on plenitude

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In a certain sense, the discovery of Capital by secularists is analogous to the discovery of the Holy Grail by the questing knights: an unthinkable eschatological event that brings about the end of the world conceptually, narratively, psychologically. The end of the world is no longer an imminent event but an immanent one; it is both always-already and always-going to be.

For the first time it is possible for a generation to imagine being smothered by the never-ending gifts that stream from the Horn of Plenty. The cure for the lack, for the missing object, is even more of a disaster for thought than the lack itself. An infinitely multiplying hyperabundance swallows us up, deranges thought, confounds ordination. There is nothing to make offerings or sacrifices to: we have to keep it all. We can't give it away, we are too clever, too sensitized to risk; perhaps this is the cruel and primitive revenge of unmannered and childlike gods for our having taught them the meaning of simulation.