Evrem

On the edge of my seat
in the bottom of my soul
time is slow
mind is on the go
i am in need
of your voice again
i am in need
of your eyes and then
pushed me to the edge
as a man to better my plan
Surrounding like the wind
calm as the deep sea
i am in need
to hold you once again
i am in need
to hold you until then
its been in the wind too
song in the breeze
together in the flood
its filling us up
i do believe
i am in need
not for a rush
but to breathe
to love
surrender and intention
focus and perspective
organic and reflective
no math for the
clocks? there's no need
time is not real
absentminded and
you know how i feel

Best believe it's true There's something right about now It's keeping me up all night...

Main Lyrics

Sweeter than sweet Brighter than bright Louder than loud Farther than far

I ignored the (4 minute warning)

I didn't listen when you told me
My ears betrayed my
with the help of my heart
I wanted to keep us
frozen in time
without the rest
of is life
I'm never gonna wake up
trapped in the amber
looking for you face
maybe when i see it
tears will stop my vision
skip a beat and double pulse
some unknown face blocks my way
your kiss was the limit
the sky has to face
and know your the boundary
it cannot escape
free me with your love
take me out the amber
I am just a fool
a cancer with cancer

Panucia Delight

There is no such thing as distance, nor time

complementary reflection, blessed connection

beauty i float with you like Orchid petals down the Ganges

Two souls with no clear beginning or end

Passion reserved like water at the levy

I want to show you the world all i know

feel all my pain and kiss you with laughter

I want your touch your organic smell

hold you in my arms wake kneading your soul

black red white and gold

our subconscious dreams and tells the story

beauty you are a part of me and I to part of you

this world we understand with our third eye open

the prayers on our lips conscious of intention and action

So love

"Take it slow
Take it easy on me
Shed some light
Shed some light on things
Take it slow
Take it easy on me
Shed some light
Shed some light on it please"

nothing

the evidence is clear though the facts remain foggy
you are trapped in a lie
and so am I
like an old Victorian dance
we prance on the political stage
no place for color
no place for brains
we love the design
and are locked on the stage
where are our brains
are we slaves
promoters of oppression
souls stuck in recession
voiceless because you have never spoken
drowning in your own reflection

it is nothing you will be
without
we

My molasses

My molasses is sweet
Thick and dear
Close to my heart
Lost without a cure

My molases is dark
Binding and broken
Blinded a few
With words never spoken

My molasses is blood
Slow and binding
Moves throught my veins
Ufaltered and uncomprimising

My ripple soul

My ripple soul

Kiss me and lose control

Frost

I am the strongest of the strong
So weak my bones will snap, from the pressure
your touch

I am the bravest of the brave
So scared I might never let you, in
I am the highest of the high
small and short of sight

I will never forget
I am the coldest of the frost
My heart is chilled
my lungs are glossed

Tired and pale in summers heat
tanned and scorched from winters streets

We all have been here
A familiar place
When do we come back,
When i see your face?

Thank you for everything I have
and for everything I have lost
Thank your for all the people
and all of life's costs

Broken prose and tinkling phrase
Words are the keys to the minds maze

Dear Beloved,

I ask you why so much pleasure with matching pain.
I see you in most things, other things i cannot.
Missing the time of day, I wonder what your asking of us
What we must do ourselves, we are silent.
Passive and lax
I wonder when we will listen.
we each have a path and are told of one another's
Understanding our differences
Are we not supposed to observe these things?
we have turned humanity on one another
stabbing and spitting,
We don't want to break line
and call what we see
a culture of sadistic capitulation
and complacency
hard questions are ignored
trust is broken and misinformation is free
We need you we need each other

Do you?

Accept it all?
Question everything?
Scrutinize your faith?
Love unabashedly?
Feel subtle loss and change?
Tire from conformity?
Test your boundaries?
Tire of patterns?
Kiss the unexpected?
Seek when you don't like what you find?
Believe in truth?
Trust in facts?
Know the truth?

I have missed a place called home. I am here and so are you.

