Zizek!

I was on www.youtube.com today and came across Slavoj Zizek, indirectly. What I initially wanted to talk about was empty gestures, but we'll see if I get to that.
Yesterday I was smoking a cigarette on a street corner coffee shop and looked out into the street and had a transcendental/horrifying experience. I realized that all this consumption would outrage us if we weren't used to it. We have been told this is normal, so it becomes normal. It is a battle between human nature and human culture, one which is based on a long line of time behind it and one which is adapting to suit our immediate concerns. This explanation of culture is especially true in our postmodern world, and seems to be the direction in which things are pointed. This distinction can be compared to the Muslims who are either twelvers or seveners. Twelvers believe in a savior of mankind to come at the apocalypse while seveners believe that there is a long line of holy men. What many of us have chosen in this society is to live in the moment, so much so that consequences are thrown out of the window.
"Culture, as such, in order to establish itself as normal, or, what appears as normal, involves a whole serious of pathological cuts, distortions, and so on and so on. There is, again, a kind of uneasiness, we are out of joint, not at home. In culture, as such, which means, again, there is no normal culture. Culture, as such, needs to be interpreted." -Zizek from the movie Zizek!
First I will address the nature of pathology in this outlook: pathology is unnoticed by those who are actually experiencing it. This is a very common belief, but what Zizek suggests as a solution or a reaction to the reality/subjectivity of pathology is unique. That is, when confronted with the pathological subject, we come to realize that the causes of such pathology lie in the power of the culture to impose itself upon the individual. The route of escape, here, lies in the act of interpretation, which breaks down the definition of a "normal culture." While culture is a force which imposes itself upon the individual, interpretation is a way of transforming specifically that force into an even greater number of different facets. The temptation of the pathological in this case is that of lacking: lacking interpretation, and consequently being subjected to the experience of the illusory whole. But it is not the act of subjection itself which is pathological in this case, rather, it is the act which immediately precedes this subjection that was see the pathological in action: in the "spooky action" of the establishment of a culture. What I/Zizek means is that culture does not necessarily have to be accepted to exist, but rather that the greater the perversion that exists in the cultural establishment, the more normal it will feel to those experiencing it. Therefore, those of us who have the experience of the absurd will be opposed to those who have the experience of the normal. However, absurdity of experience only grows in the case of someone who goes into a more pathological society than they had previously experienced, meaning that as the experience of the normal gains influence, the absurd does not grow up in opposition to and therefore with it. This is proven by the fact that there is no absolute escape from the influences of a culture, and that even through opposition we cannot overstep our limitations. What can magnify this feeling of the absurd, getting back to my anecdote, is the knowledge we have ingrained in us from our evolution. Here, the normal existence of our current culture is made abnormal by our experience, or, more accurately, our knowledge of the history of culture. We are being told two contradictory things: that this culture is normal, and that culture progresses. Life seems absurd only if we accept the simplicity of it. My final point being that those who have an intimate knowledge of the history of mankind are much more likely to change the modern culture into a non-totalitarian existence, whereas those people who think that we must treat our current experience as unique to our current circumstances, separate from the past, are much more likely to change modern culture into an accepted state of totalitarianism. I will conclude with a point present in the Zizek quote: any culture of any kind must be deceitful in order to establish itself. This effects the populace without them knowing it: exactly how we want it!
Interviewer: "Don't you love it a little bit."
Zizek: "I hate people, I think people are evil."