We Live in the Future

A short list of current events: "the worst oil spill in US history" euronews.net, activists are being fired at by Israeli armed forces, and every half hour or so there's a fatherhood initiative PSA paid for by another corporation [ liz library ]. Things are looking down.

What qualifies as a future? We [which may include you the reader and "I" the author, or the whole host of readers who may eventually read] edify future states. We do not choose the future; but it is by our collective workings, random and indifferent towards one another, that this future happens. The present is a meeting of the past and future, which are the same road going in opposite directions (I believe that was Arendt quoting Nietzsche), and we regret the fact that we cannot act backwards in time. The eternal return only matters in the face of the irony, po[st]-mo[dern] as that may sound, that we cannot act backwards; our actions will ripple on into the future [Arendt]. I would like to propose a seemingly unradical idea of admitting Arendt into the poststructuralist, if not postmodern, 'cannon'. Her ideas on plurality (and not mere plurality that David Hoy in Critical Resistance might accuse) and totalitarianism speak clearly to our notions of the polymorphous perverse in Freud, queer theory, and poststructural feminist critiques and biopower with the trend of infinite Foucaudian readings currently occupying our academic journals.

If we think about the future as a product of power structures operating at the level of desire, and consider both psychological and socio-anthropological implications of power moving us to do anything-to-everything, then we have to keep a critical eye on the present and past. The critique must give way to resistance, because no system is closed and no power structure could exist without resistance; since we must change how hard the world has been and will become for the oppressed, we must take full advantage of our pocket of action against power. This can come from consumer power, legal power to social power and public persuasion. People must be impressed upon and have a counter-conversation once and a while, even to ethnographically research our neighbor.

Today I was talking with someone about the big oil spill BP caused. We discussed how there is a crucial moment approaching in regards to our dependency on oil to carry the weight of hyper-industrial and highly technological Western countries like the US. Could this disaster give enough public outcry and demystification about the process of Progress-by-any-means-necessary? The future is literally set in front of the consumer and I predict the following: for some time, people will urge a publicly funded research program for alternative fuel sources. IFF no body cuts the funding after media attention halts (when the news gets bored of the now, when the now becomes a then, but not a past), then there will be a public interest in the fashion of alternative fuel. For a year maybe people will buy into the trend, on a mainstream level embracing corn utensils, converting engines, buying entirely new cars because we refuse to pay European oil prices (what would amount to $20 a gallon). Then, as usual northern industrialists often have done, the price of living will get higher, people will become disenchanted because they expect some immediate results (that could never surface in such a short span of time) around global warming, fuel dependency, and 'progress' and the major companies that fucked us up today will lobby their way into power once again, fucking us into the next century. The recession will monopolize existing powerhouses and blight any competing alternatives in the fuel industry. In 20 years max we'll have another oil crisis.

If there was a serious effort on the part of our government (which seems unlikely but not impossible [important distinction]) to regulate existing reliance on oil and incentivize alternative use, and a consciousness as a consumer group that we all can change how things work, we can see a new future.

500 teachers are being laid off in Ohio, and entire sports programs in low income areas of New Jersey are being completely taken away. The educational system has worked to give 'our future' (a true yet seemingly loaded slogan for DARE and the like) the least analytic capability. Without critique, resistance can be dangerous, and therefore will not be effective or long lasting. Also, if the people 'act out' after being disenfranchised for so long, they will buy into their own oppression through committing themselves against each other racially, along gender and sexuality lines, and most explicitly along class lines.

We have to demystify the future. It is not what happens but what we let happen. I feel like every person I know watches the news like a movie or another reality TV show, strung along by 'sub par' plot lines because apathy is endorsed. We literally have apathism, where people are offended when we disagree with any single major or minor political view. Moreover, they never even think they have a political view to begin with. They claim that the way things are will remain unchanged regardless of how much we know about them and how wrong we know they are. The fact that there are so many problems in the world and, therefore, so many causes to get behind more often leaves people indifferent to the entire enterprise of being socially conscious. As if it were a sport that they could choose to pick up if the season was right.

This first post might seem a little dry but I'm getting used to this format. Shouting into the void will eventually refine itself into specific and eclectic thought streams. The topics will range from fashion [theory], TV commercials and shows, futuristic films, what will soon be called neofuturism, global and local news stuffs and philosophy, cultural studies and lit theory inspired jargon. Please post any thoughts on improvement, to argue, to ramble absurdist phrases in the comment box.