I get to be as self-indulgent as I want without wasting anyone's time. Guilt-free solipsism -- excellent!

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My favorite writer, Martin Amis, has written a wide-ranging piece for the Guardian about the events of the last week and where the world goes from here. His incredible gift for language, when brought to bear on what has happened to all of us, makes things hurt more. He also offers some gems of insight, producing the familiar brain jolt that takes place when one realizes that a few artfully chosen and arranged words have just enabled one to "get it".

While the jolts make me feel better and more hopeful, in a reassuring pre-September 11th kind of way, my reaction is also more complicated now. Whereas before, a jolt cheered me by embodying the human ability to learn and communicate that learning, insights like Amis's now feel like a reminder of a time -- lo these seven days -- when it all seemed more academic than it does now.

Guess I'm a little pessimistic at the moment. Right now, I'm hoping that the Afghan council of clerics proves me wrong. And if they fail to, I'm hoping President Bush does. Although neither of them is likely to help me keep my job.

:-) :-( ;-)

One comment of Amis's that particularly struck me:

Weirdly, the world suddenly feels bipolar. All over again the west confronts an irrationalist, agonistic, theocratic/ ideocratic system which is essentially and unappeasably opposed to its existence. The old enemy was a superpower; the new enemy isn't even a state. In the end, the USSR was broken by its own contradictions and abnormalities, forced to realise, in Martin Malia's words, that "there is no such thing as socialism, and the Soviet Union built it". Then, too, socialism was a modernist, indeed a futurist, experiment, whereas militant fundamentalism is convulsed in a late-medieval phase of its evolution. We would have to sit through a renaissance and a reformation, and then await an enlightenment. And we're not going to do that.

I'd like to apologize for how poorly written this entry has been, particularly the deeply unsatisfying trope of the "jolt". But I have the morning off, and I want to have breakfast with my wife before I head off to my "strongly-encouraged-group-counseling-session-with-coworkers".


| posted by Alex at 10:04 AM