History is the Present in the Age of Broken Hearts

[tagonist]

I'm rewatching the X-Files. On VHS tapes, which means that instead of a complete season, have a set of selected episodes "chosen by fans" most of which have to do with the larger story arc- government collaboration with aliens to create a hybrid species (or, later, humans immune to the black oil) that can survive colonization. The house only has

Comments

[sophiism]

So nice to read your words again!

". . . this is the age of broken hearts:" When I suggested something like this a year ago, you said that, in fact, all of these murder/suicide rampages were indistinguishable from any other time in history. Do I have that right? Am I misreading what you had said? I bring it up because it gave me great pause.

[tagonist]

Huh.

Crap. Well I don't know. I feel busted here. Murder-suicide rampages are not new, not by a long stretch, nor is their sensational reception (penny-dreadfuls and murder ballads make that clear) but... there's a sort of weird, isolated paranoiac theme here? Maybe this is just the human narrative tendency, the need to see everything in terms of agents and actors, and any time personal misfortune overtakes an individual, or national misfortune overtakes a country, there's a certain proportion who seek violent revenge? Definitely the story is that this is a new surge in the phenomenon, but perhaps that's always the story?

Maybe my point in this article is that one consequence of self-exculpatory persecution fantasies is redemptive violence?

Do you have a link to the other conversation? I may have changed my mind. I'm just worried that I had some insight then that I've lost now.

[sophiism]

Before I find the link, I have to preface it by saying that "the age of broken hearts" is a much more elegant interpretation than mine. :-D

[tagonist]

Blame Ran. He's choosy about his archives, though, so I can't give you a link to his first usage. I may even be able to claim this one...

[tagonist]

Yeah well, shall we just say more of this post is personal navel gazing than I would like? If I've disappeared here, its to spare you all the whining.

Aaron

[anonymous]

I hope this post works, most of the instructions appear to be in Russian (at least I think it's Russian)

A lot of the Crash Advice we've heard over the last few years has centered around the basic idea that we will need to find a way to defend ourselves from the great unwashed masses when they go hungry - but what you're saying is that it's the alienated professionals that we're going to have to look out for, people in expensive clothes with a crazed look in their eye.

I never totally bought into crash-paranoia anyway but this post makes me realise that aside from the general hysteria the advice also carries with it a fair amount of class, um, bias. Maybe I shouldn't be surprised.

Re: Aaron

[tagonist]

Russian, yes. There's also a self-fulfilling prophecy at work in the LATOC vision of the future- if people become so convinced that the mutant zombie bikers are coming for them that they stash buttloads of food and start shooting at strangers they will, indeed, become the kind of dangerous and unwelcome individual that the rest of the world doesn't want around

Re: Aaron

[sophiism]

1.) Violence has a language. It matters how it is performed, and in what context. (This is why I tend to take notice of political assassinations

Re: Aaron

[tagonist]

In re #4 (the rest will have to wait for chores)- Part of why this entry is so obtusely written is that I couldn't actually decide where I fell on this question. One possibility is what you say. The other, though, is that we have a strong, potent, and possibly explosive narrative, which is this: "we have no narrative; we lost it through diffidence, and our own weakness in the face of active subversion." That there is an internal contradiction in this story makes it all the more dangerous. What you say- cheap goods and escapism- are the scourges with which the penitent have flogged themselves since anyone started writing things down, certainly the

forge

[anonymous]

o/t but fyi (re the pics of your forge on the bio page)

"rocket stove" link (1 of many)

http://www.richsoil.com/rocket-stove-mass-heater.jsp

Lara's Dad

Re: forge

[tagonist]

Ah yes, rocket stoves. Always seemed neither fish nor fowl- neither good cookstoves (which are inefficient but make food) nor good mass heaters (which keep your house toasty but not your bread, so to speak) but so damned clever in their construction...

Name

[anonymous]

(Her name was Amy Bishop, not Elizabeth -- thinking of the poet?)

Re: Name

[tagonist]

Ha ha! Damn! Whoops!