Thu 10 May 2007 10:28 PM
Tonight Frontline aired an episode about the man who blocked a short column of tanks during 1989′s Tiananmen Square massacre. It’s currently blowing my mind– maybe it’ll blow yours too.
Mon 19 Feb 2007 4:00 AM
I’ve been obsessed for some time now with the aesthetics and mentalities of certain periods in time. The 70s with its formica, drugs, and pre-AIDS promiscuity. The nuclear 50s with horn-rimmed glasses, buzzed hair, and a red scare played out on black and white television. What will the icons be of our messy era of social repression, tech explosion, and unpopular war? What harsh realities will fade as we move out of one decade into the next? What are the nascent issues now hatching that will grow into the galvanizing trials of a future iconography?
The whole practice of periodizing or fetishizing an era or scene may just be a way to insulate ourselves from responsibility. For those who idealize the beat generation or draw inspiration from the global revolutions of the 60s, there’s a longing for what they imagine those times to be like, but also a relief that, since those times are gone, there is no burden to actually live what in reality must have been an exhausting and alienating life. Was the punk movement filled with marginalized dreamers who just wanted a simpler life and greater autonomy? Or was it just a bunch of assholes who didn’t want to do anything they didn’t want to do?
There are some big problems with our cultural compulsion to put brackets around time periods, perhaps especially in the arbitrary designation of decades. A good example is the current surprise a lot of people have that North Korea is trying to build nuclear weapons, that the world’s ecosystem is turning against us, that we’re in a bloody war in Iraq for no good reason. These are grown-up versions of problems that entered our awareness long ago, but then disappeared once the numbers rolled over to a new set of ten years. Fashions changed, consciousness changed, it seemed like a fresh start.
So maybe it’s useful to look at the ways the present will be iconified and forgotten as it happens. While the dot com boom was technically in the late 90s, I think it will be absorbed as part of the 00s since it could only really be understood in retrospect – the same way a lot of the culture of the late 60s bleeds into the early 70s. That’s an easy one – college students getting rich off of empty, exciting language; venture capitalist rolling on the ecstasy of a wildly inflated market. But what did it set the stage for?
The boom was a huge shift in economy, public philosophy, and awareness who’s effects can easily be overlooked since it can swiftly be dismissed as ‘that crazy dot com bubble.’ What will the safe totems be for this war time depression? The powerlessness of compassionate intellectuals lulled to complacency by economic comfort? More likely it will be blogging. Soldiers blogging, moms blogging, everyone blogging. What was your blog about during the Iraq war? Oh, that was back when I was blogging about kitten attire and mom makeover secrets, it was great. At least the kids of the Vietnam era could take solace in their radicals. Are they out there now and just hidden from us?
Maybe it would also be useful to find out what type of learning mechanism makes this an appealing strategy for assimilating information. Is there a more comprehensive way to digest large pieces of information so that our landmarks of history can be based around events rather than temporal mile markers?
This is not only on my mind as a critic of culture, but on a personal level as well, because I have a similarly limited perception of myself. My idea of who I am is only based on about the last three months. I take no pride in past accomplishments, old friends fade from awareness, a stifling tunnel vision sets in due to the constant reenforcement of a small number of visual landscapes. I use seasons and years to put bookends on themes and personas that are ongoing and fluid. Whenever I go to my hometown of Eugene, OR or down to Santa Cruz where I went to school, I’m flooded with a deeper sense of myself and a wider vocabulary for interpreting my current situation. Upon returning to San Francisco, the vision narrows and the claustrophobia sets in, with little of the recovered identity transcending the boundaries of the bay.
Perhaps it’s a bit conceited to analogize the two periodizations. But if the world can carry around the calm that I feel when a larger portion of my history is at the front of my mind, perhaps we can collectively make better decisions and repeat less mistakes. Maybe a more comprehensive public consumption of history would have the added benefit of allowing compulsive nostalgics to stop dreaming of a scene or era or movement and see the ways they can shape the future by believing in their own perceptions.
Wed 14 Feb 2007 11:33 PM
Many of you will have seen one or both of these two clips. Still, the quality of design here demands another golf clap.
The first makes a graphic reality of middle-school teachers’ dreams. It is the cartographer’s logic summarizing Middle Eastern geopolitics.
This second is a similar paired down mother-google-earth, time lapse map of US conflict. Or rather, an atlas. The US interests are astonishingly global.
It is worth more as an education on forgotten violence, than as a tacky face-off between political parties for fewest war fatalities.
