To be clear: nothing repeats itself. Height, width and breadth can be replicated exactly – time cannot. And that fourth dimension affects everything that happens everywhere, every time. Nothing is the same second time around, or third, fourth, fiftieth, six hundredth, seven thousandth. Circumstances and the tick of the clock exert their own inescapable influence.
And so Hitler’s ill-fated, mistake-ridden invasion of Russia mimicked that of Napoleon... but it was not a repetition. And so the Global Slump of 2009 is not the same as the Great Depression of 1929 – which in turn was not the same as the South Sea bubble of 1720, when everyone went mad for investing in fundamentally unsound schemes and the resulting panic brought down the British economy.
And so your habit of falling for the wrong kind of lover, or for quitting jobs, or for slipping back into your addictions, does not mean history keeps repeating itself – it simply means your present mistakes are a mimicking of your past mistakes. A parallel.
And the influence of time on this? Time does what time does – time provides hindsight, time provides a kind of mocking knowledge of our own powerlessness in the face of our own stupidity, our own weaknesses.
skip to main |
skip to sidebar
This is the age of the slogan, the soundbite, the snappy phrase in place of considered argument. Thought is dying; reason’s gone critical. In bookshops and magazine racks we’re told only what we want to hear: we’re told it in neat, bullet-pointed affirmations of our own worth.
No more. This is the fightback. The resuscitation. This is the slogan as explainer of the world. One a day for a year. Three hundred and sixty five phrases, soundbites and bullet points with which to make sense of the way things are now and point to how things could be tomorrow. Read them and weep.
Defining the age through a slogan a day
This is the age of the slogan, the soundbite, the snappy phrase in place of considered argument. Thought is dying; reason’s gone critical. In bookshops and magazine racks we’re told only what we want to hear: we’re told it in neat, bullet-pointed affirmations of our own worth.
No more. This is the fightback. The resuscitation. This is the slogan as explainer of the world. One a day for a year. Three hundred and sixty five phrases, soundbites and bullet points with which to make sense of the way things are now and point to how things could be tomorrow. Read them and weep.
Posts
