Gündüz Vassaf | Standardization

IX.

The standardization of man, madness, and freedom in the twentieth century has removed any sense of intensity in life itself. Nothing is intensely felt. There is no time for depth. All experiences must be fleeting. Experiences are like chattel - to be bought or gotten ridden of, to be experienced at will. The twentieth century chooses experience as if buying something from a department store. It is rumoured that Dostoyevsky suffered from intense guilt feelings because of a sexual act he's said to have had with a female child. He was tormented throughout his life. A hundred years later travel agencies book sex tours for Germans, Japanese, and Americans so that they can be flown into Manila or Bangkok and have as much sex with as many child prostitutes as they wish for the duration of their journey. In a week they are comfortably back at their jobs and secure in their environments. Consumed experience extinguishes the spirit.

It is becoming more and more possible for us to experience almost anything in specially Constructed environments as in the case of sex tourism above. Thus, also with the right contacts one could also partake in a witchcraft ceremony including actual sacrifice, participate in an expedition to the North Pole. live like a feudal lord in a British manor. and on and on. All this, while continuing to work as a priest. postman. or psychologist. There is no risk. no sense of being in a situation where the end is not certain. You are usually even guaranteed to have a good time to enjoy it, to have a thrill. 

The totalitarianisn of controlled experience is accompanied by poverty of imagination. Even at "good" Western restaurants the menu and the waiter are similar to the warder and regulations in a prison. "You can have two vegetables with this meal". "No salad comes with that order."In eating out one has the "freedom to choose" from an increasingly restricted multiple choice list. Eating, an important source of pleasure for man. is a controlled experience. So is sex.

Rather than the infinity of experience, we are face to face with assortments of sex paraphernalia. sex machines. vibrators - various material objects that standardize and limit our sense of pleasure.

Eating, sex, madness have all been broken down into categories. The total experience is no longer. Rather one chooses a set pattern of experience from a limited multiple choice set.

X.

The anti-hero of civilisation will be the mad person. In spite of the permeation of standardization and totalitarianism, those who can still be mad are indeed very strong and unique individuals. One should not use the word "mad" lightly for there are very few who can be accorded that privilege. It is a privilege accompanied by great suffering. It is a suffering that is rarely alleviated. The path of the mad is so lonely that although he has empathy with the world and the cosmos, he is also beyond praise and punishment. The mad are alone against the totalitarian state, built upon the totalitarianism in each and every one of us. They are also under the potential threat of the complete standardization of madness through "breakthroughs" in bio-chemical technology and perhaps genetical engineering. If we cannot protect ourselves let us at least, in the name of the human spirit, allow the mad to be free in their madness.

Oct. 31, 1986

Marburg