RESISTANCE - HERMENEUTICS OF SUSPICION (PART ONE)
‘Hermeneutics of Suspicion’ was a document circulated around Europe by Jack Stanza’s publisher, Paul O Hasard.
It was originally written by the 4 Horsemen in English, German, French and Spanish, but this English copy is the only one left in existence. The document was taken to a city where Paul was attending a publisher’s exhibition and had contacts; members of his underground publishing network. This was in London (Chelsea), Berlin, Paris and Seville. Whilst the exhibition was running, the manuscript would be handed to the writer and they would have to complete their (typed) section by the time he had to leave the city.
This was the safest way of preparing the document, as no paper trail nor digital trace was left for the State Security Services to find. On its completion, copies were distributed in the same manner.
“Resistance”, said Paul, “is a matter of erosion and not storming the battlements.”
Hermeneutics of Suspicion:
’Unmasking the lies and illusions of political (Un)consciousness’
by
The
4
horsemen of the Apocalypse
Introduction to the Apocalypse
The Hermeneutics of Suspicion (Hermeneutik des Argwohns) speaks to my own failure as it does to our communal one. We were present when these things were happening, but did not discern their influence, nor decode their intent. Politically, Spiritually and Artistically we were left as spectators rather than participants in this grand change. Sophie Scholl said that we get the Governments we deserve; this is through pursuing our own self-interests, by sheer apathy or stupidity.
Whilst there is ‘no cure for stupid’, I am hopeful that the cause was either self-interest or apathy. The cure to self-interest is to show how interdependent we are for our well-being and prosperity; for the apathetic, those in a torpored state, it is achieved by smelling the burning infrastructures of our three concerns.
What I believed about the coming Corporatism, I thought would sound a prophetic warning – a wake up call - to us. I was wrong, because it had already happened. You can’t be prophetic and too late at the same time!
I didn’t understand that the 4 horsemen of the apocalypse were not a prophecy of the future, but that they’re inherent in every form of Imperialism: Conquest, War, Famine through inflation and Death with its co-respondent, Hades on Earth. The latter is the ever-increasing threat of morbid suffering. The gates of hell are no doubt situated in the Cathedral.
We were born into a system of our time. In times past it was Babylon, Egypt, Rome, Greece, now Corporatism, (sometimes called Globalism).
The New Imperialism
In this new Imperialism we are the assets, the commodities and we may be bought and sold at will by our Masters; namely the 1%. First there was debt slavery. The Banks created money out of nothing; when £1 in circulation would cause £5.50 of debt. Inflation caused debt to increase. What caused inflation was the banks printing money - not by people spending too much. We were told this was to distract and confuse us as to the real cause, the banks themselves.
We spend because we have needs, but the value of our income is worth less and less – worthless! Ask any Public Sector Health worker. People worked on credit, not debit. The inevitability of foreclosure followed; homelessness increased as did child poverty. When the Government claimed it couldn’t afford to put more money into education, the National Health Service or social care, they were lying. During times of economic meltdown, specifically the Greek Tragedy, Governments forked out billions to prop up the banks.
But the bankers weren’t repentant, but belligerent, threatening the end of the banking world as we knew it, along with State economies. It was the government who blinked first of course. Our politicians are spineless artefacts of humanity.
From the hallowed halls of St Paul’s in London, the devout voice of a ‘Christian’ (whatever that means), Lord Griffiths sounds out that we have to “...tolerate inequality as a way of achieving greater prosperity and opportunity for all.” I can’t imagine those words being spoken at the Sermon on the Mount. We can sense the true source of this devotion, perhaps?
The deceit here is that trickledown economics doesn’t work, because the top 1% (the pampered effetes), are hoarders and any consumption of their wealth is done conspicuously upon themselves. Trickledown didn’t work for those caught in spirals of war, famine and plague.
I said we could be bought and that is what happens when Artists have to register with the Arts Council. They received an annual grant, for which they were thankful, but all their work was proposed through the AC bureaucrats; their work monitored and assessed by criteria which has nothing to do with artistic, aesthetic creativity.
So we get the art of evasion; evasion of what it is to be art, what it is to be human, what it is to be fulfilled. The artist is set on a course towards the State and its agenda for life, beneath its ‘sacred’ canopy. “Art for the People and the People for the State.” But...is the State for the people? Or is it self-serving, following its own agenda of power and the resulting aegis over every part of our lives? Is that desirable? Do we wish to be controlled and served art by the decorators of propaganda, with all their philosophical depth written on State-sanctioned toilet paper?
The 4 Horsemen
