What Times Are These?

Keith Haring, "Untitled"

Jeff—Saturday

I’ve been back in the US for less than a week and the primary question I’m asked after the initial good cheer questions runs along the line of, “So, how’s Europe doing these days?”

As if I know.  Neither Boris nor Jean-Claude are confiding in me at the moment, and Vladimir is too busy giving riding lessons to his new buddy, Kim Jong Un, to call me with his plans. 

  

Which leaves me to random anecdotal moments, and bits and snatches of conversations as the possible realm for yielding any more intelligence than is available to the general public via the media.

That said, I just read this piece in Greece’s Ekathimerini—Athens’ paper of record—expressing a position that, even if not accurate, plays precisely into the concerns I’ve heard expressed by many. The article was also republished in the US’ largest circulation Greek-American newspaper, The National Herald.

The article begins with this headline: “US will ‘abandon’ Greece as it did with the Kurds, Russia’s EU ambassador warns.”

Russia’s EU ambassador Vladimir Chizhov has criticized a defense deal signed between Athens and Washington, while warning that the US might “abandon” Greece, as it did with the Kurds in Syria.

In an interview with TASS news agency on the sidelines of a conference on Rhodes island Tuesday, Chizhov said Greece was “wrong” to sign the revised defense deal with the US.

“You need to ask the Greek side why they made such a decision. But I do not rule out the possibility that they did so amid tensions between the US and Turkey. However, this does not mean that this decision is well weighed for the future,” Chizhov said.

Turning to Turkey’s military offensive in northeast Syria, the Russian envoy added: “We had warned the Kurds that the Americans will abandon them. And here, in Rhodes, I can personally warn the Greeks about it, that they will have the same fate as the Kurds.”

As for what the future will bring, I think the players are fixed, it’s just the plot lines that are left to play out.

Ahh, and to think but I week ago I was here.

In Tuscany. :(

To better times.

—Jeff 

My Upcoming Events

Saturday, November 2, 4:00-5:00 PM

Dallas, TX

BOUCHERCON–Hyatt Regency Dallas

Moderating, “If I Could Turn Back Time,” with Joe Clifford, Laura McHugh, Hannah McKinnon, Lissa Marie Redmond, and Scott Von Doviak

Sunday, November 3, 8:30-9:30 AM

Dallas, TX

BOUCHERCON –Hyatt Regency Dallas

Panelist, “Detectives Overseas” with Ian Hamilton, Ragnar Jonasson, Michael Sears, and Stanley Trollip, moderated by Nancy Tingley

it's not far from a nightmare...Marguerite Duras on the future

Marguerite Duras,  the influential post-war French novelist and filmmaker and former Resistant spoke in 1985 of what the world would be like in the 2000's.

Her interview, with a link below, is scarily correct and on target. Some writers we know write about the future: William Gibson, Margaret Atwood, Octavia Butler, Philip K. Dick, Ursula Le Guin. We expect them to find insights about how humans might live. But what about someone like Marguerite Duras who grew up in colonial French Indochina? She had important things to say about the 20th century

Photonics researcher Antoine Wojdyla stumbled across an interview with Duras from September 1985 in the French magazine Les Inrocks. Struck by Duras' perspective on technology and deception, he translated the article.

It's strange and remarkable, an uncanny interpretation of our present. You can hear some of it here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8-B9Ezr4VI

Her statement can be seen as a kind of pre-answer to Google and wearables and the quantified self. When former Google CEO Eric Schmidt told the Wall Street Journal in 2010, "I actually think most people don't want Google to answer their questions. They want Google to tell them what they should be doing next." That's what Duras means when she says, "In the 2000s, there will only be answers."

In any case, here's Duras as translated by Wojdyla:

In the 2000s, there will be only answers. The demand will be such that there will only be answers. All texts will be answers, in fact. I believe that man will be literally drowned in information, in constant information. About his body, his corporeal future, his health, his family life, his salary, his leisure.

It's not far from a nightmare. There will be nobody reading anymore.

They will see television. We will have screens everywhere, in the kitchen, in the restrooms, in the office, in the streets.

Where will we be? When we watch television, where are we? We're not alone.

We will no longer travel, it will no longer be necessary to travel. When you can travel around the world in eight days or a fortnight, why would you?

In traveling, there is the time of the travel. Traveling is not seeing things in a rapid succession, it's seeing and living in the same instant. Living from the travel, that will no longer be possible.

Everything will be clogged, everything will have been already invested.

The seas will remain, nevertheless, and the oceans.

And reading. People will rediscover that. A man, one day, will read. And everything will start again.

We'll encounter a time where everything will be free. Meaning that answers, at that time, will be granted less consideration. It will start like this, with indiscipline, a risk taken by a human against himself. The day where he will be left alone again with his misfortunes, and his happiness, only that those will depend on himself.

Maybe those who will get over this misstep will be the heroes of the future.

It's very likely, let's hope there will be some left.

Wow...it's amazing that in 1985 that she could see our present world so clearly.
Cara - Tuesday