Fear of the Present

Some people suffer from anxiety. Amongst the different anxieties is anticipatory anxiety. Anticipatory anxiety is excessive worry about a future event. We could label this as mellophobia – a fear of the future; from μέλλο (mello) meaning future and Φόβος (phobos) meaning fear.

Although individuals in our society suffer from this fear of the future; rather, our culture seems to suffer from a fear of the past and/or a fear of the present. If not a fear of the present and past, then certainly an addiction to the future.

Indeed, we are about to celebrate this addiction with New Years Day. New Years Day: a day on which we resolve to make changes (for the better) in our lives, a day on which last year’s calendar is taken down and a new one hung up, a day on which we look to new beginnings and anticipate the good things to come.

Our culture is almost predicated on the future. It’s called progress. And progress we must. Progress is good, progress is the epitome of modernity. Progress proves the worth of our society and culture. We measure it with growth. Growth in the economy primarily; growth in prosperity, growth in technology, growth in the GDP.

‘Grow, grow, grow’ is the rallying call of progress and our addiction to the future.

But, what are we running from? What are we running towards? Why is the future more important than the past, let alone the present?

Originally progress simply meant to take a forward step. Since the 1600s it has come to attain the sense of moving towards something better.

We must ask though, better than what? Importantly too, we must ask, better for whom?

Our (westernised) sense of time with a past, present, and future is moulded on a seamless, linear concept. Non-westernised cultures, however, conceive time in more circular, or spiral, ways.

Vanessa Machado de Oliviera notes that this seamless, linear concept of time is one of the promises of modernity. But, there is a violence in this promise. It is, states Oliviera, ‘resting on the delegitimation and elimination of other knowledge systems.’ ¹

Our (westernised) concept of time and the notion of progress underpins European colonisation as well as exploitation of nature. Our (westernised) notion of progress too often includes the ideology of defeating nature; the conquest of nature as it has been labelled.

Ironically, our addiction to the future ensures that we are unable to recognise the harms that are done to other people and to nature. We are so focussed on looking to the future that we fail to notice the harms that become manifest in our wake.

Furthermore, our addiction to the future can stymie our individual human development. The human development journey consists of various stages. At each stage there are lessons to learn, skills to be acquired, and concepts to be incorporated into our growing understanding of ourselves and the world.

One psychologist who has mapped this developmental journey very well is the eco-psychologist Bill Plotkin.² Without going into details of his map, Plotkin does note that of the eight stages, most westernised people get stuck in what he calls patho-adolescence. However. Plotkin, and other similar psychologists claim that it is always possible to re-visit earlier stages (even in later life) to learn and incorporate the lessons from earlier stages.

But, our future-addiction inhibits this. The future, in modernity, is always better than the past, it always brings with it improvement. Returning to an earlier time, or stage, is an admission of failure and a worsening of circumstances.

Such future-oriented thinking is a mistake. Ironically, being focussed on the future prevents us from growing as a human.

So, as we acknowledge the New Year let us begin the process of overcoming our fear of the past and present. Let us start to overcome our addiction to the future.

Notes:

1. Vanessa Machado de Oliviera, Hospicing Modernity, North Atlantic Books, Berkely, California, 2021

2. See especially, Bill Plotkin, Nature and the Human Soul, New World Library, Novato, California, 2008

Presenting Time

Where I live (in Australia) at this time of year Christmas is acknowledged, even if not celebrated. For many people and families that means it is a time of giving presents.

Present: to give a gift to someone. This is the sense in which the word present is used in this context.

However, I wonder how many people know that there is a connection to this meaning of present and the temporal meaning, i.e. the present time, as distinct from the past or the future.

The connection may not seem apparent. Let’s trace the etymological roots of the two meanings.

To give the gift of a present literally means to place an object in front of someone – in their presence. It comes from pre meaning before or spatially in front of, and the Latin esse meaning to be. Hence, we get the idea of something being in front of,

Another way in which present can be thought is that of one person being in the presence of another. That is, literally standing before someone else, and in their immediate vicinity. When we think of it this way it is possible to recognise this as being both in the immediate vicinity spatially, as well as being present at the same time as the other person.

How else would someone be in the presence of another unless it was in the same location and at the same time?

When we consider all this then it is possible to recognise the strong connection between giving a gift of a present and that of the present time.

Perhaps the greatest present that we can offer another person, and ourselves, at this time is the gift of being present at this time, now, the present.

In a world that seems fixated on the future – whether hopeful or expect of a better future, or anxious and fearful of what is to come – living in and for the present is a sane way to life.

Let us present ourselves a present of the present moment.

Lest - Book Review

It has been said that the first casualty in war is the truth. Author Mark Dapin in Lest,¹ is keen to ensure that the casualty list grows no longer. Before proceeding further it is important to clarify for readers of this review that Lest is a book about the myths surrounding Australian military actions.

This is not an anti-war book, nor is it a book glorifying war. Even the author himself is ambivalent to an extent. Of Australian involvement in Afghanistan he writes that ‘had I been a bit younger, a lot braver, and considerably more capable, I would have considered joining the military myself.’ A few pages (and two years) later he tells us that ‘I and about 200,000 other people marched in Sydney against the looming Iraq War.’ Dapin’s openness and honesty in this revelation of ambivalence is refreshing and allows the reader to feel an empathy with the author – he is just like us; a bit uncertain, a bit conflicted, and wholly human.

Perhaps the most oft repeated phrase in Lest is ‘it did not happen,’ although he does once, in a pique of anger, use a more emotive phrase. He relates an episode of when he was interviewed on radio and a caller claimed that Vietnam vets were not allowed to march on Anzac Day. ‘That’s nonsense,’ he rails.

