention this popular saying: “Fear is the deadliest assassin; it does not kill, but it keeps you from living.” It defines the civil dissuasion … The manifestations of the administration of fear are countless: They are our daily existential everyday lives.
Kicking Against the Darkness
What is one of the ways we kick back agains the administration of fear?
Creating Beauty.
But before we go into that, we need to unpack more barriers; ways the administration of fear is … administered.
