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Zizek is keen to rubbish the assumption that we live in a decadent, consumption-obsessed [[society]]. There is, he maintains, plenty of [[belief]] around. It is just that our beliefs are secreted within the fabric of our lifestyles, and we profess not to take them very seriously - [[witness]], he says, the popularity of everything from books like The [[Da Vinci]] [[Code]] to newspaper horoscopes.
Zizek sees it as his job to keep alive the revolutionary [[conscience]], and he specialises in needling leftwingers and [[liberals]] who have moved on to make their peace with the [[political]] [[system]]. It has won him some interesting [[intellectual]] bedfellows, and a few enemies. He is critical, for example, of the [[liberal]] [[notion]] of harassment in contemporary western societies. He agrees that [[The Real|the real ]] experience of [[sexual]] or racial harassment can be terrifying, but goes on to argues that - almost imperceptibly - the idea of harassment has slid into a social [[neurosis]] that means no more than an [[injunction]] to keep out of our personal [[space]]. "The liberal idea of [[tolerance]]," he argues, "is more and more a kind of [[intolerance]]. What it means is leave me alone, don't harass me, I'm intolerant towards your over-proximity." He sees something suspicious in the way that smokers are increasingly kept at a distance and seen as polluters who are intent on violating space. It is part of the antiseptic [[nature]] of contemporary culture, he says - coffee without caffeine, beer without alcohol, cakes without sugar.
But, I protest, he has just ordered a Diet Coke to go with his chocolate fudge brownie. "Come on," he says. "I don't have any problem violating my own insights in [[practice]]." Even the [[Iraq]] war, he points out, was initially conceived as a decaffeinated [[conflict]] - a war without victims, at least on our side. "Nowadays," he says, "you can do anything that you [[want]] - [[anal]], [[oral]], fisting" - I stare down momentarily into my Yorkshire pudding - "but you [[need]] to be wearing gloves, condoms, protection."
