I don’t know why humans like stories that involve death and misfortune; these are the stories that we’re drawn to again and again. […] In terms of the episode itself, for the writers, we had dug in from the beginning in terms of going for maximum impact, giving the characters a real sense of victory and triumph but also coupling it to an inevitable sense that triumph never comes without loss.
Jonathan Nolan, executive producer
“Person of Interest,” Hollywood Reporter interview (11-20-13)
Literary types, and I count myself among them, try to ascertain how many basic plots can be found in literature. There are those few who contend that life has no plot, and therefore literature shouldn’t either. But plotless novels are generally not worth the effort to slog through. Try reading a Kathy Acker novel for kicks sometime. Then there are the monotheists, who argue that there is only one real plot: conflict. Life, and story, are based on conflict. Or more specifically, plot must be structured around one central conflict. There are those who believe that there are only three basic plots: man vs the environment, man vs man, or man vs self. Another triad would divide basic plots into happy endings, unhappy endings, or literary plots in which things are complex and a tad fated whether the ending is happy or unhappy. Matters quickly proliferate from there; 7 plots, 20 plots, 36 plots, etc.
I bring this up because I’ve been writing this more or less monthly column for over twenty years now. I’m bound to repeat myself, mostly here and there, but occasionally in whole. I have my themes, my pet subjects or my axes to grind. I do know that I’ve changed over the past two decades. When I started writing for MRR, I was a newly-minted left communist, having just transitioned from anarchism. I believed that revolution, no matter how unlikely, would eventually succeed; that the working class, no matter how beleaguered, would eventually triumph; and that communism, no matter how fanciful, would eventually come into being. Now, I’m convinced that it’s all fucked and that we’re all doomed. I’m an ex-anarchist, ex-communist, ex-everything who still wishes things might be different but who knows things will only get worse.
When I started writing my columns, I tried changing things up at first; switching from expository essays to three dot news and commentary, rants, satire, reviews of my favorite newspapers and magazines, micro fiction, multi-part in-depth research replete with footnotes, extended discussions of this or that personality, book, film or event, etc. Now, I’m happy to stick to the short essay format, with the occasional foray into other forms. And I’m content to restate and recapitulate, in whole or in part, what I’ve said before. I’m not the most original writer, nor the cleverest. I continue to critique common enemies—state and capital in all their iterations—as well as friends—those to the left of the Left. But without the certainties of my younger years, indeed with a profound despondency over our present and future, my analysis has been fragmented, my scorn has been blunted, and my anger has been rendered aimless.
Without the rubric provided by the early “Lefty” Hooligan, the potential to see the uniqueness in everything is possible. In lieu of my bygone pissed-off politics that had me seeing red—so to speak—most of the time, I now try to cultivate a less judgmental mindfulness. A Theravadan Buddhist forest monk, Achaan Chah Subato, commented: “One day some people came to the master and asked ‘How can you be happy in a world of such impermanence, where you cannot protect your loved ones from harm, illness and death?’ The master held up a glass and said ‘Someone gave me this glass, and I really like this glass. It holds my water admirably and it glistens in the sunlight. I touch it and it rings! One day the wind may blow it off the shelf, or my elbow may knock it from the table. I know this glass is already broken, so I enjoy it incredibly.’” Yet, far from realizing that every experience is singular and every moment precious, the loss of a unifying context often makes me deplore everything as shit. Without meaning. Not worth the effort. I no longer subscribe to my old ultraleftism, which allows me to more easily determine what’s bullshit from what’s not. I’m far from being an iconoclast however, having been troubled at times with a forlorn isolation.
Still, I’m drawn to the tragedies, the disasters, the train wrecks. The psychology of why we can’t look away, indeed, why we want to look, is well documented. I was a fan of “Slow Motion Apocalypse” by Grotus, mostly the music but also the album title. It doesn’t take a radical to realize that we live in a slow motion apocalypse when the planet is being gradually gutted, humanity is being marched (or perhaps sauntered) to the edge of a cliff, and each of us faces a rather grim future. Everyone knows by now that lemmings jumping to their deaths is a myth, perpetuated by Disney whose film crew engineered the whole spectacle. What’s harder to swallow is that so-called revolutionaries seem hell-bent on self-destruction and suicide. Different cliff, same leap, and in our own language, “self-organized.” No triumph despite loss, no heroic self sacrifice that wins out in the end, no nothing.
Nothing is as nothing does.
What's Left? 