View From The Brextanic
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Marcel Duchamp Sad young man on a train – Nude study 1911-12 Longtime Automatic Earth friend Alexander Aston talks about finding himself
[See the full post at: View From The Brextanic]Dear Raul,
This is the most brilliant piece of writing I have read on the brexit trilemma. As a resident of the North-Western part of our likely to become disUnited Kingdom I would suggest to Alexander Aston that his evident sympathies for this part of our country might cause him to choose to relocate here from Oxford.
He would be most welcome, are most foreigners in these underpopulated parts. I was particularly fascinated by the dialects and accents paragraph. Amazing writing from a foreigner!Thank you for posting it.
What strikes me most in my experiences of the United Kingdom are the incredible levels of cognitive dissonance demanded by its media, politics and economics in order for the society to function.
Severe cognitive dissonance can lead to suicidal depression. The UK, having being among the first to embrace suicide capitalism, may also be the first to embrace national suicide. Oh the humanity…
Sophocles again: “The keenest sorrow is to recognize ourselves as the sole cause of all our adversities.” The ruling classes need to take a good long look into the mirror.
What an excellent piece. Not only is it applicable to the Brexit dilemma, but on many issues in the world. The following quote is on the same level, as Harari (Homo Sapiens) and Diamond (Guns, germs and steel).
“I, as the rest of us, have no idea where our current moment in history will lead. However, there are a few things that I feel confident are occurring. The long twentieth century that began in 1914 is at the end of its cycle. Whatever comes next will be something new, a difficult and demanding opportunity for profound creativity and the chance to step out of the long shadow of our past. In all ecosystems, diversity generates resilience. It is the reason and the strength of building consensus. Yet we cannot build consensus if we refuse, alienate and straw man the voices of others and refuse to examine and discuss the contradictory predicaments in which we find ourselves.”
A wonderful essay, thank you for posting it.
I recently visited a rich town in the south west of England and saw for myself the juxtaposition of great wealth with abject poverty and homelessness. As I’ve said before on this forum – in agreement with Aston – the brexit genie will not go back in the bottle. Whether the UK remains in or leaves the EU is almost irrelevant now with the country as divided as it is. This division runs right through families and all other societal structures. My only hope now is that through all the chaos, which will most probably get much worse before it gets any better, the UK, quite possibly split up into independent states, rises, phoenix-like from the ashes with an entirely new paradigm, a new economic model, one which takes full account of all the painful lessns learned throughout the brexit “process.”
With the inustrial revolution, the UK lead the way into devastating materialism. Just perhaps, they could point the way out again.
Can someone tell me how this compares to the 1945 Labour landslide over Churchill, where when the results came in, she was quoted as saying “Labour can’t have won; the people wouldn’t stand for it.”?
Seems there are similar elements in Britain’s national character — and the “young Lions of Tarsus”, the Anglos such as my nation as well. Back to Dickens, back to Cromwell, but forward to Thatcher and Blair. We Americans are less tolerant of anti-democratic sensibilities, but that’s countered by how enormous the country is so you could live a life and never see or interact with the wealthy, so they can be super-boors. Still, the lines are the same, “our betters”, our designated, hereditary owner class and us outsiders, careless economic slaves to be ignored and trampled at will, even if unthinkingly, unintentionally. This is what happens when you have great power: like an elephant you trample small things, and not things you wish to or are aware of, until you simply crash about because are you supposed to sidestep every mouse and blade of grass?
That is why it is so very unhealthy for humans both grand and humble to have such enormous class-and-power differences, and indeed the whole ship of state cannot get signals, cannot be steered, and crashes into the rocks of reality. I feel for the upper classes, the powerful, although it doesn’t seem that I do, because their life is in many ways no better, empty, thoughtless, so that they fill the gap with virtue signaling about plastic straws being unable to break the arms of the social machine and get their neighbor an honest, lifelong living. –The same thing Dickens lamented humanely and said, “‘Tis a muddle.” It is indeed, and all parties will have to move to re-invent it, and that’s why the populism exists and is being fought with every violent means short of open war.
If we “refuse to alienate and straw man the voices of others” then we at the bottom of the pile ALSO need to listen to the upper classes, those in power, and examine what they are afraid of and why — although sadly they lie to us and won’t tell us. Some of it is indeed fantasy, fear, and I highlight this every day, but indeed some of it is not, and the ship is narrowly avoiding the economic, military, and thermodynamic rocks, and rivals WILL indeed capitalize on and sink us for any mistakes. And when the ship of state splinters, yes the wealthy may lose unjust power, but the rest of us will suffer too, and awfully.
Although I’m listening, I’d rather have a humble, just living than a wealthy, extractive one, and doubly so since no one I know is enjoying any of that wealth — at the most they are imprisoned by it.
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