Here we are, you and I, at odds with those who hold power over us. But without power ourselves,or the hope of attaining it. So why bother? This is the question you ask yourself sooner or later, isn’t it? Why sit here reading impotent diatribes against those who would be unmoved even if they condescended to listen to us? Which we know they won’t anyway.
Sooner or later disaffection, as a permanent state, turns on itself and demands that there be something more, to save itself from self doubt. Some express their frustration publicly and physically. Marching and confrontation as a rough balm for fading hope. And when hope does fade a quietism creeps in to the soul. A feeling of turning inward to something private. Be it love of one’s own or care for those close to hand. Some permitted act of caring and contrition.
It is the most quietly dispiriting facet of our freedom in this late stage of debt and consumption capitalism, that the freer we are from any tie which bind us, the more alone we come to feel. It is a feeling that hollows out our hopes of finding a way of ever acting together.
I doubt I am the only one who has felt these things. And yet I do not find myself without hope or determination.
Personally I have more hope for the future now than I did twenty years ago. The problems are no less than they were. But people are less tied to their habits of thought that they were. Less than they have been for generations.
You can think of a nation as a cargo ship. Normally everything, every one’s thinking is tied down firmly. Everything firmly lashed to where it should be. No movement. No chance of any movement. But in times of crisis it is as if, as the storm rages about us, ropes fray and stanchions break. Things once tied in place come loose and start to roll with the ship. As the ship is pitched and rolled, the heavy freight of public faith and hope starts to shift with it.
Opinions and enthusiasm become fickle and volatile. Those who suddenly find they are the recipients of a wave of enthusiasm, imagine they are changing the nation. Thatcher thought it. Blair thought it. Both were appallingly wrong. The once secure and unmovable prejudices of the nation had simply started to come loose. As the ship rolled so did its freight of public opinion. First we rolled right, then left. As more cargo came loose so the rolling of the ship has become more exaggerated. If it continues the rolling freight of public desperation will turn the ship over.
It can be a frightening time. But it is also the most free you will every be, we will ever be. When people’s hopes are no longer tied down they are searching. That weight of hope is waiting to find somewhere to settle. That is our chance.
The main thing is not to be afraid or bullied into offering or believing too quickly in replacement certainties no better than those that have already failed us. In times of change there is a danger of moral agoraphobia. A need to find some close fitting logic to pull over one. A shroud to hide in. A uniformity to feel a part of. To then inflict on others. Whether religious or secular, certainties are there to arrest and restrain and tie back down that which, for a moment, was free and dangerous.
Our job is to undo the work of those who wish everything re-settled and firmly lashed back into tired and worn-out place. Dissent is a victory in its very being. It is an end in itself and becomes ever more dangerous as that which it opposes looses vitality. And the certainties and forms of our time have lost their vitality.
We are, to borrow from one of the great historian, Johan Huizinga, living in the autumn of the certainties which have animated our society but which have now run their course – “…as a tree, with overripe fruits, fully unfolded and developed.” They are all around us, everywhere a “luxuriant growth of old compelling forms over the living core of thought, the drying rigidifying of a previously valid store of thought;…”
“Only when the old life dream is dreamed out with the passing of time, and sacredness and passion have vanished like the scent of a rose, only then,..” only then can we murmur a new dream and find people ready to enter it. We are, I believe, at such a moment.
I too have been sitting at a desk, writing and drinking red wine…
A nice abstract pause and some welcome hope.
The question I'm wrestling with is 'Have we now reached THE moment in time when we will look back and say that Britain had reached the end of economic growth as we know it?'
Why should it be now? Living in a relatively affluent part of East Anglia, I see few signs of a slowdown. None of my friends have lost their jobs, shops are relatively busy, restaurants certainly are not suffering and you still can't get a good plumber at less than 6 weeks notice. After an uncertain 2009, it seems like business as usual.
On a personal level, I've taken several major steps to try and disengage my family from the economy (sold some underused trinkets, bought a small farm, diversified what cash I have left). I'm encouraging my friends to consider the same – they raise a quizzical eyebrow and humour me as a maverick.
Is our pessimism overcooked? I sometimes wonder if I'm focusing naïvely just on information that reinforces my jaundiced perception of the times ahead.
Do you ever wonder the same, Golem?
sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires. Strangely, this comes to my mind, perhaps owing to the late hour of the day.
The skald ushers in the sunset over ravaged terrain. What will the next day bring?
What will be the trigger? It could be a broken window, bonus announcements or another corrupt politician. One shattered pane might start a rampage and be the impetus needed for radical changes to occur. Britain stages few significant protests. A British protest may be just the excuse needed by other European nations to do the same. Ach meine gott! If the UK are protesting then we'd better do something too!
Winter is a quiet period for many non-retail companies and the traditional time for mass redundancies. With cutbacks and tax rises who wouldn't be discontented.
benek99 said
"I too have been sitting at a desk, writing and drinking red wine…"
yes, but without offering anything positive to anybody else.
Bob2000
I'd forget encouraging the friends, just be happy with your thing . As the news very very gradually worsens, they'll think again on what you said then.
As Golem has said , the Financial System ain't NECESSARILY going to collapse .
It will maybe stumble on some more, but at any rate the precautionary measures aren't going to kill us here 🙂
Golem grows his own veg , and so do I , and with food insecurity coming along a bit of self-sufficiency is a start .
In WW2 the brits had "dig for victory" and the US " Victory Gardens" — examples for today.
Bob2000,
I do wonder the same sometimes. But my worry is NOT that things might fall over. That, however shocking it would be, we canrecover from. We have done it before, we would do so again. My worry is if things do not fall over but instead we are held to a decade long grind of paying off other people's debts so that those other people can remain in the positions of power and wealth they currently enjoy.
My worry is not just the widespread privation this would entail, it the hollowing out of democracy itself. THAT is my worry. Peopkle seem to think democracy is a given. That the rule of law, one law for everyone, is a given.
They aren't. They were hard fought for and we are watching them being quietly dismantled. Once the banks get accustomed to finance being outside of democratic control and above the law, then that is where those things and those people will stay.
That is my worry.
As for taking steps. Thos steps are sensible not because teh world might end, but because, even if it doesn't, we have left the era of low volatility and broad stability. We are entering a time of increasing volatility and sudden jholts. The governments, we can alrady see, can do little to smooth away such volatility. Thus the most sensible steps anyone can take are those which provide you and yours with insulation from the coming volatilty. So in my opinion none of your efforts will be a waste.
A wonderful melancholy piece.
And it contained my two favourite analogies, ships and the seasons!
Talking of seasons, I noticed Denninger waxing about Kondratiev which surprised me. I would have thought the theory a bit kooky for him.
As coincidence would have it, it was stumbling across a blog (or the 2006 equivalent)on Kondratiev 4 years ago that woke me out of my stupor.
Anyway, as the Housemartins used to say… I Smell Winter.
Unclear.