I’ve been on a scam stream-roll lately (apologies for the truly terrible alliteration) – Anna Delvey, Billy McFarland, Sarma Melngailis, Gerard Cotten. Thing is, I can mostly write off rich, entitled people with more money than sense getting what was coming to them, but PPE scams? Scum.
Terry Eagleton, an old favourite, is back with a book on Critical Revolutionaries. No prizes for guessing who they might be.
I’m actually fascinated by NRx and their conception and construction of reality. As a political force, they are something to be reckoned with, even if they are fundamentally and ultimately fragmented.
Don’t be a “stick that stirs the shit” – an earthy Cantonese description, and more cultural gems about all the ways humans have tried to deal with our own excrement.
“What we need most are temporal structures that stabilize life. When everything is short-term, life loses all stability. Stability comes over long stretches of time: faithfulness, bonds, integrity, commitment, promises, trust. These are the social practices that hold a community together. They all have a ritual character. They all require a lot of time. Today’s terror of short-termism — which, with fatal consequences, we mistake for freedom — destroys the practices that require time. To combat this terror, we need a very different temporal politics.” This is precisely what a lot of people in NRx desire a return to. How can we build truly pluralist communities, or is such a thing a pipe dream?
Comments
No posts