really alive

from welcome to the desert of the real by slavoj zizek

"when we try to preserve the authentic intimate sphere of privacy against the onslaught of instrumental/objectivized 'alienated' public exchange, it is privacy itself which becomes a totally objectivized 'commodified' sphere."

"today, the only way of breaking out of the constraints of 'alienated' commodification is to invent a new collectivity."

"how authentic zen differs from its western appropriation which reinscribes it into the matrix of 'discovery of one's true Self'. . . the logic of an 'inner journey', brought to the end, confronts us with the void of subjectivity and thus compels the subject to assume his or her full desubjectivization; the paradoxical pascalian conclusion of this radical version of zen is that, since there is no inner substance to religion, the essence of faith is proper decorum, obedience to the ritual as such.  what western buddhism is not ready to accept is thus that the ultimate victim of the 'journey into one's Self' is this Self itself."

"what if we are 'really alive' only if we commit ourselves with an excessive intensity which puts us beyond 'mere life'?  what if, when we focus on mere survival, even if it is qualified as 'having a good time', what we ultimately lose is life itself?"

"what if a hysteric is truly alive in his or her permanent excessive questioning of his or her existence, while an obsessional is the very model of choosing a 'life in death'?  that is to say, is not the ultimate aim of his or her compulsive rituals to prevent the 'thing' from happening - this 'thing' being the excess of life itself?  is not the catastrophe he or she fears the fact that, finally, something will really happen to him or her?"

"what makes life 'worth living' is the very excess of life: the awareness that there is something for which one is ready to risk one's life (we may call this excess 'freedom', 'honor', 'dignity', 'autonomy', etc.).  only when we are ready to take this risk are we really alive."