Ecclesiastes tells us that the search for knowledge, and the hunger the compels it, is futile. Perhaps it is only when we get our grubby little fingers on it, and it slips through our fingers, that the lesson finally hits home. I am not, despite all appearances to the contrary, one to pass judgment on the truth value of propositions such as these. Though I can hardly pretend that the thought does not send a little aesthetic thrill up my aching spine. But that's just the point, isn't it? The appearance and reality don't match up. The unity of phenomena and noumena is revealed for the meretricious mendacity it really is. I am getting ahead of myself. I am not so vain as to affect noumenal reality. I am just the opposite. Words, words, words. That's all this is good for. And perhaps all I am good for is all I am.
Indeed, what good is a blog in the third decade of the twenty first century? In the time of coronavirus, I'd say there is more than a retro-thrill to the idea. It is quite like a diary, only I have never been very good at putting pen to paper as thought to digitized document. And in this roiling, hustling, bustling, destabilized conflagration of a world, in which irony, spectacle, simulacrum, "efficiency", progress and unadulterated, conspicuous consumption are triumphant, what is the use of a vertiginous pinprick, marooned on a tiny one-dimensional dot in a vast sea that has already swept up and inundated the medium? Who will see this but myself? Many such questions, very few answers.
I concede that this is an exercise in vanity. Maybe even a monumental one - an accusation I only recently leveled against a certain Irish-Libyan filibuster. We all have our vices, I suppose. I have not yet toppled a state, but rest assured the Congo remains high on my hit list - right after everything else. But even more than vanity, it is a keen sense of righteous indignation that compels me to write. "Vanity, yeah?" you snicker. Alright. I am once again on the back foot. I can shovel justifications upon myself all day. But in reality I am only amusing an audience of one. I quite enjoy the thought of that. It is much like how I imagine our President's executive time.
I am all out of pretensions to affect. All out of airs to expel. I am not looking to formalize thought, to organize and categorize, to explain and explicate. I am only here to expel and regurgitate. I see something, I say something. Isn't that how it ought to be? It is one strongly held belief of mine that there is a way the world should be. I have quite a few strongly held beliefs, although lately I have begun to question the sincerity of those beliefs. I suspect my intentions and motivations are not quite so pure as I have often led myself to believe. I have even begun to consider the possibility that it is belief itself that has led me to this state of great discontent. I don't possess a healthy stock of integrity, despite my championing of the ideal. Wouldn't we all like to be sincere, genuine, authentic and integral? No. I don't think we would, and that is a profound problem. Whether it is our own fault is maybe the biggest question that faces every age cohort as we enter the 2020s in earnest. It is certainly the one that keeps me awake at night. I am not, and have never been, particularly interested in categorization on the basis of age. When the Baby Boomers are accused of fomenting both progressive liberalism and authoritarian conservatism, my money is on neither.
And yet it is certainly no secret that we live in an age of polarization. That polarization, the fixation on ways of life, on cultural mores, on secular sacrament, on birth and death, on party, state and nation, occlude certain shared realities and tend to sidetrack even those that recognize it. The problems are bigger than any of us. It is so much easier to make a sport out of politics. Why not? A reality television star struck a home run that landed him smack dab in the Oval Office. Just as horizons have narrowed, the possibilities have ballooned. Another curious contradiction. And who is to say the analogy is just that? Politics has always been something of a sport.
The culture war bores me, but somehow it is universally considered to be the driver of political mobilization after the collapse of class politics. And as I scroll through my twitter feed tonight, I find that culture is inescapable. Contemptible subcultures are springing up at the drop of a hat. Everyone has their in-group, their good (old?) boy clubs, their secret back channels and neologisms, and I am so adrift that I have ended up writing a blog opener far longer than I had ever planned on. Sometimes the poison just has to be drained, and there is a lot of poison floating around out there.
Maybe I am the most poisonous of all. But if that is the case, then I am doing myself a disservice and everyone else a grande service by keeping myself confined under lock and key, tucked away in the bowels of a dead medium. I have turned back the clock on myself, sequestered myself behind this electronic moat. I can scream and rail and rage and all I'll get is an echo in return. Life has contracted to four walls and a chair. So be it. I salute it. I am impossibly angry. This is impossibly long. Oh, I just can't stop myself. Why should I want to?
I don't want to. So here we (I) are (am). A classic impasse. Something you might find in a dreadful western (I am currently watching Deadwood for the first time and it is very good). Perhaps I should talk about what has made me so angry on this night, but seeing as it is the same as every other night, I think we'll have plenty of time for that. Maybe time can be turned back here, but why bother when there's so much of it?
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