6-a.m. thoughts before work
Identifying the possibilities for freedom is an arduous task indeed. Those possibilities, if any, are sown alongside the all-too-real violence of everyday life. It takes a certain kind of crazy to insist on their existence.
We devote time to joining, studying, and criticizing ‘the Left’ because the Left has been the most realistic in its utopianism. The Left is scarcely indistinguishable from its enemy (no, not the Right), and for that reason merits our attention. For that which we hate the most is also, potentially, the source of our very freedom.
The Right scorned such a project. If we look with any interest (dare I say, longing!) to the Right today, it is only as a foil. The Right can remind the Left how to identify those very emancipatory possibilities. But if so, it is only because today’s Right has more of Leftism about it than of feudal reactionism. The Right too will in time only be justified by the extent of its Leftism.
Identifying possibilities for freedom isn’t good enough. Once there existed the confidence to also intervene actively for one possibility over others. The time for confidence has passed. Yet the urgency remains.
What might we do now that we have a blank slate? Our own utopianism has been liberated from confidence.