In “Tasting the Pickle” Jonathan Rowson gives a partial formula for the meta-crisis [1]:

when one of the eight billion asks us then: What should I do? At least part of the answer has to be: You tell me.

So the crisis is not about finding the right authority who can legitimately declare “I tell you!” It’s not simply a crisis of authority, it’s rather a crisis of authorization: It’s about finding ways to authorize each other and thereby self-authorize [2].

Given the psychoanalytic insights that (1) there is no meta-language and (2) human relations are actually determined by symptomatic parapraxes (dreams, jokes, blunders, etc.), it’s more accurate to call the meta-crisis a para-crisis: The unknown entity is not simply “What to do” and then “How to do it”; instead, it’s “How to behave properly” or rather “How to desire accurately”.

Now let’s move Rowson’s formula to the linguistic plane and derive variations:

You tell me.
Your allusion implies my allusion.
Generic you determines the ego.
The generic shapes the particular.

Due to a fortuity of Turkish language, “your allusion” (iman) also means faith, and “my allusion” (imam) also means priest [3]. Given that such equivocations constitute lalangue, the para-field of language baptized by Lacan, we are authorized to produce meaning through them:

I tell you: The priest forms the faith.
You tell me: The faith forms the priest.

This simply amounts to:

1) Putting the generic you before the particular ego.
2) Putting gratitude before envy.

The key point here is that true gratitude is generic. It is not merely a gratefulness to a particular authority. It is rather a way (or rather the only way) to authorize each other and thereby self-authorize [4].

Işık Barış Fidaner is a computer scientist with a PhD from Boğaziçi University, İstanbul. Admin of Yersiz Şeyler, Editor of Žižekian Analysis, Curator of Görce Writings. Twitter: @BarisFidaner

Notes:

[1] See “Tasting the Pickle: Ten flavours of meta-crisis and the appetite for a new civilisation” Jonathan Rowson

[2] See “Symbolic Authorization of Fetishes and Real Authorization of Symptoms”, “‘Crisis of Masculinity’ is a Manifestation of the General Crisis of Authorization”, “Calhoun and the Murine Oedipal Crisis of Authorization”, “The Crisis of Authorization in Dark”, “Life, Philosophy, Psychoanalysis”

[3] See “İman ve İmam: İma edilen şey-tanrıdır”, “Tözne/Cevherzat: özgür, özür, zaten, bizzat”

[4] See “Make Gratitude Cool Again”, “The Artemis of Ephesus: Being Seized by Mamilla Envy and Being Turned into a Data Breast of the Virtual Lord”, “Don’t Look Up to the Sky, Look Down at the Symptom”, “Religion vs. Analysis: Grateful Although Envious vs. Grateful Because Envious”, “The Marxist Suture and the Ruling Class of Ungrateful Jerks: The hearty laughter for bringing lambs to the slaughter”, “Differential Synchronicity and Deferential Diachronicity: Signifi-cushion, Signifi-caution, Signifi-crouching”