hey why would you not credit this?? this absolute gem is by hacker queen zullie the witch on youtube, one of the very best souls channels and as of this video winner of all elden ring
“psychic maladies such as depression and burnout define our times. In contemporary American self-help literature, the magic word is healing. The term refers to self-optimization that is supposed to therapeutically eliminate any and all functional weakness or mental obstacle in the name of efficiency and performance. Yet perpetual self-optimization, which coincides point-for-point with the optimization of the system, is proving destructive. It is leading to mental collapse. Self-optimization, it turns out, amounts to total self-exploitation…the only pain that is tolerated is pain that can be exploited for the purposes of optimization. But the violence of positivity is just as destructive as the violence of negativity. Neoliberal psychopolitics, with the consciousness industry it promotes, is destroying the human soul, which is anything but a machine of positivity (Positivmaschine). The neoliberal subject is running aground on the imperative of self optimization, that is, on the compulsion always to achieve more and more. Healing, it turns out, means killing.”
— Byung-Chul Han, “Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power”
You like Kojima? His early work was a little too new wave for my tastes, but when Metal Gear Solid came out in 98, he really came into his own, commercially and artistically. The whole game has a dark but cool atmosphere, and a new sheen of interactive storytelling and cutscene direction that really gives the game a big boost. Kojima has been compared to Kubrick, but I think Kojima has a far more bitter, dark sense of humor. I think his undisputed masterpiece is this, Metal Gear Solid 2. A game so polarizing that most gamers probably don't even pay attention to the story. But they should! Because it's not just a tale about the memetic ideals passed through society, and the subversion of the very idea of a sequel, its also a personal statement about Kojima himself! Hey Paul!