Imagining the real. Really imagining. There and here, blending and blurring, all together. Hayao Miyazaki, Shuna’s Journey. Christopher de Bellaigue on the possibilities of ‘an unstoppable spiral of state violence and popular fury’ in Iran. Alexander Baunov on Russia’s objectives. 2022 is set to be ‘a fabulous year’ for some. Ali Ansari on ‘failures of imagination’ in Iran.
Recently I found myself at Suirakuen, a Japanese garden located in Fukushima prefecture, and as I took in the landscape, my mind inevitably started drawing connections with themes of decline and decay. It is that time of the year. In a prior note, I suggested that polycrisis is effectively something of a placeholder concept for trying to name and narrate being caught up in conditions of socio-political entropy.
This was Karl Jaspers considering the ‘new fact’ of atomic weapons in his 1958 book, The Atomic Bomb and the Future of Man . As the ‘new fact’ became old, and the Cold War finished with a whimper and not a bang, the nuclear threat faded from our collective view. At some point, most of us stopped asking these questions that so concerned Jaspers. Yet the problem never disappeared.
‘All alike burned in its fire’ - a line taken from the fragment below - captures something powerful about the impact of disasters, moments when worlds bend and break. How to make sense of the nonsensical? How to comprehend the incomprehensible? What to do when reality outstrips imagination? Robert McLiam Wilson on the trial for the 2016 truck attack in Nice, France.
Writing in 1891, Frederick Engels reflected on Karl Marx’s ‘remarkable gift’ for That is our challenge. One of the ways that Adam Tooze has sought to respond is through adopting the frame of polycrisis, which he has further outlined in a new FT piece and accompanying Chartbook entry. The concept intuitively fits. It captures something in the air.
The framing of these notes around the the idea of imperfection is very deliberate. Partly it is about the imperfection of the subject matter - humans and the shared worlds will build, bend, and break - but also the analysis provided, inevitably partial and incomplete. There is something remarkably freeing about being honest about the limits of knowledge and comprehension.
What to make of the world we find ourselves in? In the last note, I was considering how we collectively understand the trajectory of the pandemic, and the difficulty of ascribing meanings to what has unfolded. Part of the challenge is the odd combination of a broadly shared condition - the ‘pan’ in pandemic - with a huge range of experiences and outcomes.
Ōe no Chisato, Poem 23 from One Hundred Poets, One Poem Each ( Hyakunin Isshu ) Autumn, that most Japanese of seasons, has arrived again. The beauty of the leaves and sky, tinged with the deep melancholy that comes with decay. That distinct sense of loss and sadness autumn provokes, these feelings are in the air as I reflect further on where we collectively find ourselves.
With this note, I would like to thank and welcome new readers, and provide an update on what I am exploring through this Substack. By training, I am a scholar of politics and international relations, and hold positions at universities in Australia and Japan, the former my country of origin, the latter my country of residence.
As we struggle to make sense of our ‘unnamable present’, one logical direction to turn is backwards. Historical analogs are sought out, comparisons are offered, and sooner or later, a reference is inevitably made to the Nazis. Certainly, historical reflection is a vital part of comprehending and acting in the world, but the manner in which it can work as a guide is less straightforward than what is often hoped.
Listening to a major podcast on one of the most important questions of our time, I was struck by a judgement made by the guest, who spoke of policy being used to encourage people to make ‘right choices’. The specific issue and platform are less important than the more general mentality it encapsulated.