"What both Wallace's critique on television and Žižek's insight into modern ideology hold in common is the very concept that we, in a fit of liberal education, are aware of the very systematic ideology that confronts us on a day to day basis; but, through our cynical adaptation of our daily lies, through a comical irony, we have convinced ourselves of our innocence and inculpability in relation to this “system”--in a truly cynical sense, we have convinced ourself of a lack of guilt even in our own actions. This cynicism comes with an unhealthy dose of zen-like apathy in which the inner journey of meditation and peace is justified by the refutation of “actual” actions through a mental distancing–in an absurd reversal of Sartre's citation of the waiter and his “bad faith”, modern cynicism seems to have eradicated any notion of freedom or choice at all, but not in a deterministic sense, simply in a nihilistic sense: almost as if the mind has given up to the corporate nature of reality, playing along with it . . . but when the cynicism is obvious (take Sartre's waiter or Wallace's example of TV viewer “Joe Briefcase” who sees the falsity of a commercial, feels rewarded for realising the irony of it, but still ACTS as Audience) we are culpable, guilty of “Bad Faith” at a far worse level than our parents and grandparents who may have been excused to a more “provincial” viewpoint (not yet cynical, but in Direct Belief) in Modern and Pre-Modern periods. "
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