Виктор Пелевин - Babylon

When oral-anal stimulation forms a closed loop, we can say that the goal of advertising magic has been achieved: an illusory structure is created that has no centre, although all objects and qualities are related to each other via a fictional centre that is called ‘identity ’.

Identity is the type-two subject at the stage of development when it is capable of existing independently without constant activation by the three wow-impulses, under the influence only of the three residual wow-factors, generated independently by its own mind.

Identity is a false ego, which says everything there is to be said about it. In its analysis of the modern human situation, bourgeois thought regards the violent escape from identity back to one’s own ego as a tremendous spiritual achievement. Perhaps that really is the case, since the ego is non-existent in relative terms, while identity is absolutely non-existent. The only difficulty with this is that it is impossible, since there is nowhere to escape from or to and nobody to escape. Despite that, however, we might allow that in this situation the slogans ‘Back to the ego!’ or ‘Forward to the ego!’ do acquire, if not actual meaning, then at least a certain aesthetic justification.

The superimposition of the three wow-impulses on the more subtle processes taking place in the human psyche is the source of all of the mediocre variety of modern culture. A special role is played in this by the displacing impulse. It is like the rumbling of a pneumatic drill, which drowns out all other sounds. Any external stimuli apart from the wow-oral and wow-anal impulses are filtered out, and the individual loses interest in everything that has no oral or anal component. In this brief article we do not consider the sexual aspect of advertising, but let us note in passing that more and more frequently sex becomes attractive only because it symbolises the vital energy of youth that can be transformed into money. This can be confirmed by any competent psychoanalyst. In the final analysis the modern individual experiences a profound distrust of practically everything that is not connected with the ingestion or elimination of money.

Externally this is manifested in the fact that life becomes ever more boring, and people become evermore cold and calculating. In bourgeois science the new code of behaviour is usually explained by the attempt to maintain and conserve emotional energy, which is a response to the demands of the corporate economy and the modern lifestyle. In actual fact there is no less emotional content in human life, but the unremitting influence of the displacing wow-factor results in all of the individual’s emotional energy being shunted into psychological processes related to oral and anal wow-content. Many bourgeois specialists instinctively sense the part played by the mass media in the paradigm shift that is taking place, but as comrade Allende junior used to say, ‘They are searching for a black cat which has never existed in a dark room which will never exist.’ Even when they go so far as to call television a prosthetic support for the wrinkled and withered ‘self, or say that the media inflate a personality that has become unreal, they are still missing the point.

Only a personality that was real can become unreal. In order to become wrinkled and withered, this ‘self would have had’ to exist. In the preceding argument, and also in our previous writings (see The Russian Question and Cedera Luminosa) we have demonstrated the groundlessness of this approach.

Under the influence of the displacing wow-factor, the culture and art of the dark age are reduced exclusively to oral-anal content. The fundamental feature of this art may be succinctly defined as ‘moutharsing’.

A black bag stuffed with hundred-dollar bills has already become the supremely important cultural symbol and a central element of the majority of films and books, for which the trajectory of its path through life provides the mainspring of the plot. In more precise terms, it is the presence in the work of art of this black bag that stimulates the audience’s emotional interest in what is taking place on the screen or in the text. Note that in certain instances the bag of money is not directly present, in which case its function is fulfilled either by the participation of so-called ‘stars’, of whom it is known as a certain fact that they have such a bag at home, or by persistently touted information about the budget of the film and its takings at the box office. In the future, not a single work of art will be created simply for its own sake; the time is approaching when books and films will appear in which the dominant element of content will be a secret hymn of praise to Coca-Cola and an attack on Pepsi-Cola - or vice-versa.

The effect of the impact of oral-anal impulses is to encourage the development in the human individual of an internal auditor (a typical market-economy variant of the ‘internal party committee’). He constantly assesses reality exclusively in terms of property and performs a punitive function by forcing consciousness to suffer intolerably as a result of cognitive dissonance. The oral wow-impulse corresponds to the internal auditor holding up the flag ‘loser’. The anal wow-impulse corresponds to the flag ‘winner’. The displacing wow-impulse corresponds to a condition in which the internal auditor simultaneously holds up the flags ‘winner’ and ‘loser’. It is possible to identify several stable types of identity. These are:

a) the oral wow-type (the dominant pattern around which emotional and psychological life is organised is an obsessive yearning for money)

b) the anal wow-type (the dominant pattern is the pleasurable elimination of money or the manipulation of objects that are surrogates for it, also known as anal wow-exhibitionism)

c) the displaced wow-type (possible in combination with either of the first two types), in which the individual effectively becomes insensitive to all stimuli apart from oral-anal impulses.

The relative nature of this classification can be seen from the fact that one and the same identity may be anal in relation to those who stand lower in the wow-hierarchy and oral in relation to those who stand higher (of course, there is no ‘identity in itself - we are concerned here with a pure epiphenomenon). The linear wow-hierarchy that is formed by numerous ranked identities is known as a corporate string. It is a kind of social perpetuum mobile; ifs secret lies in the fact that any ‘identity’ is obliged constantly to validate itself against another that is located one step higher. In folklore this great principle is reflected in the colloquial phrase: ‘keeping up with the Joneses’.

Individuals organised according to the principle of the corporate string are like fish threaded on a line. But in this case the fish are still alive. More than that - under the influence of the oral and anal wow-factors they crawl, as it were, along the corporate string in the direction that they think of as up. They are driven to do this by instinct or, if you will, by the urge to find the meaning of life. And from the point of view of economic metaphysics the meaning of life is the transformation of the oral identity into the anal.

The implications of the situation are not exhausted by the fact that the subject who is overcome by the influence of the three residual wow-factors is obliged to regard himself or herself as an identity. Coming into contact with another human being, he or she sees him or her as an identity too. The culture of the dark age has already correlated absolutely everything that can characterise a human being with its oral-anal system of coordinates and located it in a context of endless moutharsing.