Contemporary Nihilism On Innocence Organized "When reflection has traversed the infinite, innocence is regained." - Heinrich von Kleist With the emergence of a privileged mediocrity, the innocent life became accessible to the masses. No longer was John Doe part of a class striving toward historical ends, e.g., revolution or fascism: Enter a cold era, now devoid of passion. While outside, storms raged and change rapidly followed change, one's own life was left to grind to a halt. Time, regardless of history, fashion, politics, sex and the media, was to take its due course. The innocent made no fuss, they despised it - "Come what may." Average folks considered themselves cogs in some giant machine, and were proud to admit it. They saw to it that the trains ran on schedule, and returned home at night in time for supper. Instead of the old barriers, such as caste, sex, and religion, innocence introduced such bromides as tolerance, openness, and harmony. Positivism become lifestyle. Positivist critique served the reconstruction of politics and culture. Good times were had, one was busily and dynamically engaged and abundantly employed. There reigned a clear and simple view of reality. The innocent did not incorporate the Good, they just hadn't a clue, though not lacking in standards. Crime was not for them. Thus, they involuntarily became the objects of strategies of Good and Evil. We are speaking of a life without drama, immediacy, "decision." Things will never get hot. Nothing will ever have to be decided on. You don't need to break out in order to be just you. Rock ye no boats. The innocent thrive on everyday ritual; it's what makes them happy. A failing washing machine suffices to drive one up the wall: The bloody thing simply must function. The plight of materiality is that it's always breaking down, failing, malfunctioning and generally behaving in odd ways, and that it cannot be quietly replaced. Untrammeled consumption holds a promise that from now on, nothing will ever happen. In this undisturbed existence, luxury becomes so natural it goes unnoticed. The innocent consciousness is distinguished by its air of cramped grass-rootsiness, evoking a universe where personal irritations may explode without warning: Time and again, streetlights, traffic jams and delays, bureaucratic hassles, bad weather, construction noises, diseases, accidents, unexpected guests and incidents comprise an assault on innocent existence. Nonetheless, one is caught up in uncalled-for events. This attitude of disturbance deterrence, devoted to job and professional affairs, excludes all risk and has bestowed the status of sole criterion upon the attainable. The summum of happiness now consists of soft porn, moped, the new medium-priced car, one's own house and mortgage, interesting hobbies, club life, kids, elaborate birthdays of family members and friends, book clubs, Christmas cards, cross- stitched embroideries, ikebana, tending the garden, clean clothes, the biosphere of pets and indoor plants, guinea pigs, the rabbit in the yard, the pigeons in the attic, holiday destinations, dinners out, a bit of catching up or a general chat, Greenpeace membership or tele-adoption through the foster parents plan. This ideal of an unrippled and spotless life is characterized by its endearing pretense of being literally everybody's goal. Innocence is under constant treatment from doctors, therapists, beauticians, accupuncturalists, and garage keepers. Innocence likes to be tinkered with. It considers it its duty to develop and, if necessary, reeducate. Courses are taken, adilkno sessions participated in, the theater, concert halls, expos visited, books read, directions to forest walks followed and martial arts actively engaged in. Innocence as a universal human right encompasses animals, plant life, architecture, landscapes and cultural expression. This is the condition under which the world may be ultimately salvaged: neither utopian nor fatalistic, but smoothly functioning. The advertisement campaigns accompanying this way of life appeal to the childlike joy of having one's accomplishments rewarded. Scenes of smiling dads and mums who can afford anything. A reference to the authoritarian circumstances in which the child is raised to maturity and learns to talk. Innocence presupposes the enclosed security of family, school, company, and sports club. Under "infantile capitalism" (Asada), desire is tempted by the offer of a secure existence. By displaying good behaviour, one is assured that the ongoing changes in the vast world outside will not cause any catastrophes. Rebellion is punished and virtually pointless. The household comprises a fortified oasis. The others are just like you, and moving from one cell to another you get the impression that life is swell. Surprises are solely permissible within well-acquainted constellations. The crush alone makes for a composed exception to the rule. In sex, there may yet be room for assaults, with all that may imply. This is why the personal ad is such an innocent medium, having nothing to do with prostitution or moral decline whatsoever. The highlight of innocent existence consists of the wedding day, the happiest day of your life. Marriage is the one occasion in their existence on which John and Jane Doe may dress up in all their decorum and show themselves to the world at large. The ordering of the wedding gown, the white or red worn for all to see, the bouquet, the bridegroom's shoes, the orchestra outside, the cabriolet or carriage, the cheering onlookers, the historical wedding room, the clergyman's moving little speech, the standing ovation and gifts, the dinner at some fashionable restaurant, the subsequent feast till the small hours: No trouble or expenses are spared to create surroundings in which everybody ends up getting terribly pissed, yet never severely disgraces themselves. A day to remember in horror for the rest of your life, but forever impossible to forget; a wound in your life, a mental tattoo ruthlessly inflicted by family members. Millions of couples shack up forever just so they won't have to cope with it. The pressure lies in the fact that there is no option but for the whole thing to proceed smoothly, so that even if it does, any fun that there might have been is definitely out. The greater misery the night before, the bigger joy come the wedding night. Afterwards, it's safe havens forever. As innocence, to a substantial degree, consists of defense, it cannot remain neutral under the continuous outside threat facing it (thieves, rapists, hackers, counterfeiters, the incestuous, psychopaths, renegades, bacteria, missiles, toxic clouds, aliens, etc.). Neither can it summon any childlike curiosity concerning events in the outside world. Innocence's protective coating mirrors any threat posed by its environment, thus causing it to take on an aura of organization. The Mafia, youth gangs, criminal conspirators, sects, drug cartels, banditry, pirates are all thought to be after mediocrity's naiveté. They're omnipresent spooks. Before