“I think you’re wrong about the instinct for beauty. Human beings lost that when the Berlin Wall came down. I’m not going to get into another argument with you about the Soviet Union, but when it died so did history. I think of the twentieth century as one long question, and in the end we got the answer wrong. Aren’t we unfortunate babies to be born when the world ended?”
I’ve befriended a Kosovar Albanian here in the tax haven. She lives in Belgium but only 200 meters from the border. What a world of difference that line makes, when I first met her, I asked about the Prime Minister of Luxembourg who had visited the LLC that same day and she knew nothing about him, “je suis belge” she politely reminded me and a Luxembourger. She could answer any questions we had about her side of the border but not what is happening just 200 meters away.
I chatted with her at the LLC yesterday and she asked why I am interested in Albanians, most people either don’t know about them or think of mafiosos, crime, or Bergtürken. I’m sure it’s a puzzle for her, I have no relationship with the country, why would I find it interesting? The unfortunate truth is that I do not have an answer, it’s an interesting place and I like to imagine it would have been a comfortable academic niche, how many books have been written about Albania? The answer I ended up giving her was revealing, I told her that the Balkans live in history, history can still mean progress.
The Albanian was shocked by my answer. How can anyone mention progress and the Balkans in the same sentence?! She tried to explain to me that I am mistaken, that the people of the Balkans have a medieval mindset (this only after we spend a half hour denouncing everything Serbian). I stuck by my guns and explained what I meant. The people of the Balkans and the eastern Europe – the former communist world – have an intellectualism about them that we in the west simply lack (it is at this point that I’m sure she decided I was mentally ill, Albanians and intellectual in the same sentence). Living through the end of a social system reminds you that the world is not static, that things can get worse, but that they can also get better. The Russians are more aware of this than anyone else (“These Russians are a step ahead I tell ya”) they lived through a great tragedy, indeed they are living through it again. Eastern Europeans can see the beauty in the world, or what’s left of it anyways.
I think I made this point, not because I actually believe it, but because of how I feel living in a tax haven. The feeling that I am living in the end of history is immense, the buildings are floating glass structures designed to look like they are impossible to build, I go to class next to bright red skyscrapers that signal capital’s unmitigated victory. There is no resistance here, when I go to the city, I see that the tax haven’s DSA equivalent is equally effective, they tagged some construction barriers with slogans, but they are not simple demands, but a long and nuanced takes about how climate justice cannot exist without gender equality. A paragraph of graffiti! What happened to “Peace, land, and bread?!”
I often feel defeated these days. What meaning can I find in a tax haven? I am making friends, but it still feels pointless, my research brings me joy, but I need more. I have been watching the British media destroy Salley Rooney for taking a stand, how dare she stand up for her own principles, the Israeli’s must have unfettered access to popular media! I am trying to get a copy of her book, Beautiful World, to read. I pirated a copy after the Daily Mail published a screed calling the Irish author a communist. I opened and will close this post with extracts from the book, it seems like a meaningful read, I hope they have a copy at the LLC.
“I know that you personally feel the world ceased to be beautiful after the fall of the Soviet Union. (As an aside, isn’t it curious that this event coincided almost exactly with the date of your birth? It might help explain why you feel so much in common with Jesus, who I think also believed himself to be a harbinger of the apocalypse.) But do you ever experience a sort of diluted, personalised version of that feeling, as if your own life, your own world, has slowly but perceptibly become an uglier place? Or even a sense that while you used to be in step with the cultural discourse, you’re not anymore, and you feel yourself adrift from the world of ideas, alienated, with no intellectual home? Maybe it is about our specific historical moment, or maybe it’s just about getting older and disillusioned, and it happens to everyone. When I look back on what we were like when we first met, I don’t think we were really wrong about anything, except about ourselves. The ideas were right, but the mistake was that we thought we mattered. Well, we’ve both had that particular error ground out of us in different ways – me by achieving precisely nothing in over a decade of adult life, and you (if you’ll forgive me) by achieving as much as you possibly could and still not making one grain of difference to the smooth functioning of the capitalist system. When we were young, we thought our responsibilities stretched out to encompass the earth and everything that lived on it. And now we have to content ourselves with trying not to let down our loved ones, trying not to use too much plastic, and in your case trying to write an interesting book once every few years.”
Signed,
Andrew (Pfannkuche)
Normal Thoughts 