Cramped in introspection
honestly scared of my reflection
So I have never seen...
immortal in love
seeking a fresh vein
only the sun will wash the pain

the pain

keeps me questioning

Clarity...

I miss....
steps taken
looking at my receipts of communication
my trail of perception
dancing in the wind
highs and lows floating
stirred in the ice and glass
we connect
honest laughter
surreal surrender
to the most basic of all needs
companionship
wanting to be together and separate
our dialectic is clear
unlike most days
its naturally unnerving
comfortably confusing
however we breathe
not misstepping
without creating
reflecting
and living
happily on a journey
going nowhere and everywhere
I'm happy
nothing is (=) so satisfying
we trade trails
sorrow is easy
pain is calm
pictures are vivid
there is all the time in the world

Dirt

I put my hands in the ground

Wood and Iron cutting into the landscape

I though of a different time

where the land was connected to the people

my love moves

I want to touch the tender

love of the earth in another

natural

i need more time

sew more seeds

to understand

all that i have been fighting against

all that i have been fighting for

trust

we will grow together

with my hands

my mind

i will not give up until

there is plenty

for all

until i give more than the world needs

until it overflows into and the hungry are full

and the blind see

and we move as we were intended

I will sew

we will sew

don't forget

come with me

we will put our hands in the dirt together

We only rent the land.

There is only one, don't forget.

One beloved.

BE

Trapped against our nature

Kept away from the beauty of this world

Like it is far away

Locking the beauty of life

Waterfalls and trees that spiral into the sky

And float down the rivers

many are lost

I am a fool of convenience

Taught to constrict out life

Missing the beauty I look for fashion

Trying to recreate all that is natural

Looking to hold the power of thunder in my hand

I don’t know you mother earth

I am a stranger

It was my own choice

I hear the trees fall the look into the eyes of the mystic

I am all at once with you and not you

Please bring me close

I need you

Mother

The valleys are the curve of your hips

And I want to rise to your peaks

Placed in paper-mâché walls

And artificial suns

I approach you and want you to come closer

I have opened my heart and my eyes for the first time

We pile on top of each other

Detaching our selves from nature

Caged in concrete

I miss all of your simple complexities

How can I rejoice you?

I cover my body and cloak my heart

Pad my feet

I am loosing touch with you

Will you forgive me?

I am so callus

We mimic the volcanoes

And try to take all in out control

We are all apart from your beauty

I love you

I hate you

Kiss me

I am the passion

And jealous of your beauty

Maybe I am your mistress

Or I am only a prostitute

Selling my self

When you look at me what do you see?

I am tired of the cluster

Noise and pain

Yet I love it all

breaking my soul

Torn between worlds

One world that we make twain

Will you forgive us

We are not the keepers

We are the visitors

Mostly strangers

Loosing all in order to control the uncontrollable

I am sorry

Please show me your love

I might not see it

God open my heart

So I can feel your breath against my face

Take my robes to I can feel you majesty

Your peace let it be within me

Guide my heart

And let me rest

And live

I

Want to be no more

I

Want to be no more

Us

I want to be no more

I want to be

Want to

Be

God's Funeral

We carry the bodies
Stack them to the sky
I hope we get higher
I’m higher than high

Making a mountain
Collecting the bones
I’m loosing all feeling
Slaves work in droves

Draining the wine
Life’s intoxicating river
We are trying to get higher
From the blood from the sinners

In the name of man
We trample the poor
Pushed to the margins
Material whores

We publish the truth
And ignore all the lies
We are getting higher
Higher than High

Scoff at the intellect
Piss on your reason
Why are you thinking?
True acts of treason

I vomit crude in the forest
As I chop down the trees
I need a bonfire
To burn our disease

The sores are sickening
Only seen without wealth
I don’t see any body
I only need myself

Come to the valley
Climb up the mountain
No more bodies to bury
No more blood in the fountains

Carry my rifle
Bring the holy text
Only I can interpret
This political sex

Don’t worry its all normal
Don’t you be shy
It will all be history
His story not mine

The tree is uprooted
Buried upside down
This mountain of martyrs
With me as its crown

