Mishima in the Twenty First Century

Mishima in the Twenty First Century
petertasker.asia

>In the sociological sense, recuperation is the process by which politically radical ideas and images are twisted, co-opted, absorbed, defused, incorporated, annexed or commodified within media culture and bourgeois society, and thus become interpreted through a neutralized, innocuous or more socially conventional perspective. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recuperation_(politics)

"Also [Hitler] has grasped the falsity of the hedonistic attitude to life. Nearly all western thought since the last war, certainly all ‘progressive’ thought, has assumed tacitly that human beings desire nothing beyond ease, security and avoidance of pain. In such a view of life there is no room, for instance, for patriotism and the military virtues. The Socialist who finds his children playing with soldiers is usually upset, but he is never able to think of a substitute for the tin soldiers; tin pacifists somehow won’t do. Hitler, because in his own joyless mind he feels it with exceptional strength, knows that human beings don’t only want comfort, safety, short working-hours, hygiene, birth-control and, in general, common sense; they also, at least intermittently, want struggle and self-sacrifice, not to mention drums, flags and loyalty-parades. However they may be as economic theories, Fascism and Nazism are psychologically far sounder than any hedonistic conception of life. The same is probably true of Stalin’s militarised version of Socialism. All three of the great dictators have enhanced their power by imposing intolerable burdens on their peoples. Whereas Socialism, and even capitalism in a more grudging way, have said to people ‘I offer you a good time,’ Hitler has said to them ‘I offer you struggle, danger and death,’ and as a result a whole nation flings itself at his feet."

The kind of person who looks romantically at that disgusts me. we need a Mishima? By all means, be the first to spill your guts and call for a violent military overthrow because radical violence is the answer to the culture-war not going your way. I'm sure the Nazis will be far less willing than the Paris Commune to hijack Zoom, Netflix, Uber Eats and future products of Big Data and AI to keep you singing the party's tune. The only kind of people who look romantically at that kind of violence are the ones who feel it will never touch them, who are so safe they can't imagine the suffering. I'm sure the author feels happy giving Nouveau-Mishima the thumbs up because he tacitly thinks he'll be on the last flight out to watch the fireworks from the safety of a Paris cafe.

Lets say the 'shock' against this 'Last Man' isn't a call from the author for violence and political revolution because the Culture War isn't breaking his way. What's the Nouveau-Mishima supposed to do here? Besides some old man grumbling about "them d*mn kids and their nebulous and scary AI" it's not really identified what exactly we're being complacent in. I'm afraid this feels like more angry impotent pot-stirring mixed with a bit of rehabilitation.

The conservative's "Last Man" seems to come and go every century unabated, and with it the reactionary conservative backlash that oddly only ever seems to seek to turn back the clock a decade or two. We're always so arrogant in thinking that the present is so different than the past.

The sentiment that the world will ever be devoid of struggle to me is naive. The fear of the "fall of struggle" is like fear of the "rise of productivity". We all thought that the rise in productivity would mean less work and thus laziness; instead productivity is sky-high and we're all working ourselves to death. More productivity just means more opportunity for work. Likewise, People are naturally tuned to find struggle and risk, and they will redefine their selves and situations until they have it. Free of our old burdens, we'll just find new vaster ones. If you need the Noble Savage stuff to create art, wisdom, or whatever other product your spoiled mind think society has to produce to have 'worth', it's gonna be there, I promise.

The author's final observation, "Perhaps we need a Mishima to shock us out of our complacency." is something he should be careful about wishing for. (Though the idea of Ian McEwan storming a military base was very funny, I thought Stephen Fry would be even better equipped. "...ah, well, right then, moving along..." )

What makes Mishima so dangerous today is that he produced beautiful art and culture from which the downstream political conclusions were unavoidable. This is one side effect of good art. Political theory itself is a kind of vulgar pseudo intellectual haggling compared to aesthetic truths and their self evidence that great art demonstrates. As an example from another of today's threads, a Chopin mazurka does more for Polish national identity than any explanation could do. Writing itself is an inferior (but necessary) form because it only describes in a narrow dimension instead of demonstrates over multiple senses. This is what I think Misihma also understood. I only read the Sea of Fertility books (in English some years ago) and they're demanding, but this muscular and humane expression of aesthetic truth and even divine power is the seed for the survival of the human spirit. A revolt against becoming the bland, homogenized "last man," may very well originate from the sentiments Mishima was able to bring words and life to.