New Decade, New Chances: A Manifesto for the Moment
Another day down the mines of our lives. We drink 'til we stink and smoke 'til we choke because that's how we get things done, you and me. Spending our lives making things and making things out of our lives, because anything else would be dull as hell and we're damned if we're going to sit at the other end of whatever years we get saying, well, what the fuck was that for?
Years of scars, lipstick and tears, and every day the dawn comes on we turn our eyes up in surprise, saying, "There's that goddamn sun again.”--Warren Ellis
“Do anything”, Volume 1
We looked back on Monday. It’s time for us to look forward.
This new decade dawned like any other, because calendars are invented by human beings, and there’s no reason for one day to be any more or less important than any other. It’s only the actions and discourses of people which makes it so.
Still, the actions of humans have far-reaching effects. As of the time you read this, we have slightly less than 87,500 hours to fix climate change. If you’re in the United States of America, you have slightly less than 7,344 hours until the polls open and you can cast a vote for the next president. I, personally, have about 300 hours from the time you read this to plan my class for this coming semester, because I’m going back to that 5AM grind I was so happy to escape from.
A series of concentric circles, concentric horizons, stretch out from the present moment. Some of them more important than others. Being a bit of a Fisherite, or a Fisherian, however you want to adjectivize the man’s name, I hesitate to call what we’re looking at a real future; it might be, or it could just be history that hasn’t been recorded yet. We could have a future, if only we could craft a way forward.
Originally, and often adapted from, Shen Comix.
There have been a number of jokes on the internet about bringing things back from the 1920s – Flappers, Art Deco, the Charleston, crippling economic depression or Anarcho-Syndycalism – or about merging the culture of the writer’s youth with that of the 1920s (I’ve read the phrase “RAWRing Twenties” several times and feel tired just thinking about merging 1990s Emo/Scene fashion with that of the 1920s, honestly.) But I think that a better model for what we’re going to live through – if we have to look at the 1920s – might be the Années folles: the culture of France after the end of World War I, which led to the emergence of surrealism. This was engendered by the sense that a lot of the culture up until World War I was unable to confront the horrible reality of the industrialized slaughter of human beings on such a massive scale. If the preexisting structures of power hadn’t been able to prevent, mitigate, or otherwise avert the worst of that war, why bother with them?
Of course, this is looking back. The Années folles americaines could probably be said to have started in 2016. I cast this thought aside and seek a new one.
Cory Doctorow in 2007, after the XKCD strip.
Cory Doctorow, the writer described by my best man as “the god-wizard of the internet”, has a good piece about looking forward, tying together science fiction and environmental issues, which I must admit is a bit of an inspiration for this current piece. It’s called “Science fiction and the unforeseeable future: In the 2020s, let’s imagine better things” and I recommend reading it.
The IPCC predicts that, by 2030, climate change will be irreversible. It seems daunting to think about, especially for people who understand that the problem is institutional, largely driven by capitalism. Of course, I can’t even convince other members of my family that this is something to be concerned about: they all think it’s someone else’s watch, or that it’s not necessarily caused by human activity. Meanwhile, I’m watching my niece and two nephews grow up with the sinking suspicion that they’ve been born into a world that’s sleepwalking towards its own doom. The oldest of them will be just old enough to get a drivers’ license when the deadline passes us by. This isn’t a problem that can be left for future generations: someone’s got to do something, and no one before us did. So it’s up to us.
As for how? That’s the issue. I feel like there’s the will to solve this issue, but it’s like a pile of iron fillings – we need something magnetic to come along and set us in alignment. In his piece, Doctorow talks about the emergence of this will from Canada – which is possible, but he has a utopian vision, and Canada is a Settler-Colonial Petro-state, similar in many ways to the United States.
So, if a Canadian Miracle does happen, I’ll be thrilled, but I’m still going to donate my money to Mutual Aid Disaster Relief and look for opportunities to take first aid and similar training. An ounce of prevention may be worth a pound of cure, but no one’s making prevention available.
As for the other major issue we’ve got coming up in the states – the looming election – I know that there are readers here, and a number of my friends, who have all but given up on Electoral Politics. I’m frustrated with it, myself, but I think that leaving aside any weapon in the fight for the future is a mistake. Vote with your dollar, go on strike, write letters, learn about jury nullification, vote, and do anything else you can to summon the future you want: the arc of history doesn’t bend towards anything, because progress is a social construct.
So do what feels right to you.
And if you don’t know what that is, repeat the Deleuzian Mantra we’ve adopted: “There's no need to fear or hope, but only to look for new weapons.”
I’m allowed to reference Pat the Bunny and Gilles Deleuze two lines apart. You can deal with it.
But what about us – we’re not politicians, we’re not engineers, or climatologists, or environmental scientists, we’re artists. At least when we’re not pretending to be critics or philosophers or publishers. What place do we have in the herculean tasks that face us in this new decade? Edgar, rightly, pointed out that “no amount of craftivism or emphasis on the value of the humanities is going to turn that [climate change] around on its own.”
There are two reasons that I would argue that what we’re doing here has value – maybe it’s not important the way a Green New Deal is important, or sustainable energy is important, or economic and racial justice, or an end to rape culture and homophobia, but it still has value in an absolute sense.
The first is that the arts make life worth living: I’ve battled depression and anxiety for a lot of my adult life – and there are books and albums and movies and games that have helped drag me out of it. We all have a song that helped pull us out of the deepest pit we’ve ever been in, some spark of meaning that just wouldn’t go out and helped keep us warm through the winter. And maybe nothing I’ve written or helped come into the world has been that for someone yet, but if there’s a chance it can do that, then I feel I must continue. We have to save the world, and it’s going to be a long, difficult road: we’ve got to carry the flame with us.
And my metaphor of the flame isn’t something I toss out idly: the arts can have a Promethean role to play in the struggle we have going forward. I feel that part of the job of the arts is to drag the unthinkable into the light and make it comprehensible – which is not to disparage the creativity of the engineers, scientists, and other professionals who are on the front lines of addressing this problem, but many hands make light work, and this is the heaviest burden people have had to bear.
So that’s all fine and good and highfalutin’, but what do we actually do, like...in the moment?
Well, first thing’s first, sleep off any hangover you might be nursing, but not before you get a big drink of water. That’s apparently something that people have trouble doing. It’s New Year’s Day, after all, I assume you’ve got one. If you went to a party and stayed there, offer to make breakfast or to help the host make it. If you slept at home, ask friends to come by or go out for brunch.
I made eggs. It’s just me an Edgar this morning, but I made all of the eggs we had. Admittedly, there weren’t many.
Because, of course, there will be brunch. New Year’s Day is the Sunday of the year, after all. The rest of January can be Monday morning. It doesn’t have to be fancy, it doesn’t have to be expensive. What I’m telling you is that it’s important that it be a shared meal.
Talk to them about whatever they want to talk about. Talk about whatever you want to talk about. But I think that you should, at a point in the conversation where the discussion slows, ask them how they think we can make the world a better place. Ask them what they need, and what the world needs.
Because humanity is a team effort, and if life is going to have value – whether from art or from some other source – it’s going to be because we’re going into the future together.
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