King of the earth
I will march into heaven
I buried my friends
To make my bread leaven

I stepped on the face
On the hearts
and the hands
Of the mothers
fathers and children
That once walked this land

I’m going to God
To glory and love
Don’t worry how I got there
Because I’m the only one

As I ascend to heaven
I questioned my way
But no one stays on track
Without others losing the way

I’m here at the gates
Looking onto the throne
But there are no angels
Ghosts, Jinn’s or stones

I cried for God
Sure he would appear
I cried again
Maybe she didn’t hear

In the fog of the clouds
And the mist of the sky
I thought it was raining
No just tears in my eyes

I looked down on the mountain
And what did I see
The face of God looking up at me

I killed the lamb and slaughtered
My sons, ending the lives of the ones that I loved

I killed God,
and all his prophets
I killed my neighbors
to gain new stock tips

I killed the others,
Whose looks I despised
I kill many mothers
With wandering eyes

I died a thousand times
And a thousand over
But with no God in heaven
And no angels on my shoulders

I was alone with my gold
And my lies and my book
Alone with my hands and the bloody brook

I was alone with my truth
And alone with my deeds
My murdered family
And my uprooted tree

Make this my last...

I
dance
without thinking
always moving
the essence
of passion
of care
love
and charisma

how I stumble
in thought

and careless
with words

lift me to the sky
without hesitation
I need peace
Still I move
hypnotized
I am truth
and the lie
maybe fools
are enticed by me
knowing that one day
they will become old
and I will move on
and stay the same

how frightening
and honest
there is only one promise

carry your will
sing for me
move for love
and I will play
on and on
change your steps
I will sing for you
and follow

a dance is peculiar
and is every thing artistic
but never controlled
or contained by art
in one breath

we are together
and apart

be swept up
carry me softly
I will lie on your shoulders
like a silk scarf
caught in the wind

beauty is in the eye
love is in the heart
truth is in the world
music is universal
finish this dance with me
for we have already begun
will you?

My Beloved

The rain fell on me like a flood

It entered my pores

Filled my eyes

Discouraged my reason

But I never stopped

thinking for you



The sun leaned on my neck

Pinched my eyes closed

Dared me to scream

But I made not a word

Of selfish pain

deep was my concentration



The wind pushed my center

Made every breath labor

Scattered my thoughts

But I never forgot

My direction

towards you



Everyday I wake

sometimes dazed

I lay on the ground

Looking up for you

My love will not sway

I am yours



I don’t need a book

Or any precious metal

Because of my love for you

I need no physical connection





I wonder when my companion

Will come

But I’m not in a hurry

I am patient

Tireless and restless

Somber and stern

Like a child

Wide eyes and open heart

Like a adult

Perceptive and cautious

You know my contradictions

And my intentions

This will never end

Time means nothing

with you my love

Blush

Do you remember the sound of my voice?
When I fell down, I saw you.
Drifting between dreams and songs
Revealing the truth as true as blue.
Eyes distorted by prescription reflectors,
I’m missing the time as perceptions preceptor,
Watch as I rise like mercury’s center
Heat pacifies all memories that enter
Tears made me blind to the light that I held
Time blurred the lines and my thoughts...what I felt
You were the answer to all of my needs
The push pull of wants will never take leave
I stagger, pause and change
My pace my thoughts my heart my brain
This space between the words
And before the print, taste this thought
From a once lost prince
I was true when I fell and called your name
It made me blush now in the same vein
Heart body and mind
Words can’t describe
My pain

of losing you

I am the water

I am the water
I want to release your thirst
Clean the dirt from your wounds
Soak your tired feet
Wash the days that surround you
Hold you while you swim
Carry you on my back
Feed the plants in your garden
Course through your valley
Massage the roof and lay you down to sleep
Travel over every inch of your body
I know your every curve
I am a part of you
Together we are Singular and multiple
Taking your form
We are
Bliss…..
Follow the moon
We Wax and wane
I am no mystery you can see through me
Roll me across your tongue
I know you are thirsty
I will satisfy you
I am the water