Time and time again Dapin cites an event and then shows that it is an entirely imagined happening. Whether it be bands of women handing out white feathers, or returning Vietnam soldiers being spat upon; with meticulous research Dapin shows that such incidents simply did not happen.

Most Australians, and New Zealanders, will be aware of the wars referred to in the book – World Wars 1 and 2, Vietnam, Korea, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Dapin devotes a whole chapter to one war that most Australians, and New Zealanders, will have never heard of – the Emu Wars! Yes, it seems that emus (those flightless birds) were declared war upon in Western Australia in 1932. Myths aplenty arose amongst the feathers and dust of this war, although Dapin makes no mention of any myths created by the emus themselves.

Most of the first half of the book deals with myths from the First World War, with particular reference to ANZAC² war myths. Australia and New Zealand both memorialise Anzac Day every year on 25 April, the day in 1915 when troops from these two countries (and others of the Allied forces) first stormed, and then retreated from, the beaches of Gallipoli in Turkey.

Perhaps no other war event in Australian history has generated as many myths as those resulting from that failed campaign. Today, thousands of Australians and New Zealanders also storm the beaches of Gallipoli on 25 April each year to remember the events of 1915, often leaving litter behind. Dapin is bemused by this. ‘Exactly why travellers might choose to do this, more than a century after the disastrous military campaign and the Anzac evacuation, is a source of much faux-bemused debate among scholars,’ he writes.

Yet, as Dapin points out, this failed campaign has come to be so mythologised that many today claim that 25 April 1915 was the birth of Australian character and identity. Yet, many of the stories emerging from the sands and cliffs of Gallipoli did not happen according to Dapin, and ‘What was born on 25 April 1915 was a myth.’

Lest is a reference to a phrase intoned daily in Returned Service League’s rooms all over Australia. The full phrase is ‘Lest we forget’ and follows a reading of the fourth verse from a poem written in 1914.³ The fourth verse refers to the young people killed during the war and ends with the lines: ‘At the going down of the sun and in the morning/We will remember them.’

Mark Dapin has done a splendid job in distinguishing fact from myth, truth from falsehood, in the wars Australia has been involved in.

Lest ensures that the myths are laid bare, lest we forget what really happened.

Notes:

1. Mark Dapin, Lest: Australian War Myths, Scribner, Cammeray, NSW, Australia, 2024

2. ANZAC stands for Australian and New Zealand Army Corps

3. Laurence Binyon, For The Fallen, first published in The Times in September 1914.

Not A Danged Bit Of Difference

Václav Havel (left) and Thomas Merton

Today I read an article about ecological overshoot.¹ The first sentence stopped me reading further, until I had taken it fully in. It read: ‘I’m writing this knowing that none of the following suggestions will be implemented — and certainly not voluntarily.’

I stopped. I do the same. I write (amongst other things) about ecological overshoot. I also think that none of the solutions (real, imaginary, or hocus pocus) will be implemented, or if they are, none will be effective.

But I had never conflated the two. I had never thought I write knowing it will not make a danged bit of difference.

Until I read that opening sentence.

My next thought followed quickly: So why do I do it? Why do I write knowing that it will not make the danged bit of difference? And why do all those many other writers do the same?

Do I hold out hope for a miracle? Do I suspect that there is a tiny (possibly less than 1%) chance that writing will make a difference? Is my writing simply a projection of my ego into the world? Do I want to be remembered after my death by what I leave behind? Are we writing to support others who also write knowing it to be pointless? Or, do I write simply because it is a creative outlet in an increasingly crazy world that stifles creativity (in its true sense)?

The answer may be none of these, or it may be all of them.

As I pondered my question two quotations came to mind.

The first is from Václav Havel, the last President of Czechoslovakia and the first President of the Czech Republic (as it was known then.) Havel was also a poet, philosopher environmentalist, and writer. In his 1990 book, Disturbing the Peace, he wrote:

‘Hope, in the deep and meaningful sense… is an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed.’

Twenty-four years earlier (in 1966) an anti-Vietnam War peace activist, Jim Forest, wrote to the Trappist monk, Thomas Merton, telling Merton of his despair and complaining that, ‘…we have become insensitive to human life, to the wonders of the world, to the mystery within us and around us.’  In his reply Merton acknowledged Forest’s feelings and suggested that he accept his feelings. He then went on to advise Jim Forest with these words:

‘(Do) not depend on the hope of results… You may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea you start to concentrate more and more not on the results, but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself. And there too a great deal has to be gone through, as gradually you struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people… In the end…it is the reality of personal relationships that saves everything.’

Reminding myself of these quotations I come back to knowing my writing, and that of others, will not make a danged bit of difference. I must ‘…face the fact that (my) work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all.’  Indeed, my writing may have the opposite effect to what I would wish.

None of us can predict the future, none of us know for certain what outcomes will be in the next year, let alone in one hundred years. As a writer I accept that.

I will continue to write. If I may plagiarise Merton, and alter his words, then: I will ‘concentrate more and more not on the results, but on the value, the writeness, the truth of the work itself.’

Notes:

1. The Civilizational Hospice Protocol, The Honest Sorcerer, 2 Dec. 2024. https://thehonestsorcerer.substack.com/p/the-civilizational-hospice-protocol?r=2o44x&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email&fbclid=IwY2xjawG7ayVleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHXKHBFzx3-W6YVpoh4nvoVh1_jOHjhyNHpwYmwOqRHdEG8kmgNyIeZRF_A_aem_zCayolOJGItQWc1OspqnxA&triedRedirect=true  accessed 3 December 2024