#midwinter
Or Nature’s Plotlines (from Jenny Xie, through Latif Askia Ba) Some mornings ago when I started writing this essay, it was 9 degrees F (-12.7 degrees C) in New York city. President Donald Trump’s government was unsurprising. Friends and commentators began predicting the end of the global order “as we know it,” of multilateralism with the dominance of the United States, surrounded by its circles of allies, the closer and more stable allies tending to be European and richer, and outer circles a motley crew of more recently independent states some of them with democracies rendered precarious by Cold War games. Multilateralism built a 20th century web of relationships, interdependencies, and “international law.” Over the course of the 20th century, especially after WWII, international law got more specific and codified than in the past, crafted multilaterally by and for apparently sacralized “nation-states,” whether these were states formed in earlier centuries by increasingly centralized and high-language governments that pulled together contiguous communities with related dialects and customs, or states formed more recently with the breakdown of monarchies and empires. Relatively free trade, under the economic power of the United States and its allies and economic partners, flourished in this world of nation-states and multilateralism. Entwined with this multilateralism, international law, and free trade, was the dominance of democracy as a form of polity and governance, mostly based on the evolved European model, but also drawing on local forms and practices. Over centuries people in different parts of the world struggled to get “democracy,” a system in which the will of many replaces the power of a few. Increasingly the promise of democracy swelled to a system in which, aspirationally, ordinary people can participate in choosing and changing their leaders and the policies to which they are subject. In the 21st century, especially over the last two decades, with the rise and successes of populist leaders and governments in many parts of the world, diverse observers — including “experts;” ordinary people like my octogenarian mother; and people like the romantic and somewhat anachronistic Curtis Yarvin — have rung the alarm for a crisis of democracy. Mind you, people are ringing the alarm from and in different directions. Reflecting on the two phrases — “end of the global order as we know it,” and “crisis of democracy” — draws my attention to structural flaws in these interlinked systems despite their many good intentions and positive effects, both potential and realized. While democracy in general is likely to be more fair than the dice-throw of effective-to-ineffective benevolent despotism or efficient-to-ruthlessly-uncaring authoritarianism, from its beginning it has leaned to protect the interests of the better resourced in wealth, power, and education. And the global order as we know it — meaning the post-WWII global order that was initiated primarily by the winning Allies headed by the United States to stimulate recovery and prevent another world war — has similar structural flaws to democracy. Indeed, in both cases the flaws are recurrent through history; the larger a state or polity, especially in terms of population, the more vulnerable it is to these structural flaws. Over the decades, the post-WWII global order has served the wealthy, powerful, and academically educated more than the less resourced or other-skilled, whether in the “global south” or “south in the global north,” the last referring to the socio-economically vulnerable in the “global north” whether immigrant or not. There were murmurings of crises in the global order in the critique and defense of “globalization” but, by and large, for those who fear the end of the global order of the late 20th century, the order was a decent, rational, and corrigible frame for “progress.” I weigh down all these words with quotation marks to reflect how they are weighed down by ideological and partisan meanings that have accrued over decades; these and other potentially tumbleweed words have become widgets in the technical minds and language of “experts,” and signals in the common language of like-minded people. Through the crisis of democracy, not just in a single nation state but as a dominant form of governance in a globalized world, the chaos of (potential) breakdown of same-old democracy in individual states connects to increasing cracks in global order. Now the turning of the United States to nativist populism under an egotistical, erratic, and amoral man shoves a chisel into the biggest fault lines and pries them open. The breaking of order restricts and kills people, gives larger license to unfairness, and pollutes our planet potentially more than these things were already happening. Vulnerability rises up socioeconomic strata. So, what do we do, where do we go now? These days, in response to our new government’s strategy of unrelenting shocks and distraction, I’m here, I’m there, I’m going around and around. Resist here, support there. The crisis of democracy and the breakdown of the global order as we know it makes us all vulnerable. Some of us feel more vulnerable than others. Some of us feel bully pride — fuck yeah! Yes, I’m including all of us. At this point, will harking to the premises and rules of democracy and multilateralism work or is the rot too deep? And what does all of this have to do with ducks in midwinter and “nature’s plotlines?” I could start (again) in at least three different ways. Midwinter. When it’s 18 degrees F (-7.78 degrees C) or less in the middle of the day, the ducks curl themselves in and wait in the middle of an inhospitable pond. What predator could retrieve them there? OR Don’t be surprised if the end of the world isn’t great, or rather Do not expect too much from the end of the world: Radu Jude’s brilliant movie about Romania, about being less powerful and fucked.