From the shadows

Its been a while, but i am ready to commit to writing for a bit. I have missed the hours of introspection to books on politics, sociology, communication and my daily news fit. It was so long I almost forgot my password! However I hope to bring some very interesting things to the page once i am completely disengaged from school. I look forward to any comments hope everyone is well. Here is poem to digest:

I was lost
By all meanings of the word
My soul scattered like sand on glass
This was my life wandering the earth

I was the capitalist of human capital
I sold the desires and dreams
while in a nightmare

In every step I felt the water in my shoes
And the hand on my pants leg
Pulling me down

I kept wandering

In the streets my home
My money and
My grave

I continued my journey
Aimless, and blind
So empty and hungry
Trying to fill that void

One night I passed a one armed man
Pushing a cart
Filled with paint scraps and canvas

I then turned around
Determined to give something
To help him

He was obviously homeless
Musing, I got out my hearse
And approached him
Somewhat startled we were

I cannot remember the words that were exchanged
My mind was filled with years of
"The shit" "dat fire" and the like….
Those things that keep you up at night

I remember in this haze: I saw a picture
The man and the Bull
Of a man in an arena, facing a bull

He was fighting under a sea of people
Faceless
Nameless

I saw my self

In the picture
The arena traveled to the top of the canvas
And on the rim of this vision of troubled humanity
There was a steeple and a light shining through

This was my hope,

I understood it all


Moved, from the picture
I took my pager an gave it to him
This one armed man, with a cart of paint, scraps and canvas
I said if someone needs to get into touch with you
Tell them to page you

I never gave him the number

It never crossed my mind

He stamped my life
Etched a mark that will never be forgotten

I smiled when I saw him walking the streets
Down Tryon, and Old Concord, Independence
Pushing his cart of paint, scraps and canvas
I felt at ease

After my treatment
After my changes,

Tears and struggle

I will always remember him
I was homeless and he connected with me
He gave me a hand and peace of mind
He started my path out of the arena


And shared his vision of faith
So I share it with you


May God bless his soul

R.I.P.
David "Ray" Chisholm
http://www.charlotte.com/mld/charlotte/news/breaking_news/15898254.htm

Posted on Wed, Nov. 01, 2006
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MAN APPEARED HOMELESS BUT GAVE MORE THAN HE TOOK
Streets lose a piece of soul
120 pay last respects to artist who roamed city, touched many
DÁNICA COTO
dcoto@charlotteobserver.com

You might have seen him pushing his red cart along Independence Boulevard.

Or maybe Freedom Drive.

Some felt sorry for the one-armed man, and drove on by.

Others stopped, assuming he was homeless and needed help. But David "Ray" Chisholm rejected food and money. If you insisted, he'd ask that you donate to a church. He was content roaming the streets and creating art.

On Thursday, more than 120 people filed into Christ Lutheran Church for his funeral, including former Duke Energy CEO Bill Grigg. There were men in dirty work clothes and women with demure blond highlights. A young man with a mohawk and a couple in designer sunglasses.

Halfway through the service, a balding man burst into the church, startling everyone. He strode swiftly down the aisle, his right arm held high, clutching one pink rose. He placed it on the black and silver coffin.

Everyone grieved for Chisholm, born 60 years ago.

His parents named him Robert Louis Chisholm Jr., and he grew up to become a popular, well-respected athlete.

At 18, Chisholm recruited five boys for a band. Some thought it was called Foxy Fire. They traveled to clubs in Gastonia and Concord and played James Brown, Jimi Hendrix and Bob Dylan songs, said friend Charles McCauley.

One band member had a girlfriend, and Chisholm asked whether she had a sister. She did: Sylvia Massey. Chisholm met her in 1969 and married her a year later.

Chisholm's troubles began in 1989 when he was helping his father, who owned a scrap metal service. As he wielded a torch, it exploded, friends said. He lost part of his left arm and injured his leg. He spent several months in a coma.

By 1990, he was still in a wheelchair. During rehabilitation, he painted and began studying commercial art at Central Piedmont Community College.

He started using a red buggy and filled it with his art supplies and paintings. He became a recognizable figure.

