The Stories We Believe in
We all believe in stories. Stories about ourselves, stories about the world around us, about the societies and communities we are part of, about our histories, and so forth. We tend not to think of these stories as โstoriesโ, however, because we hold them true โ thatโs what it means to believe something: to hold it true โ and we tend to think of stories as untrue. But at least some of them are untrue. We donโt all believe the same things, so at least some of us must be wrong. Furthermore, many of the stories we believe in โ...
Death, Masculinity, and Hegemony
โAt the center of the symbolic order is the abhorrence of death,โ writes Odile Strik in the conclusion of her short essay The Symbolic Order of Life and Manhood. The โsymbolic orderโ of the title connects death and masculinity, and (supposedly) structures the way most people understand reality. The essay is terse and almost poetic, and only presents a rough sketch of this symbolic order, but it deals with a number of important themes โ such as masculinity, life and death, and cultural hegemony โ and it deserves credit for bringing those themes together. This article is a (long) commentary...
Crisis and Inertia (4) โ Economic, Political, and Cultural Crises
(This is part 4 in the โCrisis and Inertiaโ series.) While climate change constitutes a major if not terminal crisis for civilization (and possibly even for mankind) and certain technologies may also become existential threats in the wrong hands, there are many other crises and threats that seem to be less severe. All economic, political, and cultural crises appear to fall in this โless severeโ category, for example โ at least, it doesnโt seem likely that another economic crisis or the gradual collapse of democracy will lead to the end of civilization. Nevertheless, they are crises in the sense adopted...
Armageddon and Utopia
Almost a decade ago two English writers, Paul Kingsnorth and Dougald Hine, published Uncivilisation: the Dark Mountain Manifesto, calling for a literary response to the โsocial, economic and ecological unravellingโ of our time. Surrounded by a nearly deafening silence about the now nearly (?) unavoidable collapse of civilization, this dissident voice seemed a pleasant diversion, and the idea to use literature and art to change the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves and our relation with the world around us is a very sympathetic idea as well. However, the Manifesto itself raised several red flags, and made it very clear...