I often find that if I stop for a second and listen to the world that surrounds me (including all the digital and sensory media overloads), it all blends into a strange kind of peaceful mix. Perhaps that is what maximalism or the new complexity is. But all this is to say that I’d like to make a call for a new type of peace in 2010.
When I look out into the world through my often mediated gaze, I see senseless wars for national and transnational greed, unspeakable human atrocities committed across the globe against the very earth itself, not to mention it’s inhabitants, a chronically collapsing economic system always already infused with it’s own failure, enslavement of individuals akin to indentured servitude from New York to New Delhi and everywhere in between, and a general disregard for the idea and practice of human rights.
But I also see in this hyperactive Pandora’s box an undying commitment (maybe this is, in a way, what Adorno saw as well in his essay on commitment in Minima Moralia) to realize a peaceful world. And in this belief, there still remains a struggle, a radically human struggle, to go beyond the constraints of nation-state and ideological-state to listen to the melange of sounds and find a way through dialogue and discourse. And so in 2010 I send wishes for new listening experiences and new opportunities for dialogue . From the extremes of humanity’s socio economic possibilities in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, anything seems possible, even peace for a change.
And for the very few people who do look at this blog, I wish you a peaceful and safe new year.
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