On Thursday, police said, he was hit by car. The driver was charged with driving while impaired.

A couple days later, John Boyd, who works at a store where Chisholm often bought fruit, put up a sign to raise money for his funeral service: "He doesn't bother anyone. He is just there, making this beautiful art. ... I already miss this man that I never got a chance to talk to."

On Tuesday, Boyd introduced himself to Chisholm's family and gave them a $320 check.

Race: Socially constructed divison

From Wikipedia:

"A race is a population of humans distinguished from other populations. The most widely used racial categories are based on visible traits (especially skin color and facial features). Conceptions of race, as well as specific racial groupings, vary by culture and time and are often controversial due to their impact on social identity hence identity politics."

The idea of race is one that separates human from human. It is one of the basic building blocks of ethnocentrism, prejudice and hatred. One does not conceive this notion yet when you look deep into this biological classification. Does this truly call any one to universal brotherhood? Does this term identify by color or features the depth in which the society's or populations reach?

In the animal world we classify bugs by color because their color is a key piece of their survival against predators in nature. The Green Lacewings green to blend into the environment enabling them to survive.





If we take this same example do Asian people need their yellow skin tone in order to survive in the human population? Are they forced in some way to hide near the Juno Iris for protection against hunter-gather humans?

The whole concept of race takes the validity away from the individual or collective culture. It is true that the reason for the slanted eyes was based on environmental protection for the eyes against the extreme cold. It’s true that the pigments of blacks are darker in order to keep them from overexposure to the sun. However, in either of these cases does that determine personality, class, intelligence?

The answer is no, so please identify me and others as a human. I am not black, nor white, nor Asian; these terms have no meaning in my personal, ideological, intellectual makeup. If one man does badly regardless of color, I am affected because we are both human. I feel no need to separate myself from them by the race variable. If a man is ignorant then he is an ignorant man. I want to be defined by my actions and my qualities not my color. If we thought of everyone as human and each person were based on their qualities and not color, our collective perception would rise from this ethnocentric state. Idealy we would think of humanity over physical constructs, and progress into a brighter future Insh'Allah( God Willing).

The information about the skin color of Blacks of the Asians were found on some audio lectures by Shaykh Nuh Keller, he answered some questions concerning science and religion. It is something any man can reflect on here is the link:

Shaykh Nuh Keller - Home Page

hmmm............

Your Power Color Is Magenta

At Your Highest: You energize yourself and push others to suceed. At Your Lowest: You feel frustrated and totally overwhelmed. In Love: You are suprised by who you attract. You're a love magnet. How You're Attractive: Open and free spirited, people want to explore the world with you. Your Eternal Question: "What is my next source of inspiration?"

What's Your Power Color?

Jean Baudrillard

II. This Is The Fourth World War: The Der Spiegel Interview with Baudrillard

Spiegel: Monsieur Baudrillard, you have described the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington as the “absolute event.” You have accused the United States, with its insufferable hegemonic superiority, for rousing the desire for its own destruction. Now that the reign of the Taliban has collapsed pitifully and Bin Laden is nothing more than a hunted fugitive, don’t you have to retract everything?

Baudrillard: I have glorified nothing, accused nobody, justified nothing. One should not confuse the messenger with his message. I have endeavored to analyze the process through which the unbounded expansion of globalization creates the conditions for its own destruction.

Spiegel: In the process, don’t you simply deflect attention from the fact that there are identifiable criminals and terrorists who are responsible for the attacks?

Baudrillard: Of course there are those who committed these acts, but the spirit of terrorism and panic reaches far beyond them. The Americans’ war is focused on a visible object, which they would like to destroy. Yet the event of September 11th, in all of its symbolism, cannot be obliterated in this manner. The bombing of Afghanistan is a completely inadequate, substitute action.

Spiegel: All the same, the United States has brought to an end a barbaric form of oppression and, in the process, has given the Afghani people an opportunity for a new, peaceful beginning. Or at least this is how your colleague, Bernard-Henri Lévy, sees it.