Other inclusions about Secret CIA Prisons, the Retaking of Fallujah and Intelligence footage are jolt to the preferred mood. The viewer, me, was accustomed to the tone of the aforementioned, mildly apolitical forays into mappage.
Check out the rest of the site. I can’t work out whether it is the creation of socially motivated researchers or entrapment by a government agency, but I like it…
Another impeccably designed map. Satisfyingly simple, like a venn diagram.
There’s also a belter about religions’ roles in all the comedy we call humanness.
Good Night and God Design.
Sat 13 Jan 2007 11:15 AM
Just a quick update to my predictions and then some laughs, in a catch-all post:
So a few people have expressed surprise at my preference for a troop surge since it theoretically puts me in agreement with Bush, whom people know I think of as a psychopath.
Like anything, I think there’s a right and a wrong way to do things. In my perfect world, Bush would realize the error of his ways and send upwards of 30,000 troops to Iraq for a nonnegotiable term of 6-8 months. He would include, at the same time, well over $6 billion in reconstruction packages to native Iraqis that are only usable for the most vital infrastructure repairs. Priority number one would be getting everyone water and electricity. All of this with a PR/diplomatic campaign that makes clear to everyone this change in priority, while shifting the responsibility of secure urban areas to the local army and police.
A recent article in the New Yorker poses the ‘war on terror’ as primarily a war of information that we are badly losing. Our arrogance and lack of compassion are playing right into the hands of the insurgency. We need to change our global image through both spin and practice.
Hit that comments button to let me know what you think.
As far as Somalia, it looks like a whole new batch of problems is just beginning. The Ethiopian forces misplayed their hand a bit, announcing they would be leaving as soon as possible due to the poverty of their own country. This seemed to be an attempt to get other countries in the area to commit forces, but despite promises from those countries, no troops have shown up. Shortly thereafter, local militiamen started attacking the presidential palace.
Meanwhile the pentagon is patting themselves on the back for a job well-done. Never mind the starving, angry people with guns, we got those damn al Qaeda!
So now that I’ve made you read my dangerously naive opinions about world events, I’d like to give something back:
Have you ever played any early Final Fantasy games? I think this is genius …
Mon 1 Jan 2007 5:21 PM
If there’s one thing our readers come to Hesitating for, it’s our razor sharp insight into global events and global fashion. Here’s Hesitating’s vision of 2007, or as we like to call it, DoubleBond (Casino Royale anyone?):
Keith on Iraq:
Ideally, we’d see a large, temporary troop surge all over Iraq, and a change in strategy to rebuilding infrastructure without the inflated bidding wars. I’m not sure of the pitfalls in giving local workers the money to rebuild their own cities, but this seems like a good idea. If the US military can change their position there from a dubious security force to providers of necessities, then this could ease diplomacy and provide a foundation for a complete withdrawal. What will actually happen? More foot dragging, a half-hearted and ineffectual troop surge without a significant shift in strategy, a precipitous withdrawal, or a strange cocktail of all three. There is no such thing as a good idea about Iraq, so let me have it for this one.
Keith on Somalia:
I only became aware of the continent of Africa a few days ago, but it would be disingenuous of me to refrain from commenting on something I know nothing about since this is, in fact, a blog. 2007 could be a turn around year for Somalia. The past week has seen a push of Ethiopian forces into Mogadishu, overthrowing a nascent Islamic force there. Ethiopia claims that this force posed a regional threat, but from what I can tell it had barely even taken control of Mogadishu before the surge. The US seems to be behind the curtain, supporting Ethiopia to crush an Islamic uprising. Meanwhile floods are killing and starving people in the rural parts of the country. A former veterinarian turned transitional Prime Minister, Ali Mohammed Gedi, has demanded that the locals turn in their guns. The methods by which power was taken were shady – and bloody, but it seems like there’s a shred of hope for the first time in years.
Mark on fashion:
2007 will see the rise and fall of the cummerbund. An immediate surge in sales of the antiquated waist-wear will follow 2007′s release of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix which will feature them on such actors as Gary Oldman, Allan Rickman, Ralph Feinnes, and newcomer, playing yet another incarnation of Professor Dumbledor following Michael Gambon’s death in early february 2007, John Goodman. The trend will be incorporated into cummerbunds for day, night, work, and golf. Sadly, by November 2007, cummerbunds will again loose their practicality and the headline in Elle will be: ‘Come-On’erbunds: Why Catch Crumbs This Winter When You Could Catch the Whole Loaf! Aprons will be offered as an alternative. They still hide the bottom of the tummy as it is allowed to sag over one’s pants, but with the added bonus of pockets. Then is pockets, pockets, pockets till 2008.
Happy New Year everybody!