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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.
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)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: 2012-04-10 06:05 (UTC)I do think things can get better, though - or at least, I have to believe that, if nothing else, even though I know it won't happen without work. As much as I decry the Whig view of history I am perfectly willing to say that things have gotten better. But this is not cause for any particular arrogance on our parts, I think.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-04-09 23:23 (UTC)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 02:34 (UTC)As the internet said, "Remember when Margaret Atwood and Sherri Tepper felt ridiculously implausible? Yeah."
(no subject)
Date: 2012-04-10 23:42 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-04-11 18:26 (UTC)I think it does, yes - have you read, by chance, Adam Hochschild's book Bury the Chains? One of my favorite books, period. He talks in there about how slavery is older than writing and money, and as late as 1787 in Britain abolition was a crank idea. Twenty-one years later, the trade was abolished. Thomas Clarkson, one of the main architects of the entire movement, lived to see outright emancipation in 1833. What I am trying to say badly is that this is why I try not to despair and why I don't actually agree with people who say that nothing can change - because things can, and have, and changing people's minds is the bedrock of that. And it is incomplete and it does take work, but what people think is a key part of it.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-04-12 04:37 (UTC)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)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.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-04-11 18:08 (UTC)