the relapse into barbarism (beyond capital and the last man)

yesterday horsemouth worked - tomorrow he works. he's trying to finish early this year - often there's a period at the start of summer with dribs and drabs of work that at least pay the rent but horsemouth is keen to be off.

there is, horsemouth's brother notes, in the later rousseau, the figure of the solitary (think reveries of the solitary walker), but horsemouth notes this figure haunts other social philosophers as the last man (in canetti, fukuyama, mary shelley), the fear that we may turn our backs on what we have created together, but also a desire expressed in the many collapse/ depopulation fantasies (most recently horsemouth has been reading and watching 1975's survivors and the victorian richard jefferies after london (wild england) - by far the best bit of this is the 'future history' at the start called the relapse into barbarism). at the flick of a switch the social world dissolves into conflict (perhaps this is what the rage zombies are).

yet these are countered or assuaged by fantasies in which the centre can hold - the panglossian enthusiasm for the social, a world where there is always already no conflict (rather than ones where conflict dialectically leads us out of conflict and to a higher state of society, or conflict destroys and anulls civilisation leaving us to wander round the ruins).

curiously horsemouth found this most ably expressed in the truly terrible 2010 jack black remake of gulliver's travels - the giant gulliver is confined by the lilliputians, they're buiding him a house, workmen sit on the blades of the ventilator fan (like workmen atop skyscrapers in new york), tiny workmen are at work everywhere the human labour made visible in all the material items round his room, 'good morning gulliver' they chorus when he gets up. what is interesting about the gulliver clip is that this complexity and interdependence is celebrated. the world has grown happy under its secret benefactor alexander shulgin..

in istvan meszaros's housebrick sized book beyond capital one of the barriers to revolution is imagining the organisation necessary to produce our material world (it is the speech the old deaf schoolmaster gives in an early episode of survivors, the explanation as to why technology has faded in after london). to counter this we are encouraged to imagine a seamless transition from within capitalism or a going forward by going back (or ernst bloch style where the future appears in the clothes of the past) in william morris. and if this fails?

the cover of horsemouth's edition of richard jefferies after london is a watercolour by victorian religious nut and painter of apocalypses john martin, the last man stretches out his hand towards a red sunset from his vantage point on high rocks surrounded by dead lizards overlooking the darkened plain.

 (how do we know it's a sunset and not a sunrise? it would be a simple matter in photoshop to reverse this.)