Baudrillard: The situation doesn’t appear to me as so unequivocal. Lévy’s triumphalism strikes me as strange. He treats B-52 bombers as if they were instruments of the world-spirit.

Spiegel: So there is no such thing as a just war?

Baudrillard: No, there’s always too much ambivalence. Wars are often begun in the name of justice, indeed this is almost always the official justification. Yet, while they themselves want to be so justified and are undertaken with the best of intentions, they normally don’t end in the manner in which their instigators had imagined.

Spiegel: The Americans have attained some unquestionable successes. Many Afghans are now able to hope for a better life.

Baudrillard: You wait and see. Not all the Afghani women have discarded their veils yet. Sharia is still in effect. Without a doubt, the Taliban Regime has been smashed. However, the network of the international terror organization, al-Qaida, still exists. And Bin Laden, dead or alive, has, above all, disappeared. This lends him a mythical power; he has achieved a certain supernatural quality.

Spiegel: The Americans would be successful only if they were able to present Bin Laden or his body on television?

Baudrillard: That would be a questionable spectacle, and he, himself, would continue to play the role of martyr. Such an exhibition would not necessarily demystify him. What is at issue is more than the control of a territory or a population or the disbanding of a subversive organization. The stakes have become metaphysical.

Spiegel: Why can’t you simply accept that the destruction of the World Trade Center was an arbitrary, irrational act of blind fanatics?

Baudrillard: A good question, but, even if it were a matter of addressing the catastrophe in-itself, it would still have symbolic meaning. Its fascination can only be explained in this way. Here something happened that far exceeded the will of the actors. There is a general allergy to an ultimate order, to an ultimate power, and the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center embodied this in the fullest sense.

Spiegel: Thus, you explain terroristic delusion as the unavoidable reaction against a system which has itself become megalomaniacal?

Baudrillard: With its totalizing claim, the system created the conditions for this horrible retaliation. The immanent mania of globalization generates madness, just as an unstable society produces delinquents and psychopaths. In truth, these are only symptoms of the sickness. Terrorism is everywhere, like a virus. It doesn’t require Afghanistan as its home base.

Spiegel: You suggest that globalization and resistance to it is like the course of an illness, even to the point of self-destruction. Is this not what is particularly scandalous about your analysis-that it completely leaves morality out?

Baudrillard: In my own way, I am very much a moralist. There is a morality of analysis, a duty of honesty. That is to say, it is immoral to close one’s eyes to the truth, to find excuses, in order to cover up that which is difficult to bear. We must see the thing beyond the opposition of good and bad. I seek a confrontation with the event as it is without equivocation. Whoever is unable to do that, is led to a moral falsification of history.

Spiegel: But if the terrorist act takes place as a form of compulsion or fate, as you claim, is it not then at the same time exculpated? There is no longer a morally responsible subject.

Baudrillard: It is clear to me that the conceptual nature of my analysis is doubled-edged. Words can be turned against me. However, I do not praise murderous attacks - that would be idiotic. Terrorism is not a contemporary form of revolution against oppression and capitalism. No ideology, no struggle for an objective, not even Islamic fundamentalism, can explain it.

Spiegel: But why should globalization turn against itself, why should it run amok, when, after all, it promises freedom, well-being and happiness for all?

Baudrillard: That is the utopian view, the advertisement more or less. Yet there is altogether no positive system. In general all the positive historical utopias are extremely murderous, as fascism and communism have shown.

Spiegel: Surely you cannot compare globalization with the bloodiest systems of the 20th century.

Baudrillard: It is based, as colonialism was earlier, on immense violence. It creates more victims than beneficiaries, even when the majority of the Western world profits from it. Naturally the United States, in principle, could liberate every country just as it has liberated Afghanistan. But what kind of peculiar liberation would that be? Those so fortunate would know how to defend themselves even with terror if necessary.

Spiegel: Do you hold globalization to be a form of colonialism, disguised as the widening of Western civilization?

Baudrillard: It is pitched as the endpoint of the Enlightenment, the solution to all contradictions. In reality, it transforms everything into a negotiable, quantifiable exchange value. This process is extremely violent, for it cashes out in the idea of unity as the ideal state, in which everything that is unique, every singularity, including other cultures and finally every non-monetary value would be incorporated. See, on this point, I am the humanist and moralist.

