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draw things, paint things, write things, make things ... number 265 ... the costume


The ultimate, hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently.
— David Graeber

Good morning,

Every once in a blue moon I like to post a Tinyletter here, in this dusty, disused space, just in case someone happens by. Because, in many ways, things have not really changed. I am, as I often was when I wrote to this blog more frequently, still confused. And vaguely despairing. What, exactly, is happening? Why have airports become stations of anarchy, and why have airlines gone into the business of cancelling a third of the flights they’ve sold? Why are emergency rooms no-go zones, and how does a Western country in the modern world — one that largely defines itself by its universal healthcare — fall into failure when it comes to the simple arithmetic of providing enough doctors, nurses and beds? Certainly, let's blame the pandemic, even though the patient seems to have been sick for years.

Some people answer that it's the seventies all over again — inflation, malaise, international disorder, the constant threat of recession, an intractable energy crisis, a general breakdown of services and order, with an ambient, chronic decline in any larger faith in the system, needle-dropped by all the darker instincts of a shaggy, violent, pharmaceutically-driven individualism. Here TikTok would be like disco, I guess ... entertaining but criminally thin, utterly disposable, and ultimately pointless.

Some people say it's a replay of the Weimar Republic, where the central power is weak, and wandering, beset on both sides by the barking dogs of the left (back then, the communists) versus right (then Nazis, now libertarians, conspiracists and tech moguls). Certainly, they despised each other, but they hated the compromising frailty of the government more (they were, in fact, largely defined by hate, or what they were against ... sound familiar?).

Some people say it's like the end of the Soviet Union — a decadent power structure slowly collapsing under the accumulated weight of its historical wrongs and internal contradictions, unable to respond to the complexities of modernity. Look around: nothing really works at this point but no one can imagine what might come next (just as soviet communism had seemed eternal, capitalism now seems eternal to us, the one thing that is never questioned, can never be replaced).

Some people say we're in the last act of neoliberalism, that the everything-answer of markets and interdependence has finally curdled into questions about naked greed and predation (remember now, only little people pay taxes), which no one was prepared to say out loud until all these just-in-time supply chains snapped so easily under a few reinforcing crises. What good is a system based on cheap televisions if you cannot, in fact, get your hands on a cheap television? What good is a system that can only exist in the narrow binary of completely working or not really working at all? Did you ever imagine a world where you could not buy a car off the lot? Where your new stove never arrived?

We were told what was best for us. We were told to rely on supply-chains because this was most efficient. Turns out 'most efficient' also meant ultra-fragile. At the same time, we have been told for years to be more self-reliant, more resilient, that government was not in the business of looking after us. Its citizens. Then what business is it in?

Can we at least agree that systems are about power, and politics is about the exercise of power, and governments, when in power, exist to serve the people?

Okay, sorry. Too fast.

What is the plan? Can we name a few simple big ideas? When was the last time you heard a politician tell you what the plan is? What are we doing? Where are we going? Please no more rhetoric about working together. Is there any imagination here, any kind of story, or are we just drifting, and sending out some cheques around election time?

Some say we are at a moment of great reckoning, where things must fall apart before they can be put back together in a better way. This, at least, would be something to believe in ... but I don't. I don't. Again, I cannot see any great mind or plan or system at work. I see reactionaries, and demagogues, and liberal democracies struggling to be coherent. No one has told me a story about getting from A to B, what B looks like, and the steps necessary, however painful, to be a healthier, stronger, more equitable society. Or at least one that doesn't burn down. People will put up with all sorts of pain if they have confidence in a plan.

Some people say that this is the end of financialization, that illusory world where capital is everything, where we no longer make things, where we just move money around, or print more, and because we have lost any measure of self-sufficiency, the only levers we have left to pull when things go wrong are all located at central banks. Sadly, the health of the stock market proved of little value when the PPE we needed came from a few factories in China. Still, what a great run it was for the assets class (while plodding wage earners began to wonder what was the point). But in the end capital doesn't care about feelings or people. The only moral agency it has is what we give it, and make it do.

