Brian Kerr
I’ve had a hard time these weeks knowing how to show up in the face of all the stuff that’s been going on. In my personal experience it’s a direct line to today from Bush v. Gore, which was my political awakening as a 19-year-old goofy-ass college student. The onramp to a quarter-century of horseshit. Of course this direct line goes back to the quashing of Reconstruction, and further back still. But something about this moment feels worse, the worst.
Mar 7 at 7:23pmWeb
Show threadBrian KerrMar 7

On the one hand, I’m with Edgar (King Lear): “The worst is not so long as we can say ‘This is the worst!’”

On the other hand, I’m with Orwell: “Nourished for hundreds of years on a literature in which right invariably triumphs in the last chapter, we believe half-instinctively that evil always defeats itself in the long run. Pacifism, for instance, is founded largely on this belief. Don’t resist evil, and it will somehow destroy itself. But why should it? What evidence is there that it does?”

Show threadBrian KerrMar 7

Last year Mandy Brown shared with me and a few others the notion of “far-fetching”. I’ve been meaning to e-mail her and ask where she found it, or if it’s her own.

As I received it, it’s the idea of reaching out into a desired, or necessary, future and finding some piece of it—however far-fetched—to bring (‘fetch’) back into the current moment. Something practical to do with hope, in hope. There are, and have been, many small things to far-fetch in this way.

Show threadBrian KerrMar 7

And there’s the dharma: “this stable truth, this fixed truth: All conditional things are impermanent. (sabbe sankhara anicca)”

Things are always becoming otherwise. From this you get the other two of the three marks of existence, and the four noble truths, and the eightfold path, and so on. This is the core of the teaching and the practice.

No matter what’s happening now, something different will happen next. Let’s make that next thing fucking _good_.

Show threadBrian KerrMar 7

Before I wander off again, Starbuck gets the last word. Doesn’t she deserve it?

You remember the episode. Things have gone absolutely to shit. Tyrol asks, “What do you want to do now, Captain?”

Starbuck says, “The same thing we always do. Fight them until we can’t.”

Show threadJohn Abbe (aka Slow)Mar 8

@chrkrhc "reaching out into a desired, or necessary, future and finding some piece of it—however far-fetched—to bring (‘fetch’) back into the current moment."

cf prefigurative politics

(Stay alive, be a helpful part of your community, somehow find time to:)

Open up future imaginings beyond some very narrow range, find our way through the resulting groan zone to a solid enough shared vision, that might actually work, and organize ourselves to embody what we can of that vision in today's world.

Show threadAlatheaMar 7
@chrkrhc Writer and critic El Sandifer has stated the flip side of that: "haunt the future".
Show threadAaronMar 7

@chrkrhc Evil defeats itself because good works together, and evil cannot sustain that in the long term. We do have proof. Evolution creates altruism over and over. Chemicals working together. Cells working together. Organs working together. Organisms working together. Societies working together. It's not perfect, and defectors perpetually re-emerge, but they cannot last in the face of altruism.

But we have to remember why it works: It's because altruistic beings *work* together. We cannot sit back and expect it to happen on its own.

Show threadAlatheaMar 7
@chrkrhc listened to this Jello Biafra-fronted live anti-WTO album from 2000 for the first time just a couple of days ago, and like 90% of it could be about today.
https://youtu.be/YuI3kQLOGbI?si=oNqnUywoWWJuySLb
Jello Biafra & The NO WTO Combo – Live From The Battle In Seattle

YouTube