you know it, you may be involved, guilty of or victimized by fraud. Innocence, desperate to turn its head, to pretend that nothing's the matter, threatens to succumb. Ignorance may prove fatal; a more practical strategy consists of localizing and channeling attacks. Hand out to each individual an electronic guarantee of innocence and sooner or later any felon will end up in some specialist jail. In fact, innocence shouldn't need any legitimation; all this registration and surveillance merely causes it to lose its aura. Everyone is a potential illegal immigrant; even if the contrary is proven, one remains a risk factor. In the present phase, escape into anonymity becomes daily more dangerous and undesirable. Neutrality thus appears a chosen isolation, the final outcome of which is grotesque exclusion. Those who aren't thoroughly on line can make no appeals to organized innocence's compassion. Organized innocence is obsessed with Evil, gazing at and dissecting it, categorizing and exposing it, in order to finally bypass it altogether. Innocence owes its existence to its seeming opposite. One cannot confess innocence, for every confession must needs be one of guilt, any gesture a false pose pertaining to goodness itself. Everybody is informed to start with, everyone knows all about the next person and there's a silent agreement that some things are best left unsaid. The innocent are discreet and do not interfere with certain hidden domains (of power, lust, death). No boundary violations here. Holidays may offer some compensation, but everything has its season. Next of kin are those who cause maximum annoyance. They are parsimonious neighbors, noisy kids, funny couples. First annoyances are quickly made emblems, forever there to fall back on. The others are scrutinized distrustfully, in a form of surveillance which it is impossible to sanction since there no longer exists any common exchange to define a norm. Normality can no longer define any aberration. Only drug-related nuisance, streetwalkers' districts, travelers' sites and refugees' centers may now temporarily unite citizens in mobs, for fear of declining property values. This neighborhood resistance is not ideologically motivated; one simply never gets down to the point of formulation of transferable ideas. The neighbors are doing model airplanes, oneself preferring Pierre Boulez; what room is left for any exchange? There is more to separate us than mere garden fences. Therefore, too, accusations of racism or discrimination are off the mark here. There isn't any moral order to deteriorate into bigotry. Stereotypes get blurred. No one knows what a Jew might look like, or what distinguishes Turks from Moroccans ("All Turks are called Ali"). The other's features don't stick, since one has no sense of identity oneself. So much for PC advertising, public information campaigns, even cookbook recipes. Multiculturalist society is a clash of featureless citizens and the heirs to identities. There is a severe misunderstanding with the Innocent concerning the Other come from afar. There is a great readiness to accept the concept of differing cultures. They're assumed to function in the same type of isolation as ours. Who would wish to visit upon another a dull life like our own, culminating in likewise padded solitude? Tolerance means envy of the other's simplicity. Friday rounds are not considered backward (as the strict Reformed once were), but as proof of a devotion and consistency no longer available to oneself. The suburbs are polytheistic; everything is believed in. There is more than what's been taught you at school - but what? Seeking, one has found, but anxiety remains as to what more is going to show up. Gurus, healing stones, skyward apparitions, voodoo and encounters all slip past without one having ever a chance to share these experiences. For a moment, one gets the impression that there's quite a bit going on, that the surrounding world is full of deep acquaintances, of promises and optimistic prospects. Before long, one finds oneself alone with all the acquired cross-country experiential attributes, the textbooks, perfumed oils, the neat windbreaker the two of us bought together, remember?, the empty personal organizer and holiday photo albums. What macrosocial guiding principle will dissolve all this weeny human suffering, will resolve our confusion? Where are they, the builders of this new state of affairs, amidst and around us? The refugee, as a cultural carrier, may prove prophetic. Ultimately, it is they who reintroduce to us our exiled spirituality, so sought after in the West. Innocence may be lost through committing murder, participating in a little S-M, joining a bike club, opting for art, going undercover; yet the underworld of entertainment offers no consolation. One final option much in vogue consists of defecting to war or genocide. There can, however, be no refuge from the conglomerate and its diktata. The mountain bike, T-shirt, Oilily clothing, computer games, graffiti, bumper sticker, spoiler, cap, sloppy casual wear, hair gel are all the nomadic objects of Jacques Attali's Europe on its way to a stylized uniformity. Innocence cannot be negated, or compensated for, by its opposite. The one thing it can't stand is party poopers. This process of decomposition within normality offers no alternative and puts up no fight, nor even does it make a point. Through it, innocence is exhausted. One cannot be bright and happy all day, forever dissolving the grime through constructive thinking. Innocence is not in danger of being wiped out by either revolution or reaction. It can only wither, go under in poverty, slowly vanish out of sight, as though meant to waste away. Grounded love affairs are resolved by ordering a dumpster in which one's accumulated innocence is disposed of, in order to make a cleaner, wilder start after interior redecoration procedures. A generation ago, the politicization of the private managed to get some innocence out the door, but it has regrouped with a vengeance and now has grunge rockers, generation Xers, trance freaks and other youth categories all searching in vain for some firm footing they can react against, in some format other than that of fashion or the media, innocence's latest organizational modi. Government itself is now the most outspoken antiracist, antisexist, antifascist, antihomelessness and generally anti-anything the well-intentioned insurrectionists are liable to oppose. The one thing left for innocent young generations to vent their anger on are all forms of organized innocence itself. Abundant material for grounding an enormous social movement, to start working at innumerable separate issues, in order to discover a common ground in all those disparate little divisions. Boycott insurance companies, raid those self-assured infant clothing shops, torch those redundant gift stores - we've a consumer paradise to destroy! But let's not get excited. We'll have innocence fade away, see it quiet down; tell you what, we'll not even mention it. ??