Light in the Darkness

"As our circle of knowledge expands, so does the circumference of darkness surrounding it."

-- Simone Weil

The greatest political memoir of our time: Diana Johnstone's Circle in the Darkness:

When individuals are bunched into groups assigned intrinsic qualities — from victimhood to racism — normal human ties of mutual concern, shared purpose, comprehension and compassion are severed. In a grotesque development, new gender identities are invented, whose ‘cause’ overshadows the real problems of genuinely disadvantaged people. Economic issues are forgotten as groups mobilize solely to police attitudes. Billionaires prosper more than ever before, while down below people bicker over safe spaces and toilet use.

The countries of the Western world are in a state of schizophrenic overconfidence and self-doubt. Their leaders persist in proclaiming ‘our values’ as the model for the rest of humanity, while their own people are increasingly divided and disillusioned. 

The 18th century was the century of the liberated mind. The 19th century was the century of Great Men. The 20th century was the century of the common man. And the 21st century looks like it may become a negation of all of them. The century of nobody at all.

Irrationality and censorship restore chains to thought. Great Men are only statues to be demolished. The common man, once hailed as the hero of a radiant future, has been degraded to a superfluous nuisance, probably racist and homophobic. Ordinary folks have been reassigned from the glorious concept of ‘the people’ to their derogatory redefinition under the rubric of populism and Trump deplorables.

People are reduced to ‘consumers,’ while being told that by consuming, they are destroying the planet. Identity Politics has not only turned people against each other by group, but its late manifestation, Vegan speciesism, even turns people against people altogether, for being an overprivileged life form.

What will our future be? Currently we live in a dystopia of deceit.  But the failure of our leaders to deal adequately with a health crisis and their hostility to an economic system that serves people rather than the wealth of elites are marking the Western world as a massive failure. Will realization of this failure cause the people to revolt as the Yellow Vests have, or will it break the people and further diminish them?

The ePub can be found here.