Spiegel: But don’t universal values such as freedom, democracy, and human rights also establish themselves through globalization?

Baudrillard: One must differentiate radically between the global and the universal. The universal values, as the Enlightenment defined them, constitute a transcendental ideal. They confront the subject with its own freedom, which is a permanent task and responsibility, not simply a right. This is completely absent in the global, which is an operational system of total trade and exchange.

Spiegel: Rather than liberating humanity, globalization only in turns reifies it?

Baudrillard: It pretends to liberate people, only to deregulate them. The elimination of all rules, more precisely, the reduction of all rules to laws of the market is the opposite of freedom-namely, its illusion. Such out-dated and aristocratic values such as dignity, honesty, challenge and sacrifice no longer count for anything.

Spiegel: Doesn’t the unrestricted recognition of human rights build a decisive bulwark against this alienating process?

Baudrillard: I think that human rights have already been integrated into the process of globalization and therefore function as an alibi. They belong to a juridical and moral superstructure; in short, they are advertising.

Spiegel: Therefore mystification?

Baudrillard: Is it not a paradox that the West uses as a weapon against dissenters the following motto: Either you share our values or…? A democracy asserted with threats and blackmail only sabotages itself. It no longer represents the autonomous decision for freedom, but rather becomes a global imperative. This is, in effect, a perversion of Kant’s categorical imperative, which implies freely chosen consent to its command.

Spiegel: So the end of history, the absolute sway of democracy, would be a new form of world dictatorship?

Baudrillard: Yes, and it is completely inconceivable that there would be no violent counter-reaction against it. Terrorism emerges when no other form of resistance seems possible. The system takes as objectively terrorist whatever is set against it. The values of the West are ambivalent, at a definite point in time they could have a positive effect and accelerate progress, at another, however, they drive themselves to such extremes that they falsify themselves and ultimately turn against their own purpose.

Spiegel: If the antagonism between globalization and terrorism in reality is irresolvable, then what purpose could the War Against Terrorism still have?

Baudrillard: US President Bush aspires to return to trusted ground by rediscovering the balance between friend and foe. The Americans are prosecuting this war as if they were defending themselves against a wolf pack. But this doesn’t work against viruses that have already been in us for a long time. There is no longer a front, no demarcation line, the enemy sits in the heart of the culture that fights it. That is, if you like, the fourth world war: no longer between peoples, states, systems and ideologies, but, rather, of the human species against itself.

Spiegel: Then in your opinion this war cannot be won?

Baudrillard: No one can say how it will all turn out. What hangs in the balance is the survival of humanity, it is not about the victory of one side. Terrorism has no political project, it has no finality; though it is seen as real, it is absurd.

Spiegel: Bin Laden and the Islamists do indeed have a social project, an image of a rigorous, ideal community in the name of Allah.

Baudrillard: Perhaps, but it is not religiosity that drives them to terrorism. All the Islam experts emphasize this. The assassins of September 11th made no demands. Fundamentalism is a symptomatic form of rejection, refusal; its adherents didn’t want to accomplish anything concrete, they simply rise up wildly against that which they perceive as a threat to their own identity.

Spiegel: Yet this doesn’t change the fact that in the course of history cultural evolution takes place. Doesn’t the global expansion of Western culture demonstrate the power of its appeal?

Baudrillard: Why not also say its superiority? Cultures are like languages. Each is incommensurable, a self-contained work of art for itself. There is no hierarchy of languages. One cannot measure them against universal standards. It is theoretically possible for a language to assert itself globally, however, such reduction would constitute an absolute danger.

Spiegel: For all intents and purposes, you refuse the idea of moral progress. The unique, which you defend, is in itself not a value at all. It can be good or evil, selfless or criminal…

Baudrillard: Yes, singularity can assume all forms, including the vicious or terroristic. It remains all the same an artwork. For the rest, I don’t believe that there are predominantly good or evil cultures-there are, of course, disastrous diversions, but it is not possible to separate the one from the other. Evil does not retreat in proportion to the advance of the good. Therefore the concept of progress is, outside of the rationality of the natural sciences, in fact, problematic. Montaigne said: “If the evil in men were eliminated, then the fundamental condition of life would be destroyed.”

