RANT #9
RANT #9
an incomplete list of quotes that hit me hard
Or: Some things some people have written that have shaped my life to an unreasonable degree.
It is not despair, for despair is only for those who see the end beyond all doubt. We do not.
- J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
Even more than Gandalf's "what to do with the time that is given to us" quote, THIS is the Lord of the Rings quote that hits hardest for me. So often the world seems to just get worse and worse, I'm that exact age where one of my earliest real memories is 9/11 and the chaos just keeps coming. I have to remind myself sometimes that this is not the apocalypse, no matter how much some people seem to want to make it so. This is a no doomerism zone.
We cannot see the universe. We are in the darkness of a trench, a deep cut, dark water heavier than earth, presences lit by our own blood, little biolumes, heroic and pathetic Promethei too afraid or weak to steal fire but able still to love. Gods are among us and they care nothing and are nothing like us. This is how we are brave: we worship them anyway.
- China Miéville, Kraken
I was raised Catholic. I'm an atheist, but I have to admit that I'm a wobbly one - if only because I find it uncomfortable (though not unbelievable) to think that there's nothing else out there except maybe some space microbes. I don't believe in gods as such, but I sort of do believe in Other Things. Whether those are spirits, aliens, or eldritch beings we can't really conceive of remains to be seen.
Let’s face it. You didn’t meet me after all these years and fall in love with me. You fled [...] because I reminded you of the values you once held. When you were not afraid to admit or speak the truth about anything. I don’t say I am right in everything I’ve done since then, but we did remind each other of a little bit of our real selves.
- Wole Soyinka, The Beatification of Area Boy
One of my favorite plays of all time. This quote in particular hits on some of the uncertainty of growing away from people - whether it's you or them that changed - and the comfort and fear that what you both were before is closer to the truth than your current self.
This Age wanted heroes.
It got us instead:
carefully constructed, but
immobile.
Subtle but,
unfit
to take up
the burden of the times.
It happens.
A whole generation of washouts.
History says stand up,
and we totter and collapse,
weeping, moved, but not
sufficient.
- Tony Kushner, "A Bright Room Called Day"
An encapsulation of a real fear of mine - that, even though I try, everything I do to fight the things I think are worth fighting isn't nearly enough. It's also a warning. If this Age wants heroes, it shouldn't have to just get us instead.
You can’t blow up a social relationship. The total collapse of this society would provide no guarantee about what replaced it. Unless a majority of people had the ideas and organization sufficient for the creation of an alternative society, we would see the old world reassert itself because it is what people would be used to, what they believed in, what existed unchallenged in their own personalities.
- Anonymous, "You Can't Blow Up A Social Relationship"
I consider myself an anarchist of some flavor or another - definitely not an anarcho-communist, probably technically some wimpier flavor of anarcho-socialist. In general, however, I hesitate to join in on the more revolutionary or commune/"let's run away to the woods and destroy capitalism"-based mindsets. If I had any type of mental certainty at all, I'd call myself a realist. In general, I'm kind of skeptical about the ability of any wider application of these sorts of things to work in the way people tend to plan.
I tend to stick to the practical shit - mutual aid, protests/black bloc tactics, antiprop, community-based support on the small scale. Even if some kind of revolution happened, I'd still stick to that probably.
It was much better to imagine men in some smokey room somewhere, made mad and cynical by privilege and power, plotting over brandy. You had to cling to this sort of image, because if you didn't then you might have to face the fact that bad things happened because ordinary people, the kind who brushed the dog and told the children bed time stories, were capable of then going out and doing horrible things to other ordinary people.
It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone's fault. If it was Us, then what did that make Me? After all, I'm one of Us. I must be. I've certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. No one ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We're always one of Us. It's Them that do the bad things.
- Terry Pratchett, Jingo
There are SO MANY Terry Pratchett quotes I could use for this - the Boots Theory is a classic, obviously, plus some of the more heartfelt bits from Susan and Death and Nightwatch/Thud! in general. But this feels like a Now quote, cautioning against othering those who our opposites on whatever issue and conspiracy think in general. Most Evil Bullshit, whether from Ron DeSantis or the CIA or [insert corporation here], is just Ordinary Asshole Bullshit turned up to 11 through power, money, and privilege. Real conspiracies get revealed, but assholes are forever.
