starlady: roy in the sunset at graveside (no rest for the wicked)
[personal profile] starlady
I am reading George Orwell's Burmese Days for class. It is an excellent book about uniformly terrible people - even the person you'd be expected to sympathize with in a non-Orwell novel, Dr. Veraswami, is the worse kind of internalized self-hatred, toadying colonial stereotype. The uniform terribleness of the people in the novel is not alleviated by their occasional attacks of humanity, usually swiftly repressed by liquor and the notion that one musn't let the side down. 

The point here is that reading Burmese Days does not give me a feeling of superiority. It gives me the uncomfortable certainty that if the people in the book - the people reading the book - could be so fundamentally unable to perceive certain things that slap us upside the head from page one, then we, in our own day, are missing things that are equally big. I suspect I know what some of those are - I get a lot of it just from my reading list - and I am not reassured about the state of anything. 

Sometimes I think the only thing we as a species have done right is put paid to the notion of slavery. And that too was more of a revolution, a turn, in consciousness than anything else, not a linear move up a line of progress. If there was any "progress" in the last century, along the axes of civil rights or the end of empire or the status of women, those were revolutions too, turns that turned. But that's as far as I'm willing to go. Grant civil rights? Okay, we'll just institute mass incarceration to put people in their place. I could go on. 

I don't know where this is going. The latest news out of Wisconsin (repealing equal pay provisions) makes me see red, as does the fact that racism is still killing people. I guess what I'm saying is, let's not be lulled by the notion of "progress." Every single fucking thing that's ever gone right in history, people had to fight for, and we forget that at our peril. 

(no subject)

Date: 2012-04-09 21:34 (UTC)
lotesse: (panopticon)
From: [personal profile] lotesse
I really like what you're doing with the word "revolution here." I've been worrying at something similar in my backbrain for a while, trying to figure out how to connect my intellectual attraction to anti-progress rhetoric - and my growing awareness of the negative/unjust implications and consequences of that rhetoric - with my belief in political advocacy, instruction, and advocacy. Why struggle to teach social justice if things can't get better?

Revolutions turn things, make oppression different. Better and worser in various ways. That makes sense, the etymology supports it, yes - but you designate revolution as ultimately unsuccessful, and that's right too, I think. So then if revolution is just circling and progress is an oppressive narrative - I mean, I don't mean to put you on the hot seat or anything so feel free to disregard - where do we go from here?

(no subject)

Date: 2012-04-09 23:23 (UTC)
laurashapiro: a woman sits at a kitchen table reading a book, cup of tea in hand. Table has a sliced apple and teapot. A cat looks on. (Default)
From: [personal profile] laurashapiro
Powerful post.

I would mention that our species hasn't put paid to the notion of slavery -- not yet, anyway. But apart from that, this is a sound argument and, on a personal note, I feel your rage and pain.

(no subject)

Date: 2012-04-10 23:42 (UTC)
laurashapiro: a woman sits at a kitchen table reading a book, cup of tea in hand. Table has a sliced apple and teapot. A cat looks on. (Default)
From: [personal profile] laurashapiro
I guess I figure that if the notion had gone, the institution would have gone with it. I see many cultures in agreement that slavery is indefensible, and yet it still happens all over the world. So does it matter what we think if we don't act on it?

(no subject)

Date: 2012-04-12 04:37 (UTC)
laurashapiro: a woman sits at a kitchen table reading a book, cup of tea in hand. Table has a sliced apple and teapot. A cat looks on. (Default)
From: [personal profile] laurashapiro
I haven't read it, but I remember it: Hochschild is a founder and Board member at Mother Jones, where I used to work.

I do believe change can happen. That's why I work in non-profit. And changing minds is vital. But I feel like we've reached a place where people think it's enough to be upset about stuff, without actually having to do anything about it. The Internet makes all this information available, we can actually see what's going on all over the world, and it's overwhelming, and people are lazy, and most international development is hideous and oppressive, and and and...

I dunno. I get depressed sometimes. I'd like to think that we're all aboard the "slavery sucks" train, and that therefore change is ready to happen. But I keep seeing stuff like this, and it's hard to hang in there.

(no subject)

Date: 2012-04-10 22:59 (UTC)
recessional: a young brunette leaning back and smoking (personal; it's death or victory)
From: [personal profile] recessional
I think things are on average1 much better now than they have been in past - but this comes from a gut-wrenchingly intimate idea of just how bad things used to be, and how invisible the sins of the past can be, and how they're not in "big atrocities" (the Inquisition, what have you) but in the every-day grinding evil of pain, suffering and vicious work and a devaluation of human life that outdoes even what we have now - and I don't think we're very good at valuing human life NOW.

Just because we're no longer neck-deep in shit doesn't mean there's not still a whole lot of shit to shovel.


1 a qualifier that acknowledges that in specific areas, things are WAY better, and in some, they may be much worse. That on average and per-capita unbelievably fewer people die horribly in war now than did in 1226 doesn't mean anything if you're one of the people who just got blown up.

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