Moving closer to reality

 

Previously posted on this blog on September 8, 2021

I wanted to write some kind of 9/11 retrospect, but it didn´t turn out very well, instead it became an extended and somewhat disjointed rant mostly about myself and various topics maybe only I personally give damn about, so instead of posting this on September 11, I´m just going to lay it out here for all it´s worth...

This Saturday, it´s 20 years since the 9/11 attacks on the United States, the most spectacular terrorist attacks ever. I´m 20 years older, and yet, in some strange way, it doesn´t feel like 20 years. Maybe 10 years at most. Perhaps not even that! I´m not sure why, but perhaps it has something to do with the fact that my "main activity" during a large number of these 20 years has been surfing, commenting, blogging and trolling on the World Wide Web. Very often on the same forums, year after year (such as Amazon and comrade ER´s blog). Perhaps I inadvertently got caught in some kind of time warp for two decades? Who knows? 

And yet, I *did* change my opinions, sometimes radically, during these 20 years. I think 9/11 itself was what made me draw the conclusion that maybe the radical leftism of my youth didn´t *quite* work in the new world reality, where Islamist terrorists were threatening the stability of the whole world, not to mention the lives of innocent Western civilians. I unhesitatingly supported the US attack on the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan (a strong anti-Islamism had been part even of my most radical convictions). That being said, I never became a "decent leftist", hoping instead for great power cooperation against the Islamists. Great powers as in the US, the EU, Russia and China. I opposed the invasion of Iraq, realizing that very little good would come out of it. And today, 20 years later, a case could obviously be made that very little good came out of the Afghan expedition, either. Except, I suppose, some funny troll pics of Taliban eating halal ice cream!

Otherwise, I think three changes of opinion (or perhaps heart) have been particularly important during these 20 years. First, I realized that atheism and materialism are too simple. While I wouldn´t call myself "religious" or even "spiritual", I´m open to suggestions on these points. And while I would like to believe that my quasi-conversion was (of course) wholly rational and based on the best philosophical arguments, I think it was at bottom psychological. At the time, I really did consider consistent atheist-materialism á la Dawkins´ "The Blind Watchmaker" to make life and the universe meaningless and depressive (not to mention brutish, nasty and short). Perhaps today I would see things somehow differently, but I think it was this (purported) meaninglessness and amorality/immorality of the universe if you follow the atheist-materialist logic that made me cast it aside in favor of a kind of dualism, deism or process philosophy. It´s been quite the ride, reading up on every goddamned (pun intended) religious or spiritual system. I suppose I eventually settled on some kind of Buddhoid semi-Gnostic Neoplatonism, but that´s another story!

Second, I no longer believe in the so-called Western Idea of Progress. I mean, what progress? It´s become increasingly obvious that modern civilization (including its Western centerpiece) won´t and can´t last forever. It will die and disappear, just like its predecessors did. Yes, it did make life better or easier for many people (at least eventually), but that´s irrelevant. So is the fact that it was unique in many ways (yes, really). It will die and disappear anyway. The Western Idea of Progress is just another quasi-religious myth. Or call it religious, if you really don´t like religion. 

Third, I changed my mind on certain political issues, which I don´t wish to discuss here. Let´s just say that I´m no longer a "leftist" in the mainstream sense of that term...but then, it´s no longer obvious what on earth the mainstream sense *even is* these days, so perhaps I can be excused! Is it the bizarre "identity politics" of the "SJWs"? If so, I opposed it already during my most radical period, seeing it as (at best) a petit bourgeois distraction from the real class struggle (and often the real democratic struggles as well). 

But perhaps the real lesson of the past 20 years is that we really can´t mold or remold the world entirely in our image. There are no utopian solutions to our problems and predicaments, indeed no utopias at all. There are certainly no classless, stateless, borderless utopias. But neither are there any capitalist ones, be they neo-liberal or left-liberal. Nor can we go back to an imaginary past to make Nation or Empire-Nation "great again". The drive to remake the world was just another pipe dream, perhaps rooted in a specific form of evangelical Christianity (seriously, why *should* we convert the tribes of the New Guinea Highlands to Baptism or Lutheranism, I mean what´s up with that?) that subsequently became secularized. Instead of talking about "ideals" and "ideologies", perhaps we should start talking about material interests, find pragmatic solutions and realize that a certain subset of the population will always be irredeemable scum (that goes for *all* classes of the population, btw, not just the Lumpenproletariat). Who knows, maybe we can actually get better results if we base our politics, both domestic and foreign, on these more "cynical" and "realistic" premises, rather than on the anachronistic "ideals" of yesteryear...

Some will undoubtedly say that 9/11 killed my youthful dreams of a better future, but since *they* *really* believe, they will refuse to budge. To such people I can only say: if you want to bet on Antifa riots, unsafe vaccines, hard lockdowns, transgender teens, forever wars, rising crime, "climate anxiety therapy", social media censorship and (I suppose) gated communities for you and your rich White peers *for that it what really existing leftist politics have to offer these days*, go ahead and don´t let me stop you, but I have other agendas these days. 

Strictly speaking, 9/11 didn´t kill any dreams. It simply reminded us that we´re only human after all...