Given the general tone of approaching end-times, I though this might be an opportune moment to post a few passages from my books and articles that feel applicable to our situation. This bit is from Civilized to Death, and is one of the more optimistic parts of the book.
This essay reminds me of a song which I wanted to tell you about, Chris, since forever. I never did because it’s in German and we all know that your German teacher was not that inspiring.
I believe you’d really like it, given the things it talks about (for example how ending a relationship is not such a big deal, since they had a wonderful time and the kids are raised by the community anyway)
Today I thought of letting it run through a translator. I only had to fix some minor glitches. Enjoy.
If you go to https://www.google.com/search?q=k.i.z.+hurra+die+welt+geht+unter+lyrics you'll find a "Translate to English" button (at least it was shown to me) where the German lines are put right beneath the translated ones. Maybe it's easier to follow when the words are parallelized, maybe not.
I wanted to structure text in paragraphs but unfortunately editing here does not allow it. Sorry. Maybe just go to the Google translation for easier reading.
K.I.Z. - Hurra die Welt geht unter ft. Henning May
Clothing is against God
We wear fig leaf
Swinging on lianas over Heinrichplatz
And the old people talk about urban warfare
At the barbecue in the ruins of Deutsche Bank
Birds' nests in a holey neon sign
We warm up by a burning German flag
And when someone sleeps on a park bench
Then only because a girl leans on his arm
Three hours of work a day because that's all it takes
Tonight we'll think of names for stars
Are thanking that bomb 10 years ago
And make love until the sun can see it
Do you remember when we carved on the tables in schools?
Please Lord don't forgive them because they know what they are doing
The sandy beach awaits beneath the paving stones
If not with rap, then with the pump gun
And we sing in the fallout shelter
Hurray, this world is ending! (repeat)
Paradise on the rubble!
Take your bow and arrow, we'll kill a delicacy
There's no more prison, we're grilling on the prison bars
Burnt McDonald's bear witness to our heroic deeds
Since we chased Nestlé out of the fields
Apples taste like apples and tomatoes like tomatoes
And we cook our food in the soldiers' helmets
Do you want a smoke joint?(
Then go pick something in the garden
But our life today can also be endured soberly
Come on, lets do a race in the moss-covered
halls of the Reichstag on office chairs
Our front doors no longer need to have locks
Money turned into confetti and we slept better
For us, a gold bar is the same as a brick
The fireplace is going out, throw in another Bible
The kids are scared because I talk about the Pope
This life is so beautiful, who needs an afterlife?
(echoing) who needs an afterlife?
And we sing in the fallout shelter:
Hurray, this world is ending! (repeat)
Paradise on the rubble!
The cows graze behind us, we smoke Ott, play Talva
Where Potsdamer Platz used to be
When I wake up I'll stroke your hair again
"Darling, I'm going to work, I'll be right back"
We get up when we want, leave when we want
Look how we want, have sex how we want
And not like the church or porn tells us
Baby, the time with you was so wonderful
Yes, it's over again now, but our children don't cry
Because we raise them all together
Do you remember when they wanted to put out the big fire?
That feeling when our passports melted in the flames?
They really thought their shit would last forever
I show the little ones Monopoly, but they don't understand
“A €100 note?”
“What is that supposed to be?”
Why should I take something away from you when we share everything?
In 1989, Hurricane Hugo blew through my home city with 90 mph winds. We are a city of trees and about 15% blew down, many of them damaging homes and injuring people. Power and telephone lines were down for 2 weeks in my neighborhood. No lights, no heat, etc. for 14 days. You never saw such neighborly love. People were helping each other every way they could. Late on day 1 we heard a chain saw in our front yard and a neighbor we'd never met was clearing our driveway. After about a week or so, the houses across the street got power back. Those neighbors let the folks on our side run extension cords all the way across the street so we could make coffee, use lights at night and watch a little TV. They invited us over to take hot showers. Honestly, I think people came alive during this little disaster and found meaning in helping each other. People who were here then talk about it to this day. Many of us long for a society where that level of connection and helping each other is the norm, instead of the exception.
It's funny. It feels so great to help another person in a face-to-face, personal context, which seemingly every one benefits from, yet we are deprived of the ability to do this in our day to day lives. Most don't even know their neighbours, let alone allow themselves the benefits associated with giving and helping. Instead we donate numbers to far flung countries as a matter of routine, atomised from our elderly next door neighbour who would desperately love for half an hour of your day for a cup of tea and a chat...
