critical theory with slavoj zizek: As Hegel puts it, what dies on the cross is not son but father himself. I think itʼs correct speculative reading. Otherwise we are in some pagan stupidity where you have God up there, God sends a messenger, “oh,sorry,crucified this time, it failed, comeback my son, weʼll try it later two thousand years,” or whatever. This is obscenity. The whole point is that itʼs not that if we do this we are back at this boring pagan topic of phoenix—you know, you die, but out of the ashes you, like that stupid bird, whatever, you come back. No no no, what comes after crucifixion is not Christ back to Daddy. Itʼs Holy Ghost. What is Holy Ghost? Read it literally. When Christ is asked by his followers, “How will we know that you come?” You know this famous passage, “Whenever there is love between two of you I will be there.” I take this absolutely literally. Holy Ghost is what remains of God, and itʼs our freedom. There is no higher guarantee and so on. Letʼs be frank. Itʼs no longer Christianity, even if itʼs called Christianity. Itʼs some kind of a—I like to call it a spiritualized pseudo-Western Buddhist hedonism, you know, realize yourself, a little bit of spiritual exercise and so on and so on and even Christianity is secretly if you look at it reformulated in these terms. This is why with all my appreciation of Dalai Lama, read his books. I checked in a bookstore. Three of the first page they always begin in the same way, “All living beings want to avoid pain and live happily, enjoy it,” and basically the message is a little bit of meditation will help you, even better sex, and so on. I think that first this is blatantly false, if there is anything to learn from psychoanalysis is that itʼs at least one human being, sorry, at least one living being, humans, who puts all its energy to screw things up for itself as far as possible—as much as possible. This is what Freud called “deathdrive” and so on. We are not hedonist animals and especially I think this is important. I wonder if you would agree with me. The pope, Ratzinger, said as usual something pretty stupid, that, you know, that “greed, utilitarian greed and so on, we have to overcome it,” in his apparent anticapitalism. Totally wrong. Capitalism as Benjamin knew, has a much more religious structure, a true capitalist is not a utilitarian hedonist. You are willing to starve, to risk everything, just so that capital reproduces itself and so on. You are even ready, ready to do whatever, to endanger the earth, whatever, just so that it goes on. Capitalism, again, is not the structure of personal egotism and greed. Every intelligent ideologist knows this.