Spiegel: No heaven without hell, no redemption with out perdition-isn’t your dualistic view of the world nothing more than pessimism and fatalism?

Baudrillard: Fatalism offers an unpalatable interpretation of the world, for it leads to resignation. I don’t resign myself, I want clarity, a lucid consciousness. When we know the rules of the game, then we can change them. In this respect, I am a man of the Enlightenment.

Spiegel: But your knowledge of evil doesn’t lead you to combat it.

Baudrillard: No, for me that is senseless. Good and evil are irresolvably bound up with one another, this is fatal in the original sense: an integral part of our fate, our destiny.

Spiegel: Why does Western culture find it so difficult to tolerate the existence of evil, why is it repressed and denied?

Baudrillard: Evil was interpreted as misfortune, for misfortune can be combated: poverty, injustice, oppression and so on. This is the humanitarian view of things, the pathetic and sentimental vision, the permanent empathy with the wretched. Evil is the world as it is and as it has been. Misfortune is the world as it never should have been. The transformation of evil into misfortune is the most lucrative industry of the twentieth century.

Spiegel: While evil cannot be exorcized, misfortune can be made good, it demands a better condition.

Baudrillard: Misfortune is a mine whose ore is inexhaustible. Evil, in contrast, can’t be subdued by any form of rationality. This is the illusion of the West: because technological perfection seems within reach, one believes by extension in the possibility of realizing moral perfection, in an future free of contingencies in the best of all possible worlds. Everything should be redeemed-which is what comprises the contemporary ideal of our democracy. Everything will be genetically manipulated in order to attain the biological and democratic perfection of the human species.

Spiegel: Do you regret that the West has lost its belief in redemption through God?

Baudrillard: You know, in reality one would have to turn the whole debate on its head. The exciting question is not why there is evil. First there is evil, without question. Why is there good? This is the real miracle.

Spiegel: Could you explain it without reference to God?

Baudrillard: In the eighteenth century, Rousseau and others tried, but not very convincingly. The best and simplest hypothesis is, in effect, to postulate God. God is like democracy: the least corrupt and therefore the best of all possible solutions.

Spiegel: When one hears you, it is possible to conclude that you would have been a Cathar in the Middle Ages.

Baudrillard: Oh yes, I love the world of the Cathars because I am Manichaean.

Spiegel: … of the opinion that there is an eternal opposition between light and night, good and evil …

Baudrillard: … yes, the Cathars held the material world to be evil and bad, created by demons. At the same time, they put their faith in God, the holy and the possibility of perfection. This is a much more radical view than that which sees in evil only the gradually diminishing auxiliaries of the good.

Spiegel: Monsieur Baudrillard, thank you for this interview.


Jean Baudrillard is among the most important theorists of our time. He has been employing theory to challenge the real for many years. His recent books include The Vital Illusion, The Spirit of Terrorism, Requiem For The Twin Towers, Cool Memories IV, and Passwords. He is an editor of the International Journal of Baudrillard Studies.

Samir Gandesha is an Assistant Professor of Humanities at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, B.C. Canada. He is currently working on a book length project on T.W. Adorno’s critique of Martin Heidegger. He is also working on a project on the role of academic journals in the constitution of the North American public sphere.

Gary Genosko is Canada Research Chair in Technoculture Studies and Associate Professor of Sociology, Lakehead University, Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada. His recent work concerns Baudrillard, surveillance, and the prospects of symbolic exchange for anti-surveillance struggles. He is an editor of the International Journal of Baudrillard Studies.
Endnotes

1 This interview originally appeared in Der Spiegel, Number 3, 2002. The International Journal of Baudrillard Studies thanks Der Spiegel and the New York Times Syndicate for permission to reprint this interview in English translation.

2 A talk delivered at Lakehead University, Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada, April 3, 2003.