For me, this depends on whose future, not an abstracted one, but one
within which genocide all too easily inheres, where the extinction of a
species is absolute; a few years ago Johannes Birringer and I co-moderated
a discussion on empyre on absolute terror which centered, for me, around
scorched-earth operations that permanently eliminated cultural narratives
from whole regions. So 'whose future' is absolutely critical, given this
and given the enclaving of so many of the top .1%; obviously the planet
will survive, things change, etc., but given the potential of nuclear war
etc., the future may be brutal indeed.
And as I've grown older, I've come to the opposite realization, that life
is not resilient at all...
- Alan
On Sat, 14 Oct 2017, Peter ciccariello wrote:
This is brilliant. Thanks Ian Alan Paul.
I would like to share it?
On Oct 14, 2017, at 10:04 AM, Ian Alan Paul <[email protected]>
wrote:
And so here we are. In the present, the new normal. In a situation that
feels just as quotidian as it does impossible.
With my coffee I read of fires in California and I scroll through
friends' facebook posts debating which filters and breathing masks are
best to buy. I read of the news from Puerto Rico, where a tragedy
smears across days and then weeks in slow motion, obfuscated by
politicians but nonetheless occasionally breaking through the surface.
I listen to friends talking about what white supremacists are doing on
their campuses, worried about posters and about speaking events, while
some have begun receiving death threats. I hear of safehouses being
organized for migrants that are soon to be made illegal. Everywhere
things are heating up, the seas are rising, and democracies fall from
the air like flies.
On mornings like this one, I'm reminded of Brecht when he wrote that
"Because things are the way they are, things will not stay the way they
are." What could better describe our present? There's no room for
nostalgia in such a formulation, in a rapidly disintegrating present
that forcefully collapses towards the future. While collapse is always
to some degree anticipated as we can see its shadow stretching across
the ground beneath us, even its most astute architects cannot be sure
in which direction the debris will fall.
As I've grown older, one thing which has become increasingly clear to
me is that life is resilient. It goes on. Whether in occupied
territories, under the weight of a military coup, or after the election
of a demagogue, tea and coffee are still brewed in the morning, and
people still find, even if somewhat troubled, sleep at night. Even in
the face of the most tremendous of losses, the past's rubble is slowly
and carefully accumulated into something new and is in turn guarded by
the living. We find temporary and fragile shelters from our looming
impossibility.
And so here we are. In the present, the new normal. In a situation that
cannot stay this way because of the way it is. In a kind of life we
live because we must continue living.
The question for us, I think, isn't whether or not the future can be
warded off, although promises that it can be will continue to fill the
air with their vacancy. All that remains for us is to embrace the
possibility of the impossible present we find ourselves within. If the
world can no longer hold as it is, what can come to be in its stead? As
our lives in their present forms become increasingly less possible to
live, the only refuge may be in the collective invention and
elaboration of new forms of living.
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