Over the weekend, I had a nightmare about global socialism. In short, the organic farming tribes were unable to get along and began to kill each other; there were not enough energy, textiles, nor housing without mold infestations, nor clean running water. There was of course no internet in this dream, since a magnetic warfare preceding the decentralisation took place, so people used vulgar means to signal imminent threat. The great fears people thought would come to pass under capitalism were far scarier in this nightmare.
I woke up in a bed, with birds chirping outside, a family talking while cooking food, and comforted by these notions which were in some perspectives normal, and in others luxuries. The thing I noticed about the middle class luxuries is that in a wider context, they are; and in a narrow context, is used as a means to validate hate against a perceived elite class.
The thing about elite classes, is they tend to think they have the power, control, and intelligence others do not. The thing about that is, people with common sense have power and control. This is not a call to revolution.
Quite the contrary. If you are new here, then you would know revolutionary “faiths” are historically short lived and tend to implode on their intentions. Ellen Ammann, spent a great deal of her life working to expose the detrimental effects of the ideology.
Though I prefer books due to their lack of blue-light displays, I understand some have devices that do not have such endocrine disrupting backlights. Therefore, James H. Billington’s book, Fire In the Minds of Men: Origins of the Revolutionary Faith, is available at your local library or here: https://files.libcom.org/files/Fire%20in%20the%20Minds%20of%20Men.pdf
To which I must give thanks to my friend and illustrator Mark for recommending this book to me. There are so many ideas I had after being educated in public schools in the Midwest and moving to California that turned out to be absolutely horrible. I really learned the meaning of hell being paved with good intentions, and after more hellish experiences in Scandiland (a nickname I learned from another friend), I learned to work more to really look past illusions and tune into the deeper dynamics. The thing about gut instincts is they are quite limited without proper mental training.
Knowledge you do not know is someone else’s power. Knowledge you gain is your peace.
And yet, here is this place, as so many images promise, that appear ideal. They were exposed on 120 or 220 kodak film (I cannot remember if it was 12 or 24 exposures per roll); that banding is from the scanner, and I didn’t try to fix it. The cool part of these images is that my 95 year old aunt in Ohio remembers Norway having red wooden houses with white trim.
There are some benefits to retaining the pleasures of the past as we venture into the future, even if they are impossible to reasonably quantify. That quanta matters.
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