*updatemag

Issue #1
Who let my fish loose?
“Call Now”
In the recent years, this notion of
“life” has become more and more
prominent. The whole philosophy
and theory of discourse in the last
century was about life, not about
thinking like it was before, its quite
a change, and I will be talking
about this change. Why Philosophy
for so long, from Plato up to the
end of 19th century had actually
thinking, logos and reason, for
its main topic, and then suddenly
the theme changed to life as the
main notion. We are always speaking
about reality TV, and all these
things, we speak about life and
we speak about the possibility of
changing lives and exchanging
lives, about imitating life. And all
of this has presuppositions and I
will try to discuss them.
In our time, we are attacked
form all sides by different calls
to change our life. To change our
body, by diet and fitness, to change
our mental abilities by education
and meditation. You know,
now I’m living in New York, as it
was already said, and I always get
accustomed to a certain way that
American TV presents this call. You
know, when you see an advertisement
for new medicine, new practise
or new fitness program, at the
end they always say, with a very
insistent voice
“Call Now!”
“Please call now!”
“Do not wait!”
“Call now!”
"Change your life! Now!"
The society that is only based on
differences is no longer a society, it is a
market economy.
This is what I want to talk about.
What does this feeling of urgency
mean? That we cannot delay it,
that we have to do it now, we have
to respond now. Every such a call
proposes a sort of model that is a
call to imitate socially recognised
beauties, etc. And every such call
for change is a call for imitation and
a call to become somebody that
somebody else already is. But is it
possible to become another person,
to follow a model to radically
change our own identity to imitate
another identity and if it is possible
to follow this, should we follow this,
so is our desire of imitation really
good?
First off, I would suggest that the
desire to become similar to the
others - the “mimetic” desire that
is so criticised by many authors is
actually in a certain way a positive
desire. It is a desire to be social, to
produce sociality. We tend to think
about our society as a society of
differences. We tend to think about
our society as the society of differences.
We have different culture
identity, different professions,
skills, sexual orientations etc. However,
a society that is only defined
by differences seizes to be a society
the space of difference is not a
society but an economy, and specifically
market economy - that means
economy of exchange. Difference
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