My parents both had vivid memories of the Great Depression, & they revelled in those memories. What I misunderstood but came to realize is that it wasn't the deprivation they missed but rather the togetherness of people facing a challenge as a cooperative group.
Similarly I could never understand the nostalgia of the men I knew who'd been in WWII. True, some had endured horribly traumatizing things that left them without nostalgia. But a lot of them had mixed feelings — it had been the biggest event of their lives & they had a sense of group purpose that they never found again after the war.
Our civilization atomizes us & forces us to compete for something that soon turns to ashes in your mouth should you win the race. As Paul Kingsnorth (former atheist & now enthusiastic Orthodox Christian) puts it, modernity somehow got human nature entirely wrong.
“In the Orthodox Church we began advent — a word which, in the original Latin, adventus, means ‘the coming’ — on the 15th of November. We have been fasting since that date, and will do until Christmas Day.
It’s not until you throw yourself into the Liturgical Year with gusto, and really practice the traditional Christian cycle of fasting followed by feasting, that you understand the function of a ritual year; how it deepens you and opens up the pattern of the world before you. Then you notice how we in the modern world have abolished the fasting and doubled down on the feasting, in all areas of life. This was because we wanted to be happy. We got rid of the bit that felt like effort and self-denial and extended the bit that felt like fun and self-indulgence. Now we are encouraged to feast all year and not fast at all - unless, of course, we are concerned about our ‘body image’. This gives us lots of stuff, all the time. There are no limits! Hurray! And yet, mysteriously, we do not seem to be happier.
It’s almost as if modernity has got human nature entirely wrong.”
I agree with this (and I found your book inspiring Chris). I find the clues to our behaviour often reside in the words we use. I'm a poet so I'm obsessed with etymology. The use of the term "civilian casualties" being used all the time now on the news tells us so much. We could simply re-arrange that term to be the "death of the civilised", the latter being a word originally used for the lower classes or inferiors.
Warspeak is heavily euphemized. "Collateral casualties" is even worse: the by-product killing of non-combatants (i.e. people not in the fight). And a war is a "humanitarian disaster" (oh yeah? what's humanitarian about it?)
We surround all zones of discomfort with euphemism. We say pork & beef, not pig-meat & cow-meat. We say so-&-so "passed", not died. We use the word "welfare" in a way rather opposite to its real meaning. We insulate ourselves from reality with all manner of passive constructions & politically correct gibberish.
This essay reminds me of a song which I wanted to tell you about, Chris, since forever. I never did because it’s in German and we all know that your German teacher was not that inspiring.
I believe you’d really like it, given the things it talks about (for example how ending a relationship is not such a big deal, since they had a wonderful time and the kids are raised by the community anyway)
Today I thought of letting it run through a translator. I only had to fix some minor glitches. Enjoy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTPGpBBwt1w
If you go to https://www.google.com/search?q=k.i.z.+hurra+die+welt+geht+unter+lyrics you'll find a "Translate to English" button (at least it was shown to me) where the German lines are put right beneath the translated ones. Maybe it's easier to follow when the words are parallelized, maybe not.
I wanted to structure text in paragraphs but unfortunately editing here does not allow it. Sorry. Maybe just go to the Google translation for easier reading.
K.I.Z. - Hurra die Welt geht unter ft. Henning May
Clothing is against God
We wear fig leaf
Swinging on lianas over Heinrichplatz
And the old people talk about urban warfare
At the barbecue in the ruins of Deutsche Bank
Birds' nests in a holey neon sign
We warm up by a burning German flag
And when someone sleeps on a park bench
Then only because a girl leans on his arm
Three hours of work a day because that's all it takes
Tonight we'll think of names for stars
Are thanking that bomb 10 years ago
And make love until the sun can see it
Do you remember when we carved on the tables in schools?
Please Lord don't forgive them because they know what they are doing
The sandy beach awaits beneath the paving stones
If not with rap, then with the pump gun
And we sing in the fallout shelter
Hurray, this world is ending! (repeat)
Paradise on the rubble!
Take your bow and arrow, we'll kill a delicacy
There's no more prison, we're grilling on the prison bars
Burnt McDonald's bear witness to our heroic deeds
Since we chased Nestlé out of the fields
Apples taste like apples and tomatoes like tomatoes
And we cook our food in the soldiers' helmets
Do you want a smoke joint?(
Then go pick something in the garden
But our life today can also be endured soberly
Come on, lets do a race in the moss-covered
halls of the Reichstag on office chairs
Our front doors no longer need to have locks
Money turned into confetti and we slept better
For us, a gold bar is the same as a brick
The fireplace is going out, throw in another Bible
The kids are scared because I talk about the Pope
This life is so beautiful, who needs an afterlife?
