Michel Houellebecq is one of the thinkers / writers most devastating in recent times, does not even provide an argument for optimism: the human being would be at this point in history, a lot of rubble, breathing, little more. But it happens that his tragic vision, pessimistic, is lucidly contagious: after reading Houellebecq (in Tony Judt late a similar idea) is impossible not to reflect, for example, about the damage the May 68 made to the values \u200b\u200bof solidarity and justice, high up the values \u200b\u200bof selfishness and complacency that opened from the inside left doors conservative and neoliberal revolution. But this is another issue.
Now in Interventions, published by Anagrama, found a series of reflections on the party.
The festival is one of the most fascinating anthropological facts and attractive. Houellebecq reflects on the party in the self-absorbed and selfish corporations after May 68 , because everything you write French is an attempt to understand and report what has happened between us after these values \u200b\u200btriumphed children Dad. His diagnosis of the party is bleak: even more sunny days like this where so many are prepared to live the Carnival, a party that has emptied both content, especially if we compare our parties so smug and false, as ridiculous as many times, with parties still fresh Company sincere in our pride we consider "backward." Maybe for this desolation, the analysis of the party that makes Houellebecq be accurate. Even credible.
" The aim of the festival is to make us forget that we are a lonely, miserable and doomed to die, in other words, ensure that we become animals. So primitive man had a sense well-developed holiday. A good incense of hallucinogenic plants, three tambourines, and it is: any nonsense amuses. By contrast, the western half an ecstasy reaches only after endless insufficient techno parties leaving the deaf and drugged: no sense whatsoever holiday. Deeply conscious of itself, radically foreign to others, terrified by the idea of \u200b\u200bdeath, is completely incapable of any excitement. The loss of animal condition so sad, it causes shame and vexation, would like to be a party animal, or at least pretend to be such. often brown. "
" Actually just think you're going to have fun for sure going to fuck. Ideally, therefore, would be to renounce the party. Unfortunately, the party animal is a character so well respected that the waiver entails a marked deterioration in the social image . "
" be clearly aware in advance that the party will be a failure. (...) The humble, smiling acceptance of common disaster can win the following: transform an ill-fated party at a time of pleasant banality . "
" A good party is a party shortly . "
" Finally, a silver lining: with the help of the age, the obligation of the party diminishes, the slope of loneliness increases, real life is imposed . "