Some people say this is the logical end of individualism — that peculiar dream world where you are on your own, and all truths are located within you, from your feelings. This is what I believe, because this is how I feel. The trouble is, if things are going badly, out in the world, as they are now, and these things affect you adversely, and make you feel bad, then the fault is entirely your own. Perhaps some pharmacology might help?

Perhaps this is the culmination of the age of hysteria, where everyone is shouting and no on is listening, but most of it is online, and nothing much happens in the real world, because it is now beyond changing in any meaningful way, as global cooperation collapses, and the weather turns destructive, and the insects continue to die.

Perhaps this is the end of the rule of big data, where the emperor has been revealed to have no clothes, because after decades of being told that our data was valuable, and algorithms could challenge and even solve everything, we are instead awash with problems, and even simple data concepts like advertising seem flawed and fallacious. Why isn’t data predicting anything? Why isn’t it better at selling me a pair of jeans? What exactly has data solved?

Of course, going hand-in-hand with this is the fall of the managerial class, with their spreadsheets and promises of capture, organization and efficiency. They were supposed to be the mandarins of stability. Do things feel stable to you right now? Yes, we are experiencing many problems of organization, but the solutions are to be found in planning and imagination, not more meetings about leadership or synergy or exciting innovations with the new portal or app.

Some say we are living in the time of China. But China is doomed by demographics: almost all of its population growth is due to its people living longer, with its fertility rates cratering to a point that will eventually kill economic growth and threaten social stability (factories closing, entire industries disappearing), and this unstoppable population decline will happen without having first achieved the kind of First World household wealth that it needs. Too old, too male, too fast, and no plan for the other side.

Some say that we are all simply victims of history now, that global systems have become too complicated, and events are moving too quickly, and unpredictably, for any single nation or force to affect them, which leaves us all by the side of the road, or filling the ditches, just waiting for life to overtake us. But people have always felt this way, and the character of that helplessness was called Fate. I like the Major Arcana an awful lot, but perhaps we could do better.

Some say nothing has changed, and that you can see this most easily in things like music and fashion, and all these aspects of our creative life that seemed trapped in the amber of nostalgia. And in many ways this is true (I certainly register a certain confusion when seeing how affluent university students dress like basement-bargain-bin raiders from the 1980’s), but in other important ways it does not hold, because now almost everyone walks around with the accumulated knowledge of the world in their pocket, and the ability to do almost anything in that phantom but still attendant digital sphere. Meanwhile, the real world disappears, has been disappearing in categorical ways for at least twenty years, yet continues to haunt us.

Of course, none of this means anything if you live in the once-removed, snow-globe world of everything-is-terrible-but-I'm-fine, and your social media feeds are pollinated with filtered pictures of ecstatic laughing (margheritas? group art show? running into the surf?), plus the occasional performative flare to whatever news item is currently on the moral curriculum (war in Ukraine, January 6th, latest mass shooting, Roe v. Wade, etc). Trust me, the damaged plebes like me continue to be stupefied and diminished, and presenting like bond-paper photocopies (and in my own case, from an older machine). I’m trying to understand, I really am, I know I have the right costume around here somewhere.

Good luck to everyone with their own performances this week,
djb

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E / T / C / E / T / E / R / A —
Getting Away With Murder // Traders behaving badly // Prediction? Pain // Why Accidents Aren't Accidental // And then they all cash in. // Loneliness and Totalitarianism // Don't be a writer // How to Deal with Insomnia // Thin // Conversation 28 // On Loneliness // Happy Birthday, Jesus // Love evolves and death isn’t worth your worry – life lessons from an 88-year-old // Anne Enright reads John Cheever // Rabbit’s Review Is Interrupted by an Air Strike // Fake Fliers // Toddler T-Shirt Slogans // Stealing a de Kooning // New York Public Library Digital Collections

 

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