Expectations, realities as we enter 2022
The date counter continues to run. We are entering a new year. Beginnings always give hope. It is accompanied by an expectation that everything will be reset and all troubles will be left behind. It’s a modern purity. Pretty childish. The countdown from 10 to 0, which turns into a mass ritual in hotel halls at the beginning of the new year, is the indicator of this childhood. 10, 9, 8… That’s not how history works. There is a phrase from Marx that I really like. I use it often. Let me remind you here: “People make their own history; But under the conditions they took over.. The past weighs heavily on the minds,” wrote Marx. In other words, he was emphasizing continuity. His project to derive socialist relations from capitalist relations, which he thought was doomed to wear out, rot, and degenerate, was thrown into unexpected places…
It is not correct to subject history to a simplistic distinction between old and new. Maybe it would be appropriate to consider them as articulations with accumulation. What appears to be new is actually somehow derived from existing ones; but in the end, they are the ones who are added to that accumulation. I liken the accumulation of history to a paste that is constantly mixed. These mixing processes create attractive or repulsive new scents to that accumulation; It brings new tastes with its bitter and sweet. But none of them can completely change the paste. Isn’t what we call modernity a reinterpretation of pre-modernity, as pointed out by the likes of sociologist Vattimo? Yes, modernity made the deepest transformation in putty; but even this boiled away in the old (accumulation). The evolution of the stories told to us with claims such as breaking, breaking, changing, and revolution into familiar stories through various pairings also explains this. Of course, I will not discuss their capacity for influence, but for example, the evolution of use value to exchange value, the evolution of wealth into capital, the evolution of ancient state and administrative art into a bureaucratic apparatus, and the evolution of subjects into nations, let’s just think, are these very deep breaks?
In my opinion, the problem is that the passion to make and change history has come into play along with modernization. The modern mentality that was shaped in this way has always pursued a transcendentalism, whether it is an agitation like destructive revolutionism or a more moderate and pure wish, such as achieving prosperity in this world by reviving the golden days of the past. I mean the pathetic simplifications that find their expression in platitudes such as “Tomorrow is ours”, “Tomorrow will be better”. This made history even more tragic than it used to be. Saying “everything will be better tomorrow” and saying “time will turn around” have very different meanings. Kudemâ would say the latter in the face of negative experiences. Here the emphasis is on a cycle, not a revolution. There is no translation in the expression “Tomorrow will be better”. Instead, an assertion of transcendence is emphasized. The difference is already here.
The modern mentality, equipped with derivatives of needful claims of transcendence such as revolution, resurrection or rebirth, differs from the traditional in a fundamental way. I can easily say that I find Kudema more at peace with its history. Everything starts with the rejection of the idea of cycle. Yes, I will not deny that this refusal has an epic side, and that it has an effect that expands the history of will and heroism. These claims are worth mentioning after action, but I also agree that they are very respectable, at least on paper. My intention is not to make an input-output, burden-blessing accounting. But if I have difficulty, I will not hesitate to say this much: Everything that is classified as historical gains has a counterpart in historical losses.
Sir, in 2022, those who live will see that we will be busy with agendas that are not at all different from the agendas we grapple with in 2021. We will experience days when these agendas will either be relatively relieved or get heavier. There’s no need for excitement. Is the settlement of historical issues something that can be expected from history? I’m not so sure about that either.. I guess it’s more about how and where we make history an issue..
