THINQon : Time, power, politics

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Mark Opal

Time, power, politics

Latest Post: December 9, 2010 at 8:39 AM

13 followers

Time kills all things, right?

Everything is born with a clock. Or better yet an hour glass. We spend our days sieving away grain by grain, and when eventually and inevitably our time is up, the sand remains.

How does history speak to us? How do we move within its confines even as day by day we march further away from its physical remains? Though the glass might disappear, the sand never does, it is only ever resituated inside a newer chamber.

Empires might crumble, but isn't it true that their power lingers? How else can we account for an ideal of democracy which was born out of antiquity? What about institutional racism whereby 50 years after Civil Rights segregation by race has statistically only increased?

History invades consciousness and irons out the rules by which the future lives. The same way that stars shine a light on us that is as old as dinosaurs, the powerholders of today were awarded their power ages ago.

Politics through history only ever aims to scoop up the sand and restart the hourglass via a new framework.

This is all possibly too metaphorical but I'm sincerely trying to grapple with something hard to put into words. I look today at the quagmire of American politics and through that lens global politics and I just see a prison of teleology. It's a feeling of overwhelming cynicism that at least in the realm of politics, matters are only becoming more complicated and that complication is leaving more and more people out in the cold. It's not ourselves doing this, not our own wars that we're fighting, but ones which are imposed on us by a deterministic history. We are antagonistic towards one another because our parents were antagonistic towards each other and theirs before that. We are being siphoned through time by the weight of gravity pushing us through the hourglass siphon and not by our own agency. If people stopped and looked at everything that has come before us maybe they'd realize how stupid it is of us to continue just for the sake of continuation.

What is it that we think we owe to history? Can't history ever just be put aside? It's only ever limiting whereas if we looked solely into the future there are only ever new and infinite possibilities that don't have to be predicated on old power structures.

Reply to:

Linda OReilly

December 8, 2010 at 10:17 PM

88 followers

Another cry in the darkness. My heart breaks for you, Mark, and for all of us who are 'stunned by existence' ( a quote I found by C. D. Wright just this morning).
I don't think it's history that we need to put aside.
The thing that needs to be put aside is the perpetual grief we feel when we look at humanity in a world of time.
We humans are just part of it all and trapped by time to boot.

I get lost in metaphors. I think its my age, bear with me if I get too far out.
It's all right occasionally to look around and suddenly feel your self morphing into 'The Scream'. It's all right to know that humans are not all that. It's even all right to be appalled by that fact.

But it's not all right to give in or to despair.
Look for the small things you can do to make the world a little better. Comfort yourself and the people you love with the small things, the small things are all we've got. They really are.

That doesn't mean you don't vote or picket or sign up as an anarchist ( do anarchist's sign up?) or join the army or have children. Jump in the mix and do it as well as you can.

Life is all the things you say it is in your post. It always has been. Maybe someday it will change but it doesn't seem likely.
That's no reason not to do the best you can though. One breath at a time.

For chrissake, that's depressing isn't it?

Reply to: or

John barri

December 9, 2010 at 8:39 AM

35 followers

History does not define your present absolutely, although it certainly influences it. It could be argued that if you did not like the society in which you find yourself and therefor seek to change it, or succeed in that change, that you are responding to history and that therefor history has defined your action but the sense in which I mean that it does not define your present is that you can accept the present that history has delivered to you or you can choose to alter that present (you obviously cannot change the past except as a historian working for the winning side) . It is not inevitable that you must accept what history has ladled into your bowl.

Linda has empathised and urged you not to despair. I too urge you in the same fashion. To which I might add that you should do only what you can but do not wear blinkers when looking for what is possible, because everything and anything is possible. I do not know the source of you angst or despair but point out that the US and much of the world is being steamrolled over by big money (the oligarchs) and that that need not be so. If that is the source I would urge you to look at other posts in thinqon. I will add a few suggestions. But thinqon is in part at least, populated by beings like you who are looking for answer to how can we do it better. You may find yourself in good company.

http://www.thinqon.com/topic/wikileaks_a_hero_or_just
http://www.thinqon.com/topic/libertarianism_without
http://www.thinqon.com/topic/what_should_we_expect
http://www.thinqon.com/topic/would_women_make_a_better

I'm sure there are other topics others could suggest.

In a speech 'Welcome to the Plutocracy', Bill Moyers says that Howard Zim's view of democracy is that it ' was one big public fight and everyone should plunge into it. That’s the only way, he said, for everyday folks to get justice – by fighting for it'. If you want to put that into context, visit:

http://www.truth-out.org/bill-moyers-money-fights-hard-and-it-fights-dirty64766

It should inspire.