From the shining city on a hill to Babylon

Twice the USA came to save the liberal Western civilization during the 20th century, well, no, actually it was three times with the Cold War. The cracks, the failures, the sins were surpressed then - by the memory and impact of the Revolution and the Civil War, by puritan values, by egalitarian Northern European influences. But a very corrupt of form of capitalism prevailed all the while along with a deep seated racism, the original sin. And what we now have are the purposefully ill educated, purposefully propaganda fed, largely white, largely rural masses purposefully incited towards hatred and bitterness in order to further cut taxes and to further deregulate. Even at the cost of the Republic itself.

Judy Garland: Battle Hymn of the Republic - YouTube

On good and evil according to Tolkien

Tolkien of course was obviously narrow, even if a genius. Catholicism does not get you that far, seeing the utterly fallen, the utterly corrupt nature of the Church, and yes, all churches, all organizations, all people. But there really is quite a bit of value too there (especially in this very understanding of the easy corruptability of all humanity - just with the utterly mistaken exemption of the Church). But in this especially: the ancient Christian debate about the nature of good and evil. Now I will most of the times put those words firmly within quotation marks - when it comes to individuals, there really is no good and no evil, just various levels of randomly failing or randomly succeeding (morally and materially), without any inherent conviction, without any real being. But when it comes for systems of thought, for historical structures of thought, then yes, it's pretty clear what they want to pull down, but what it is that they actually want to build? 

What we are now having in the West are these various choruses, paid or voluntary, of hatred and narrow mindedness, of sheer baseness. Homegrown or sponsored by the Kremlin or Beijing. What is then the positive vision, what is the actual point? Is there any creation, any positivity there at all, or just sheer blind atavistic destructiveness and hatred and ignorance? What is the positive vision of those corrupt, stealing oligarchies of Russia and China? Is there anything there at all?

An old Lenin number

I have carefully managed to avoid to this venerable age Deutscher's famous Trotsky biography - or I guess I should say once famous. It certainly is very well written with a surprising generosity of spirit (not suitable to the subject area). These things seem now so scholastic, so irrelevant. But I don't think they are, not in the same sense as the old theological disputes were (and those too led to horrific bloodshed and tyranny). To be a communist in any meaningful fashion is surely to be a Marxist-Leninist, and that admittedly is pretty close to theology, a very dead thing. But Marx himself was scarcely even a Marxist, not to speak of a Marxist-Leninist. These were serious issues concerning horrible injustices.

To think about those times, of the editorial board of the Iskra in London in the early years of the 20th century with the famous split starting with mostly just (at the time obscure) personalities pettily clashing: the 2nd congress being already hopelessly divided, the 1st having had, one kids not, 8 persons meeting in Minsk, all shortly arrested - history as farce already at the first time... But from farce an unspeakable horror rose. Still, the context for the insanity of the Russian revolutionary tradition is the utter insanity of the pre-modern Russian society. The heartlessness and sadism rose from horrible, horribly stupid and horribly wasteful oppression. Such loss, such cruelty, such tragedy.

About the streets I wasted

It is a strange thing to age in a relatively contained city: one repeatedly ends up in places where one once was, eons ago, as someone completely different. And pity would not only be misplaced, but seriously mistimed. Still, looking back I can't see any other way for myself but that wasteful way. And I did emerge after all, did I not, through (of all things) reason and logic. Even if the price was almost impossibly high in full retrospect, in wasted streets, wasted people.

Sex and sensibility

It is not so strange that the duality of body and mind became such a central structure of the Western civilization, and not only in our civilization. It is a thought than can emerge rather naturally from the human condition. But in any case in the West the role of the mind, of the abstract intellect, and thus philosophy and ideology has been very heightened, privileged. And our biological, animal nature much denied, abhorred, twisted. 

Obviously, we now understand it, that duality was totally wrong leading to horrible abuses. We are perpetually intermixed: angels and beasts in one, love and lust and intelligenge and ethics in one varyingly chaotic bunch. All the aspects informing each other - but, one hopes, intellect and ethics fundamentally guiding the lustful beast in the last reckoning... So, there maybe after all is, if not duality, then a consciousness that does not deny our quite glorious urges but still controls them, keeps them within reason.

Reasons for non-attendance

At this ripe age I still keep wondering, keep being uncertain. I guess for a large part because uncertainty once was the only stable ground for me, the only starting point for life and feeling, however uncertain and insecure. Through reason to personhood, to life, to love, in its many forms. Only art I embraced with unhesitating instinct. 

But still, at the same time, this road was never completely uncertain nor completely insecure, having always had this passionate insistence on what has felt true, felt certain, a stable ground. A felt truth. Even if only of hesitation but a passionate hesitation it has indeed been. And there, here, I am then, here I remain. Not untrue to myself, no never, but constantly wondering, hesitating, stopping, being ineffective. At this ripe age - and still not having any true regrets. (And anyway, I guess it could have been much, much worse.)

Nancy Cunard by Wyndham Lewis, Venice 1922

I came rather accidentally across a biography of her - of course I had known of Nancy Cunard, a marginal character in those literary circles of the time that I have been interested in. Or rather known of her as an archetype, a spoiled, beautiful, rich little aristocrat girl dabbling in poetry and radical art and radical politics, an iconic image from the 1920's, a lifelong rebellion against dear Mother and her - also rather bohemian but absurdly grand - world. A lifelong failure to mature, a tragi-comedy in several acts, ending in predictable ruins. 

That's not nearly fair, obviously. There was real talent, real tragedy there. She was also a victim of her cruel times, those brutal sexual and gender politics and values - she selfdestructed, like many artists, male or female, but was richly aided in the effort by her poisonous surroundings. And not only to talk about the attitudes and values (that she bravely fought against) but unimaginable historical events. When I read in the first pages that she was born in 1896 in securely wealthy, aristocratic but also artistic and forward looking surroundings, I could immediately picture much of the early story. Returning to London in 1919 she observed: "most people are dead". 

