Nov 27, 2016 | Dead Water, Facebook
I’ve been on Facebook for a while, I think since around 2009. I am now in my second week without it. My account hasn’t been deleted, but I have disabled it so I don’t show up there if anyone looks for me. Click on the Facebook link to the right and you’ll get a ‘Page Not Found’ message.
The reason I did it was simple: I opened my account up over breakfast one morning, scrolled back through a few entries, and decided I didn’t want to see any more of what was there. I’ve always said I liked Facebook because I could keep in touch with friends and relatives and post photographs, etc., but the scrolling list of memes and stupidity that morning repelled me, especially the political stuff from either side of the Atlantic.
Signal:Noise was unacceptable.
I’m not going to make any grand claims about how not being on Facebook has made me happier–it’s only been a few days so far after all, but the absence of it as a distraction is a very pleasurable experience. I’ve done more with my time, even if that ‘doing more’ has largely been reading and thinking about writing (and seeking publication). I’ve also started thinking about 2017 and what it may bring, and in doing so have been playing guitar more and cleaning up my old SLR cameras, readying them for use.
I don’t know whether I’ll eventually just delete the Facebook account or leave it in permanent suspension; it still has some uses, I think, so it will stay for a while. I am sure, though, that I want to reclaim my life, and especially want to reclaim my creative life. The creeping ubiquity of Facebook, or at least the way I used it, interferes with that and so, for now, it has gone.
Nov 9, 2016 | Brexit, Dead Water
On 3 November 2004, on an old blog that no longer exists except on my hard drive, I wrote:
The history of the twentieth century was the history of the rise of America: the history of the twenty-first century will be that of its decline and fall. The hope has to be that it doesn’t drag the rest of us down with it.
Although that was written with all the portentousness that a blog can entail, I still hold to that view, although I’m more inclined now to think of a general decline of the West. The election of Trump is an indicator of that, I think, as is the self-inflicted headshot that is Brexit. Moreover, it isn’t clear that the European Union has the stamina or wherewithal to survive either. Given Mr. Putin’s machinations of late, we might approach the close of 2016 contemplating the so-called winning of the Cold War by the West.
How will future generations regard the decades post WW2? As Zhou Enlai is supposed to have said about the impact of the Paris riots of 1968: “it’s too soon to say.” I’ve seen a lot of despair around today, and no doubt there will be a lot more in days to come. I’m not optimistic about what Trumpism will bring, but neither am I apocalyptic.
I have a western perspective on this because that is my culture and upbringing; Trump represents a set of values I find abhorrent within that culture. But it is not the only perspective.
Perhaps a better historical focus should start from the perspective of the cradles of our civilisations: Mesopotamia, Africa, China, and all points in between. But this would require us to take an internationalist view, and popular feeling is running against such a thing. Trump and Brexit represent species of exceptionalism, and we’ll get nowhere unless we can change that.
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