Plus Ça Change - Feb 23 2023

 

Plus Ça Change

Feb 23 2023

I've read all the predictions.

The certain, the wished-for

the hard-headed realists.

The students of history

who rhyme and repeat,

the techno-futurists

and their bright-eyed dreams.

The catastrophists

with forecasts of doom,

and the born again,

eyes on heaven

as Judgment Day looms.

While I have concluded

that the more things change

the more they stay the same.

That the future

will be much like the past.

Just as I am who I am.

So in the unlikely chance

I could re-live my life

even knowing what I know now

I'd make the same mistakes,

contend

with the same inner demons,

and end up

in roughly the same place

as the first time through.

This century is proof.

The new millennium

that was supposed to be our salvation

— the end of war

the planet saved

a moral re-awakening —

is turning out like the last.

Humankind

with all our flaws

still stuck in the past;

too much ballast, it seems

to diverge very far

from our predetermined path.

And now, with our chances running out

tomorrow can wait.

Where those who can

ignore the predictors

and live for today.

I just read an article in which various experts try to predict the outcome and timeline of the war in Ukraine.

Which is itself unthinkable. A major land war in Europe in the 21st century? The same failed appeasement when Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 as when Hitler claimed the Sudetenland in 1938? Rhyme and repeat indeed!

So instead of the triumph of liberal democracy and the “end of history”, the world slides back into autocracy and kleptocracy. A world in which things are no better and our human flaws are bad as ever.

Where there is just as much superstition and ignorance. Where gross inequality worsens, and the accumulation of wealth is more obscene than even the Gilded Age. Where the suppression of free expression worsens. Where the pillaging of a finite planet continues, even though its dire consequences are already with us. Where malignant individualism subverts economies and cultures. Where the levels of barbarity, atrocity and cruelty are medieval, rivalling the middle ages and ancient world. Where war crimes, torture, and rape occur with impunity. Where we tolerate genocides, despite the lessons of Nazism and industrial killing. Where even modern slavery continues unabated, if less obvious than chattel slavery — by which I mean our collective wilful blindness to indentured servitude and human trafficking.

There are bright spots of progress, but they offer insufficient comfort when measured against the fundamental lack of change. Is the problem in our nature? Are we unwilling to learn, incapable of change?

So yes, I guess I find myself in both the catastrophist and demoralized nihilist camps.