This is the midweek version of Culture Study — the newsletter from Anne Helen Petersen, which you can read about here. If you like it and want more like it in your inbox, consider subscribing.
Are you familiar with William Gibson's most recent two books, The Peripheral and Agency? In those, our world experienced a slow motion catastrophe he calls the jackpot. It's a combination of climate disaster, war, toxic politics, and unrestrained capitalism. We are in the jackpot right freaking now.
Great, as ever, friend. I'm sure the last thing you need right now is more dystopian novel recommendations, but my favorite is Moon of the Crusted Snow by Waubgeshig Rice. It's set on an Indigenous Reserve in the far Canadian north. Cell and satellite TV goes out. Then power. No word comes from the "outside world." It really seems like how things could go. I listened to the audio version and loved it.
I loved reading this. So strongly written and true. Like Chris, I want to recommend a book -- Octavia Butler's "The Parable of the Sower," which is incredibly well written and scares the crap out of me because I think it's the most accurate depiction of climate change combined with slow societal erosion we have, and it was published in 1993.
Apologies in advance for the sentence-case long-form sincerity. I thought this was beautifully written and it absolutely captured the unsettled emotion of the moment.
And sure, "Nothing happens unless you move." But I remain troubled by the lack of a way forward: "Maybe that looks like organizing. Maybe that looks like voting." I've got lots of experience in organizing and voting, but at this point, how is that enough? Best case scenario, we move and fight and organize until a new (BIDEN!) administration arrives in January? And we get a slightly improved Congress still operating under obsolete rules? Or. until some half-baked legislative half-measures gets passed by some carefully centrist legislators? But mostly in already-blue states?
I'm yelling at people on twitter as fast and as loudly as I can, but mere "reimaginings of how society could work" is not getting us anywhere, and certainly not fast enough. Sorry. It's all you describe here, but worse.
Angry, I hear you and I agree with you. But I also think, at the risk of sounding like a dorky chode, that part of the initial work is just pushing people to think beyond what they've accepted as, well, the acceptable options. And no, voting doesn't fix much if the elected congress doesn't do something — including but not limited to getting rid of the filibuster. But our imaginations have to expand as well.
Are you familiar with William Gibson's most recent two books, The Peripheral and Agency? In those, our world experienced a slow motion catastrophe he calls the jackpot. It's a combination of climate disaster, war, toxic politics, and unrestrained capitalism. We are in the jackpot right freaking now.
Great, as ever, friend. I'm sure the last thing you need right now is more dystopian novel recommendations, but my favorite is Moon of the Crusted Snow by Waubgeshig Rice. It's set on an Indigenous Reserve in the far Canadian north. Cell and satellite TV goes out. Then power. No word comes from the "outside world." It really seems like how things could go. I listened to the audio version and loved it.
https://libro.fm/audiobooks/9781773053769-moon-of-the-crusted-snow
Oh this is VERY up my alley. Can't wait til you get to The New Wilderness and we can talk about it.
You'll love Moon of the Crusted Snow! A fast read and gripping. Here's an interview with him, too, about how the pandemic started to reflect a storyline in his book: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/unreserved/why-stories-matter-now-more-than-ever-1.5526331/blew-my-mind-how-waubgeshig-rice-s-post-apocalyptic-storyline-became-a-reality-1.5526691
Just grabbed the audio version.
I loved reading this. So strongly written and true. Like Chris, I want to recommend a book -- Octavia Butler's "The Parable of the Sower," which is incredibly well written and scares the crap out of me because I think it's the most accurate depiction of climate change combined with slow societal erosion we have, and it was published in 1993.
Apologies in advance for the sentence-case long-form sincerity. I thought this was beautifully written and it absolutely captured the unsettled emotion of the moment.
And sure, "Nothing happens unless you move." But I remain troubled by the lack of a way forward: "Maybe that looks like organizing. Maybe that looks like voting." I've got lots of experience in organizing and voting, but at this point, how is that enough? Best case scenario, we move and fight and organize until a new (BIDEN!) administration arrives in January? And we get a slightly improved Congress still operating under obsolete rules? Or. until some half-baked legislative half-measures gets passed by some carefully centrist legislators? But mostly in already-blue states?
I'm yelling at people on twitter as fast and as loudly as I can, but mere "reimaginings of how society could work" is not getting us anywhere, and certainly not fast enough. Sorry. It's all you describe here, but worse.
Angry, I hear you and I agree with you. But I also think, at the risk of sounding like a dorky chode, that part of the initial work is just pushing people to think beyond what they've accepted as, well, the acceptable options. And no, voting doesn't fix much if the elected congress doesn't do something — including but not limited to getting rid of the filibuster. But our imaginations have to expand as well.
OMG YOU AND BEN SASSE!