Cybernetic Communism

http://thephilosophicalsalon.com/hegel-on-donal-trumps-objective-humor/

By Slavoj Žižek

"Today, we can easily recognize in these lines a postmodern intellectual who obsessively “deconstructs” every stable social institution or value. So what does Hegel oppose to this vain irony? Hegel’s point is usually taken as conservative: instead of the all-destroying anarchic irony of the Romantics, one should recognize the Good and the True embodied in social customs, i.e., its own rational core… However, Hegel is much more ambiguous here. First, his basic reproach to subjective humor is not that it is undermining all objective content, not taking it seriously, relativizing it, but that this all-destroying ironic stance is really utterly impotent. It actually threatens nothing; it just provides the ironic subject with the illusion of inner freedom and superiority. When individuals are caught in an impenetrable cobweb of social relations, the only way to assert their subjectivity is the niche of jokes which allegedly demonstrate their inner superiority."