Much promise was lost, like it always is, but in that era and in that class and age cohort, I would think, exceptionally much. She accomplished much, she was often grotesquely shallow and always scared, but had true brilliance, true talent. A casualty of history, like we all fundamentally are, but with a rare radiance.

 

In honour of Tove Jansson

Her star will keep rising. An amazing artist, maddeningly elusive, maddening. Some people are like that, called to eminence, of course mostly or solely by fortunate circumstances, yes, but the circumstances were not nearly that fortunate - yet she persisted, compulsively. And painted an amazing canvas, of her life, of her art. All honour to children's writers but she wasn't one. And all honour to Astrid Lindgren too, a great, entertaining writer indeed.

The other side of silence

I have earlier talked about how we need to be coarsened to survive this experience of this world. We need to have protection, warmth, shelter - and we so often desperately lack those, whether for external or internal reasons. George Eliot was right: if we would hear that roar on the other side of silence, the full everyday tragedy of humanity, we would die of it. And so many have and will, being too open, too honest, too sensitive for this world, for this brutal experience. And what could we do but coarsen? But no, still not completely true, there will always be hope, hope and charity: empathy and love are inbuilt into this experience too. There will always be hope. For better or worse.

The breach in the wall

It seemed reasonable to liberate the capital constraints in the 80's. It seemed, I guess, reasonable to deregulate the financial markets in the 90's and 2000's - and to disregard the public investment part of the Keynesian economics. So, what we have had since then is bubbles, finance crises, instability and the capital ever gaining on work. And national radicalism, racism and unreason continuously rising in the West. The welfare state is largely the only thing that has kept us from the 1930's and the political and economic elites are pressuring to dismantle ever increasing parts of it. 

Unconstrained economic liberalism is the breach in the wall of the modern Western system of society, liberal and rational: it has opened the gates. This era of obscene opulence and increasing middle and lower middle class distress is inciting the masses towards xenophobia and anti-liberalism. This will obviously not be good for capital, but their perspective is for the next quarter and everything seems ever so clear and promising, and so will the next quarter and the one after that etc. But history happens on the long term and the clouds are darkening on the horizon.

Greek thoughts

Our liberal democratic modern Western civilization does not seem very healthy at the moment. Who knows, of course, this is just a brief moment of history, anything could happen after all. But at the same time our responsibility surely is for the moment, our moment. Even that is a lot to ask, from a culture maybe not able to be serious, to be intense. Like the Greeks were, like Athens - like Jerusalem was, each incomplete without the other.

So what we have is immense opulence, irresponsible global capitalism (increasingly unconstrained by social democracy), confronting rather imminently huge, monstrous global challenges. Not being ready at all. We are not holding to liberty and reason like the Greeks would have, as flawed as they were, as flawed as their conception of virtue and duty were. But we don't seem to have anything any longer to hold on to, except the shopping mall and the online shop, the entertainment industry, the debased religion, the debased liberty. This will not be enough, not nearly enough to contain the coming floods.

Gott strafe Tanten

I came across a very old friend yesterday - The Last Houseparty by Peter Dickinson is a minor master piece: there are some things there that have been done with quite extraordinary skill and force. Quite out of the place in a "mystery story" (as silly as it is in many ways to say this). The Remains of the Day and Atonement do have genealogies. What got me engaged all those three decades ago were naturally the themes of childhood, friendship and sex (being then in the process of messing the two latter ones up, having already done the first one in) that are so effortlessly, economically and beautifully portrayed. But I suppose most of all it was history, personal and universal, in all its complexities, that was the main thing. One of those seminal few books that have gotten me addicted to the endlessly complex process that is interpreting the past, personal and universal.

On the oddness of history

The long views can confuse a person - if you are rooted to your short moment in time and cannot begin to comprehend utterly different eras with totally bizarre circumstances and beliefs things are surely bound to be so much more simple. There are no competing measurements, no alternative realities, no alternatives. 

This past year has been quite something, we have been suddenly living in a cocoon of a fairly comfortable global pandemic here in Finland (as elsewhere in the industrial world). Things could be so much worse, quite unimaginably so. And are, at this very moment, in oh so too many places even without any new viruses having ever been introduced to the planet. But we are already getting so bloody exhausted, close to the veritable breaking point. Or way too many are, in these absurdly privileged societies that are in so many ways benefitting from the utter misery of so many here. God, humanity is not a pretty sight, is it?

Fatal inversions

I think I have had now my fill of this debased and sadistic - even more sadistic than the original - semi-Victorian fake morality that oozes from almost every pore of this primitive and cruel society. There is no right to moral righteousness for anyone. When we see monsters, we see ourselves. We all would do unspeakable things in the right circumstances. Not in identical circumstances, those would depend on our luck of birth and genetics. Some are damaged from birth, fatally inverted already then. But by far more have their inversions later as mandated by the hateful structures of society and civilization and the tragic individual circumstances rising from that fundamental baseness. 

This is not to say that many people would not be permanently deformed. There are many such irredeemable people and they should have no access ever to the general society. But no "punishments", no moral superiority, just as humane precautions as possible. And no right whatsoever to righteousness.

Things we owe to the latest dead

Today was strange. I accidentally learned of a friend having passed, having suddenly gone away. Not being there where he once so strongly, so vividly was. These things are truly odd - people say, the received wisdom says, that this is normal, this is the way things go. And it is, empirically, that way. But no, it is not really normal, not acceptable, not the way we would do it once out of nature. And so, suddenly, just memories and feelings of inadequacy about a warm, highly intelligent person, not ideally suited for this world, for this rough experience.