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. It also feels a necessary counter to the constant bluster of confident assertions, predictions and models that tend to dominate. These notes are my attempts to try to make sense of where we find ourselves, and to offer provocations or contrasts that might help reveal certain features or dynamics of a shared world that is undergoing stress and strain. In doing so, the incomplete nature of these notes are also consciously meant an invitation to those reading to continue that process of thought. The circle will always remain open.
With that logic in mind, and continuing an approach that emphasises experimentation, this note is pulling together fragments from different things I am reading. The wager is that compiling and ordering them in a certain manner might stimulate thought and provoke further examination.
In Conrad’s novella Typhoon, the lull is the omen of a catastrophe foretold. Everything seems to be in a state of suspension that could unravel at any moment. The lull exists only against the backdrop of a cataclysmic event, provisionally deferred and yet constantly prefigured. Nothing happens, but everything feels “tense and unsafe like a slender hair holding a sword suspended over [one’s] head.”
Nicolas Guilhot in an ambitious - but perhaps not fully successful - essay, in which he considers catastrophe, the end of history, and much more about our contemporary condition. Guilhot engages with the work of Günther Anders, whose work I have explored in a conversation with Elke Schwarz.
The spectacle of fringe libertarianism crashing and burning on contact with the real world would be funny if we didn’t have to live through the consequences.
One fantasy that persists among press and politicians alike is that the maelstrom of 21st-century politics is an aberration, and a return to the mean of stable late 20th-century government is just around the corner – perhaps with a better calibre of leader. It isn’t. For the foreseeable future, we face a series of overlapping crises of such magnitude that they require leaders of epoch-making imagination and resourcefulness to meet them.
James Butler on disfunction in UK politics.
“I came here in case I could find anything and to clear up a bit,” he said. “But there is nothing,” he said, gesturing with a sweep of his arm at the wreckage.
“The calculation of the enemy is beyond common sense,” he said. “What they cannot take, they simply destroy.”
Carlotta Gall on destroyed towns in Ukraine.
There is so much focus on rebranding efforts like this and all of this window dressing and, in the meantime, the staff are really struggling to get the work done.
The source said good people were slowly forced out, especially meteorologists: “There is such a strangled culture there now.”
Rick Morton on disfunction in Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology.
Some fragile thing has broken. Some certainty, some confidence in the world I didn’t even know was there.
Hugh Raffles, The Book of Unconformities: Speculations on Lost Time, is a wonderful, poetic book that explores the layers of experience and memory, marked in our landscapes and minds.
They sawed off the branches on which they were sitting
And, shouting, exchanged knowledge of
How one might saw faster, and fell
Crashing into the depths, and those who looked on
Shook their heads as they sawed and
Went on sawing.
Bertolt Brecht, ‘They sawed off the branches’ from The Collected Poems. As Michael Wood observes, Brecht’s approach ‘leaves the reader or spectator with no option except thinking.’