Isn’t there then a new kind of story to write: the story of
this crisis?
But what story is that, and how do you tell it?
You could tell a story that depicts the crassness and ugliness
of our world—plenty of people are telling stories like that. But what is such a
story doing? What is it saying? Maybe it is saying: Ugly, ugly, ugly! But
that’s just mimicry. It tells us what we all already know. It rubs our noses in it. Maybe it is saying:
Things are bad but happiness is still possible, on an individual level—with
more wisdom, with less self-deception. This is a nice idea (I mean that; I’m
not being sarcastic), but in the background, don’t we always seem to hear the
machinery grinding forward, beauty disappearing, madness spreading? The hope is
at best short-term.
Or you could tell a story of radical destruction—the end of
the world, a handful of survivors. Plenty of people are doing that too. Again,
I want to know what such a story is doing, what it is saying. Let’s first note
the obvious: this story is an allegory. The meteorite, the zombie virus, the
irradiating sun beams—are metaphors for our own gradual but seemingly
unstoppable dissolution. What is this metaphor saying? Clearly, it is saying: This is not something we are doing but something that is being done to
us, and we have no power to stop it. And I want to ask: Is that true? Is
that a useful story to keep telling ourselves?
Or we could tell the opposite kind of story: about humanity literally addressing its large-scale problems. But I don’t see
anyone telling that story. For such a story to be compelling, the writer would
first have to take cognizance of the full array of problems (because, as
daunting as each one might be on its own, it is the whole configuration
together that haunts us), and I don’t see anyone doing that either.
And one feels that, if someone did write that story, it would be unconvincing. Which is to say, we not only have no vision for the future, we feel that it is impossible to come up with one.
3 comments:
Kim Stanley Robinson’s “The Ministry of the Future” is abt humanity addressing its big problems.
From what you've told me about that book, and what I read on Wikipedia, it's basically about addressing the climate change crisis and maybe some related economic issues. The "whole configuration" that I refer to above includes a lot of other issues, economic, cultural, even in a sense philosophical. I hope that I can give some more specifics about that in upcoming crumbs, but I think you know the sort of thing I mean. One thing that I need to find a way to talk about is the feeling I have that the climate crisis, while it is a very real threat, has also become the symbol for all problems, something onto which we project our general sense of fear and instability. But if you imagine it solved, while our current approaches to work, technology, schooling, income distribution, manufacturing, food production, etc. persist-- I think it's hard to really feel very hopeful about that situation.
You make a good point abt climate change as a "symbol" for our more general (and vaguer) dread. Dread, I guess, is vague by definition, but what is it we fear? Creep-meisters like Poe (and Henry James and Conrad) knew how to use vagueness to produce a special kind of horror. Maybe DeLillo knows that, too.
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