* About sticking it to them nevertheless, in the process profanely laughing, finding beauty, even protecting, even sharing, even loving. Green on each side of that long road, cross after cross after cross; that’s the only green I remember in the movie, minute after lonely minute — why is it taking so long?! He needed a better editor! Not. The green surrounds old crosses, new crosses, new crosses, new crosses, new crosses. People who died on the road, who keep dying on the road. It did not need better editing. Cadence is perfectly calibrated: speed, thumping, obliviousness, and grass growing around those crosses, a poem so to speak, splashing the eyes with the sense of All this gaining and letting go honed along the sharpest edges of this life’s perimeter. (Jenny Xie “Postmemory”) Xie’s words bring back a sentence from HBO’s True Detective Night Country (2024), situated in Ennis, Alaska: “And Ennis is where the fabric of all things is coming apart at the seams.” I’m not done with Jude’s end of the world. After all it comes from Romania, which right now is caught in a curious experimental drama of democracy (and TikTok). Voted in, not voted in; Russia, not Russia; EU, not EU; propaganda, propaganda; law, whose law? I’m not going to tell you the details. Look it up. It’s an interesting twist to the crisis of democracy, the end of the world order as we know it. Radu Jude looks at the global order from above and from below and we’re never quite sure what’s up and what’s down. A developer making luxury flats can’t have his wealthy buyers look at graves while sipping their morning coffee, so let’s move the graves, shall we, we’ll pay for it all, the exhumation, the new plot, everything. And by the way, the boss apologizes for not being at the meeting, he’s doing his mindfulness thing (which, somehow, reminds me of lululemon) And, then, less mindfully, or perhaps every bit as mindfully we have Bobita’s filtered TikTok videos: irreverent, sometimes obnoxious, always deliberately and shockingly profane, sticking it to my mindful mind, sticking it from below. Hmmm… a distant, filtered MAGA (without the first A of course, mostly without the G as well — just MA, making again and again? — turned upside down, back up, down again, I don’t know what’s what. You’re never bored. Well, except maybe for the long stretches of road with green and crosses on each side. It’s striking how mindful the bosses are, invoking the Way along the way. There are two narratives in the film that converge in the end. Angela in the past — from a real movie in the real-life past — is a taxi-driver. Angela in the present is an assistant in a film production company. The two Angelas meet in this film’s present, both more-than-surviving from below. The young Angela — also Bobita, the maker-star of the TikTok videos — rushes around for the production of a worker safety video for an Austrian company, evidently a logging company. She picks up and drives around the Austrian marketing executive, Doris Goethe, who is overseeing the film project. Yes, she’s a blood descendant of the Goethe Doris tells us shruggily, though perhaps because it’s family she doesn’t really read him. Angela asks her if she cares about the cutting down of forests that her company does. Doris responds by invoking the Taoist Way: she just needs to do her job as marketing executive, she says, not know or care about how her company is cutting down forests. And, she adds, in any case the Romanians allow it to happen, it’s up to them. I’m upside down. I too am mindful and invoke the Way. Overthinking. Real people are under real threat today. More threat is likely tomorrow. Defeatist, poetic nihilism gets us nowhere. Jude does the trapeze with the Way, swinging this way, turning that way, upside down, inside out, amazingly light, agile, and alive. And then he quotes haiku in the credits. in this world we walk on the roof of hell gazing at flowers (Kobayashi, translated by Robert Hass, and displayed with the credits in Jude’s film) OR I could start with nature’s plotlines, drawn from Jenny Xie’s poem “Postmemory” and quoted by Latif Askia Ba in his interview with Brooklyn Poets. His new book of poetry just came out: The Choreic Period. Look it up. I didn’t know the meaning of choreic. I’ve bought his book. Nature reuses plotlines not wanting to waste a thing. (Jenny Xie “Postmemory”) At this point, can I add anything? What else can I write? Do I have to write any more? Some of you would say no. I waste so much. Everything is done already, experienced already, written already, known already, dead, resurrected, And so we get sewn back into our origins (Jenny Xie “Postmemory”) And yet, it’s fresh again, it’s new again! Read The Choreic Period, read “Postmemory.” The deeper textures. (Jenny Xie “Postmemory”) If you’ve read any of my work or know anything about me, you know I’m much older than Xie and Askia Ba. I’m still stumbling alive with each fresh turn, still pulsing to receive and give, seduced by the deceptive eiderdown of comfortable age, still agile, still sensing, still writing, still steady. I still care. Democracy is in crisis. Many — including my now-deceased and most ordinary mother — have declared that. Curtis Yarvin (you could look up the NYT article) declares it. His solution is the mythos of the strong man, which by the way my old mother might also have considered as a solution. It’s a romantic solution, a yearning for the strong father. It serves those who believe in and obey the rules of the father. For the rest, they’re impure, lower, chattel, or enemies. I don’t really need to say more about this. Most people who read me would not be interested in a Yarvin-style solution, and those who are would not have read this far. My question — still holding hope for democracy — is how do people broadly like me live together with people broadly like Yarvin in a democratic system? Heather Cox Richardson, a historian of the United States who has a very large substack following, might say we have, we can, but right now — I say, she might say, many of us say — we are in a dangerous place. Crisis and disorder. Democracy is flawed. The global order as we know it is flawed. If your forests are being chopped down, it’s because you are allowing it. And, by the way, if you are not allowing it, you are probably breaking the law. The law can be bought. The law can be changed. But not always. Meanwhile, I can be mindful. I can be mindful. Mindfulness has many shades and textures. There is no way out of this. There is no way out of this. This is the one plotline — life comes back to Chernobyl, so to speak — which you can see as the inherently corrupt beauty of life, or the gloriously messy complexity of the Way, or work to be done now. Let’s get to work. If you don’t know where to start, Jamyle Cannon from Chicago has superb advice. https://www.instagram.com/p/DFHEpz4R4CG/ In case the link doesn’t take you to the exact reel, it’s one of the videos posted on January 22, 2025. And in case you are raising your eyebrows at our use of Meta, hey he uses us, we use him. Another excellent resource is this post on dodging the firehose by David Litt. Meanwhile: — Stay informed, read various sources to check your information and assumptions — Avoid jumping reactively on and off their carousel of big and bigger threats — Hug someone or smile at someone at least once a day — Support one initiative, small or big, that does what you want to see more of in the world. I just supported Word Up with a donation and purchases — And, ok, I would not follow Bobita, but allow yourself to laugh! *Trigger warning: it’s very long, it’s very irreverent, it’s very odd (and it’s brilliant).
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AuthorMeenakshi Chakraverti Archives
January 2025
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