ABSTRACT
Alain Badiou refers to 'well-known revolutionary practices', 'exorcisms', where the hated bureaucrat 'wears a dunce's cap and a sign describing his crimes; he must lower his head, and receive some kicks, or worse'. Morality belongs to the Symbolic and the sovereign good; the 'beyond good and evil' belongs to the so-called 'ethics of the Real', another register, a pitiless revolutionary register of mass disorder and sacred violence. Generations to come will have to negotiate their survival mentally and psychically through a bewildering array of lethal substances and, as mere nodal points in an infinite network, avoiding violence by skulking in safe areas in cities, staying 'below the radar', grabbing a few intense but brief 'highs' followed by the darkest nights imaginable. And the best that the radically helpless, unjudgemental and indifferent liberals, democrats and educationalists, all decent souls, will ever manage or muster is 'damage limitation': warn them of all the dangers and let them decide.
