The past, as well as being another country, is a slippery, slippery thing. And there’s overlap with words like “history,” “custom and tradition (see Hobwbawm and Ranger’s 1977 edited volume The invention of Tradition.)
Where am I going with this? There was an interesting comment on my last blog post about where and when entrenched political power comes from now, how long it has been around I would say that television, radio, television and other technologies that Big Brother was only using a bit in Orwell’s 1984 have, of course, been joined with new technologies of distraction and surveillance. These are of such breadth and depth that they would have been Big Brother’s wet dream.
And I think if you look at entrenched political power, if you look at the 19th century, you’ve seen it as one long attempt – largely successful – to replace the entrenched political power of the aristocracy. I’m talking about the UK here, by the way, with that of the bourgeoisie and trained in that, therefore, you get various versions of the franchise. So obviously 1832, Great Reform Act, further reform act since 1867, and so on. And these are always partial. Always incomplete, always contested and resisted. And they were done thanks to civil society for working men’s clubs, trade unions and people ended up well, dying and being transported to Australia etc.
There were no good old days. It has always been a struggle. It has always been the case of entrenched power trying to entrench itself further using existing technologies and taking advantage of any new technologies that come along.
And of course, seeking out those technologies have always been about control, extraction right now, and of course, it’s always been about resistance of various types and of varying efficacy. This is a standard again, Marxist or sub-Marxist understanding. Though, of course, the Marxist go for humans having lived in a state of primitive communism, which I am not quite so sure about. And the Marxist believed that we will return to a more advanced state of communism, which I am very sure about – as in, I am very sure it won’t happen.
We like the stories of a perfect time before the Fall, a battle against the forces of darkness and evil, followed by a final famous victory. This is a narrative that, as far as I’m aware, most religions subscribe to because it’s a very comforting story for adherents, and it’s a good recruiting call (it’s probably a little harder to get people to devote their lives to a cause, which tells them that they, regardless of what they do, they are going to die and burn in hell. Though I think the Calvinists gave it a go, didn’t they? I never really understood predestination. Anyway, I’m way off topic here.)
Where I’m going with this is that it’s probably a good idea for us to try to see the world as it is, not as we would like it to be. It’s probably a good idea for us to act on the basis of an understanding of the stories we’ve been told, the stories we want to believe. But what it’s also important to understand that our memories played tricks on us. Famously, the shifting baseline syndrome, where we get used to more and more degradation and destruction because it’s happening relatively slowly…
But there is a central illusion or trick here, that I’m playing on myself. It is one that you, dear reader(s?), have probably already spotted if not, in this post or already in previous ones. It’s this – , we can have all the accurate summations and “sit reps“ as they call them in the military, that we like. The problem is not knowledge, the problem is power. (And Mr. Foucault can go fuck himself by the way.) The problem I have is that I don’t believe that knowledge does in any way lead to power, at least not on its own. You can know the truth and it will not actually set you free. (Hey, John, see above about Mr. Foucault.)
This is the fun behind the meaning of the word apocalypse. It doesn’t mean “collapse” means “a drawing back of the veil,” where all will be revealed. Well, guess what? If you have eyes in your head, and the courage to see and of course, you know, access to information – it’s that’s not hard, really, then the apocalypse is here baby.
You can compare what’s going on today with the past you can say that today things are better and they are for some, in some ways you can say it’s a lot lot worse. And it really is. You can say what you like The problem comes when you try to communicate that to people who understandably don’t want to hear and the problem comes when you try to work with other people to “unfuck the world” as the expression was briefly and marginally popular in I think the 2000s. That’s when the fun starts
If by fun you mean futility, despair, pointlessness, rearranging of deckchairs on the Titanic, frantically pulling on levers that come off in your hand etc etc.
There’s a novel about submarines I read, thirty years ago (no, not ‘Red October’). It climaxes with the submarine, crippled, sinking to great depth. There’s one guy (I forget whether he was a goodie or a baddie) legging it towards the place on the sub where the personal evacuation “pods” are, thinking he might, just might, survive. And as he climbs up some metal rungs towards the spot, bolts start popping inwards out of the hull, and he realises that they are now at such a depth that the submarine is being crushed, and the pods would be too. He’s trapped. So he climbs back down and … waits.
Pop go the bolts… Pop. Pop.
Hope you’re ‘enjoying’ these posts. Or finding some value in them. If you’re minded, comment. Best wishes, have a nice anthropocene and all that…
marchudson.net 
‘The problem I have is that I don’t believe that knowledge does in any way lead to power, at least not on its own. You can know the truth and it will not actually set you free.’
Wayyyy too many activists and, most citizens in general don’t appreciate this reality.