The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.

When we consider what, to use the words of the catechism, is the chief end of man, and what are the true necessaries and means of life, it appears as if men had deliberately chosen the common mode of living because they preferred it to any other. Yet they honestly think there is no choice left. But alert and healthy natures remember that the sun rose clear. It is never too late to give up our prejudices. No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof. What everybody echoes or in silence passes by as true to-day may turn out to be falsehood to-morrow, mere smoke of opinion, which some had trusted for a cloud that would sprinkle fertilizing rain on their fields.

—Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854.

Various versions of the first paragraph here were a favorite of coworkers and acquaintances in the San Francisco Bay Area. „The mass of people lead lives of quiet desperation, but not I: I go to Burning Man each year, and along with a select tens of thousands of others differentiate myself from the mass.…I am different from the others because I realize we are all doomed, and rather than feel desperate I devote myself to The X-Files/ Walking Dead/ Game of Thrones/ medical marijuana/ scotch bars/ micro breweries.“

This approach to life/retreat from life is quite evident in high tech in Europe as well. There is a curious refusal to openly discuss global heating, potentially followed by a wise claim of informed resignation: „we are all doomed anyway (by the conditions which moments ago I denied), therefore only the naïve, the gullible, the conspiracy theorists discuss the issue.“

I saw yet more distinctly the State in which I lived. I saw to what extent the people among whom I lived could be trusted as good neighbors and friends; that their friendship was for summer weather only; that they did not greatly propose to do right; that they were a distinct race from me by their prejudices and superstitions, as the Chinamen and Malays are; that, in their sacrifices to humanity, they ran no risks, not even to their property; that after all, they were not so noble but they treated the thief as he had treated them, and hoped, by a certain outward observance and a few prayers, and by walking in a particular straight though useless path from time to time, to save their souls.

—Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience: A Yankee in Canada, with Anti-Slavery and Reform Papers (Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1866).

Die Zeit:

Nach Angaben Selenskyjs wird sich die Ukraine dabei nicht nur auf die Gebiete konzentrieren, die sie vor dem russischen Überfall im Februar kontrolliert hatte. Auch die Territorien der von Russland unterstützten Separatisten im Osten des Landes und Städte auf der seit 2014 von Russland annektierten Krim würden zurückerobert, kündigte der 44-Jährige an: „Denn die gesamte Ukraine muss frei sein.“

What can he actually mean here?

George Galloway and Craig Murray 20.01.2020

San Francisco Chronicle:

Americans have “moved on” from pandemic, poll finds

Concern about COVID-19 has hit a low point in the U.S. since the start of the pandemic, even though hundreds of Americans are still dying every day from the virus, according to the latest and final Axios-Ipsos Coronavirus Index released Tuesday. While White House officials anticipate another fall and winter surge, “the latest results find a country that has largely — though not completely — moved on from the pandemic,” states the report which has been running regularly since mid-March 2020. Only 37% of the respondents in the latest poll said they still sometimes wear a mask in public spaces, compared to 71% in September 2021. Few are worried about the most severe or long-term outcomes of the disease. Only about 18% said they are concerned about the symptoms of long COVID; 12% are worried about hospitalization; and 11% about death. Nearly two-thirds of the respondents said there is a small risk or no risk in returning to their normal, pre-COVID life — and nearly half said they already have.

Shall I go off and away to bright Andromeda?
Shall I sail my wooden ships to the sea?
Or stay in a cage of those in Amerika??
Or shall I be on the knee?
Wave goodbye to Amerika
Say hello to the garden

So I see – I see the way you feel
And I know that your life is real
Pioneer searcher refugee
I follow you and you follow me
Let’s go together
Let’s go together
Let’s go together right now

—Paul Kantner, Let’s Go Together

It amuses me to recall listening to this song forty-some years ago, imagining being part of a group of technically proficient political dissidents in some future dystopia. We’ve certainly got the dystopia. Where are my revolutionaries? Where is my starship?