"Es gibt kein richtiges Leben im falschen". There is no right life in the wrong one. (Theodor Adorno, Minima Moralia)
The sun keeps rising in the east, birds are singing and spring provides a sea of flowrering mountain laurels. The grandchildren continue to be a joy, the days spool down in their regular order, week by week, joyous moments arise here and there as if nothing would be amiss.
Can we encapsulate ourselves in this private bliss without thinking about the many species that will be extinct this year thanks to human thoughtlessness, the mountains of trash released in the oceans, the toxins causing cancer and Parkinson, the starving babies in Gaza, the bombing victims in Ukraine, the less told atrocities somewhere in Africa, the San Salvadorian US resident deported by accident and against the law and held there in spite Supreme Court orders to bring him back, the foreign Harvard students whose visas are suddenly revoked, the artificial intelligence rushing forward without any control towards a future we can't even imagine?
All this is removed enough from our daily life that we can ignore it, even though the news reach our ears.
But what about what about our daughters in government telling us about what became of their jobs in light of a government that holds both early childhood education and climate research for dispensable and forces whole departments to spend months on justifying their existence to some higher power that resides in an obscure space outside NOAA or DHHS, of which we know nothing but the fact that this force won't be able to read all the reports, let alone understand them.
Which, of course, was never the intention anyway, just an effort to gum up the machinery that this regime hates and that before, cumbersomely, but nevertheless, churned out the safety and security system we all had come to rely on, which made us rely on it.
All this is too much to keep at bay for longer than a few hours; then it comes crashing into our conscience, our gut and our dreams.
What to do in the face of this? Where is the leverage, where the counter weapon? The sense of not having the power to move the needle into another direction causes agony.
People nod knowingly when the conundrum is mentioned, for almost everyone experiences it, except for those for whom the destruction is reason to rejoice, regardless that this tsunami that will wash them away first.
Is it bad enough to flee or wouldn't it be far better to resist? We know that autocracy, plutocracy and oligarchy fears the people and is in the face of resistance far more vulnerable than it appears. And yet. Where are they, the people? "Pueblo unido jamas sera vincido".
The chant makes us nostalgic. Yes, if the people were united, but instead they are divided, and yes, the return to the status quo ante is not only not possible, but also not desirable.
Klaus Philipsen, FAIA