(echoing) who needs an afterlife?
And we sing in the fallout shelter:
Hurray, this world is ending! (repeat)
Paradise on the rubble!
The cows graze behind us, we smoke Ott, play Talva
Where Potsdamer Platz used to be
When I wake up I'll stroke your hair again
"Darling, I'm going to work, I'll be right back"
We get up when we want, leave when we want
Look how we want, have sex how we want
And not like the church or porn tells us
Baby, the time with you was so wonderful
Yes, it's over again now, but our children don't cry
Because we raise them all together
Do you remember when they wanted to put out the big fire?
That feeling when our passports melted in the flames?
They really thought their shit would last forever
I show the little ones Monopoly, but they don't understand
“A €100 note?”
“What is that supposed to be?”
Why should I take something away from you when we share everything?
And we sing in the fallout shelter
Hurray, this world is ending! (repeat)
Paradise on the rubble!
In 1989, Hurricane Hugo blew through my home city with 90 mph winds. We are a city of trees and about 15% blew down, many of them damaging homes and injuring people. Power and telephone lines were down for 2 weeks in my neighborhood. No lights, no heat, etc. for 14 days. You never saw such neighborly love. People were helping each other every way they could. Late on day 1 we heard a chain saw in our front yard and a neighbor we'd never met was clearing our driveway. After about a week or so, the houses across the street got power back. Those neighbors let the folks on our side run extension cords all the way across the street so we could make coffee, use lights at night and watch a little TV. They invited us over to take hot showers. Honestly, I think people came alive during this little disaster and found meaning in helping each other. People who were here then talk about it to this day. Many of us long for a society where that level of connection and helping each other is the norm, instead of the exception.
It's funny. It feels so great to help another person in a face-to-face, personal context, which seemingly every one benefits from, yet we are deprived of the ability to do this in our day to day lives. Most don't even know their neighbours, let alone allow themselves the benefits associated with giving and helping. Instead we donate numbers to far flung countries as a matter of routine, atomised from our elderly next door neighbour who would desperately love for half an hour of your day for a cup of tea and a chat...
My parents both had vivid memories of the Great Depression, & they revelled in those memories. What I misunderstood but came to realize is that it wasn't the deprivation they missed but rather the togetherness of people facing a challenge as a cooperative group.
Similarly I could never understand the nostalgia of the men I knew who'd been in WWII. True, some had endured horribly traumatizing things that left them without nostalgia. But a lot of them had mixed feelings — it had been the biggest event of their lives & they had a sense of group purpose that they never found again after the war.
Our civilization atomizes us & forces us to compete for something that soon turns to ashes in your mouth should you win the race. As Paul Kingsnorth (former atheist & now enthusiastic Orthodox Christian) puts it, modernity somehow got human nature entirely wrong.
“In the Orthodox Church we began advent — a word which, in the original Latin, adventus, means ‘the coming’ — on the 15th of November. We have been fasting since that date, and will do until Christmas Day.
It’s not until you throw yourself into the Liturgical Year with gusto, and really practice the traditional Christian cycle of fasting followed by feasting, that you understand the function of a ritual year; how it deepens you and opens up the pattern of the world before you. Then you notice how we in the modern world have abolished the fasting and doubled down on the feasting, in all areas of life. This was because we wanted to be happy. We got rid of the bit that felt like effort and self-denial and extended the bit that felt like fun and self-indulgence. Now we are encouraged to feast all year and not fast at all - unless, of course, we are concerned about our ‘body image’. This gives us lots of stuff, all the time. There are no limits! Hurray! And yet, mysteriously, we do not seem to be happier.
It’s almost as if modernity has got human nature entirely wrong.”
I agree with this (and I found your book inspiring Chris). I find the clues to our behaviour often reside in the words we use. I'm a poet so I'm obsessed with etymology. The use of the term "civilian casualties" being used all the time now on the news tells us so much. We could simply re-arrange that term to be the "death of the civilised", the latter being a word originally used for the lower classes or inferiors.
Warspeak is heavily euphemized. "Collateral casualties" is even worse: the by-product killing of non-combatants (i.e. people not in the fight). And a war is a "humanitarian disaster" (oh yeah? what's humanitarian about it?)
We surround all zones of discomfort with euphemism. We say pork & beef, not pig-meat & cow-meat. We say so-&-so "passed", not died. We use the word "welfare" in a way rather opposite to its real meaning. We insulate ourselves from reality with all manner of passive constructions & politically correct gibberish.
Language is Always political.