Even before COVID-19 smeared plague across the globe, 2020 was already going to be an especially ugly, desperate year here in America, thanks to the election. As it stands, we—Americans, that is—have collectively limped past the December 31 finish line (an illusory goal if ever there was one), having only barely gotten our shit together enough to vote Donald Trump out after his administration spent the past eleven months doing nothing about a disease that much of the world managed to handle with at least a modicum of common sense and rationality. Hundreds of thousands of Americans have died needlessly, huge swathes of the population are unemployed and/or about to lose their homes, and around the world nation-states (including the US) are starting to rehearse for the next phase of the ongoing and ever-worsening climate crisis, which usually means foregoing the sort of species-wide solidarity we actually need in favor of shoring up artificial borders, dehumanizing outsiders (or insiders who don't meet the criteria of a "real" citizen, a category that grows narrower by the day), and generally doubling down on the us-versus-them mentality that got us here in the first place.
So yeah, 2020 was been a bullshit year. It was by no means the worst in human history, but that's cold comfort for everyone who suffered, or is still suffering, at its numb, infected hands, and it feels like History (capital H) decided to give us a tightly-scripted preview of what awaits us over the course of the next, I dunno, 50 or 100 years. It ain't pretty, and I am not at all sure that humanity will rise to meet the challenges we've created for ourselves (and every other species on the planet, but it's been pretty well established that we do not give a single fuck about them or anything that stands in the way of making profits and fulfilling the sad-ass failures of imagination that pass for "dreams"). That said, barring a heavy-duty nuclear exchange that renders the whole thing moot—an outcome as possible as it's ever been—I don't think we're straight-up doomed. Shit will get bad in unimaginable ways, but the species will scrape by. Hell, we may even outgrow some of our worst traits. I have no idea. Or, more accurately: I don't know.
Not knowing is one of those skills I'm always honing. Not knowing isn't ignorance, though of course ignorance involves not knowing; not knowing is a refusal—albeit not too militant a refusal, since that leads to its own set of conundrums—to mistake one's one thoughts and feelings for reality. In this case, reality as it'll play out in the future. Forecasting the future is a sucker's game, and like most such games it's sometimes just lucrative enough to make us think it's a worthwhile pursuit. While I like throwing around ideas of what may be coming our way as much as the next dude, I like to think I have a sufficient grasp of how complex the world is, and how unpredictable people and nature can be, to avoid conflating the notions I toss out on IRC or over beers with what's actually going on. But again, I don't know, so I generally avoid prognostication. You're better off consulting the 易經 I Ching/Yi Jing than talking to me.
This blog is entering its 18th year. I still don't really know what I'm doing with it, but I plan on keeping it around. Maybe I'll do more writing and less translating this year. I wouldn't mind sorting out some of my ideas about, say, Buddhism or martial arts, or trying to write more critical album reviews. I may write more in Portuguese. 2021 is still a newborn, though, sticky with afterbirth, so I may let things unfold at their own pace before worrying too much about what exactly is said when The Corpse Speaks.
In the meantime, I'll direct your attention to Erik Davis' new venture, the wide-ranging and always compelling Burning Shore newsletter; the Korinji Rinzai Zen community, home of some deep Zen practice; Herman Melville's marginalia; the Ploughshares Fund, working to rid the world of the threat of nuclear weapons; and the mind-shattering vajra doom hammer that is the music of Neptunian Maximalism.
Happy MMXXI, y'all.
微臣
史大偉/D.A.S.
