According to Giorgio Agamben,‘thought is the courage of hopelessness’ – an insight especially pertinent for our historical moment when even the most pessimist diagnostics finishes with an uplifting hint at the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. The true courage is not to see this mirage, not to imagine an alternative, but to accept the consequences of the fact that there is no discernible alternative: the dream of an alternative is a sign of theoretical cowardice, it functions as a fetish which prevents us to think to the end the deadlock of our predicament. The true courage is to admit that the light at the end of the tunnel is most likely the headlight of another train approaching us from the opposite direction, from ecological threat to a new world war.

Slavoj Žižek delivered his lecture at Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities as part of the Masterclass on Monday 15 May, 2-4 pm. The session was on the topic: "Ideology as Augmented Reality". And Žižek's title of the lecture was on "You have to be stupid to see that" - Ideology in Daily Life. The lectures was recorded by the Backdoor Broadcasting Company Here is the lecture presented on YouTube: