”Jesus God, said Montag. “Every hour so many damn things in the sky! How in the hell did those bombers get up there every single second of our lives! Why doesn’t someone want to talk about it! We’ve started and won two atomic wars since 1990! Is it because we’re having so much fun at home we’ve forgotten the world? Is it because we’re so rich and the rest of the world’s so poor and we just don’t care if they are? I’ve heard rumors; the world is starving, but we’re well fed. Is it true, the world works hard and we play? Is that why we’re hated so much? I’ve heard rumors about hate, too, once in a long while, over the years. Do you know why? I don’t, that’s sure! Maybe the books can get us half out of the cave. They just might stop us from making the same damn insane mistakes! I don’t hear those idiot bastards in your parlor talking about it. God, Millie, don’t you see? An hour a day, two hours, with these books, and maybe…”
Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
When I graduated college, my high school teacher, Mr. McMcue, gifted me one item. It was a small, pocket-sized book called “On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From The Twentieth Century” by Timothy Snyder. As a disillusioned twenty-two year old college grad with no clear trajectory of what I wanted to do, this gift did not forebode well for me. I, along with my peers, watched as the world became increasingly violent and brutal. Maybe it was always like that. Or maybe I was too dumb and too busy being involved in meaningless bullshit (i.e. drugs) to notice how fast we as a society are falling into a veritable hell.
I want to focus on the word “dialectic.”
Why do academics love the word “dialectic”? First of all, it is a hard word to define. It resists definition. The roots of the word trace back to philosophies tied to Hegel, but Marx and Engels uphold their association. These men understood that reality is not static but rather unfolds through contradiction and tension. Two polarities revolving around each other, awaiting collision, but quite possibly never touching, make up reality. I admit that I am quite ignorant on specifics (MY BAD); however, my arduous efforts to reconstruct and understand the world around me, especially post-grad, has led to a deep resentment about the way we go about finding the “truth.” Therefore, sometimes, you must turn to the past to find a reprieve in this falsified present.
There is too much to say on the history of debate, discussion, and “being” within dialectical epistemology, so I will refrain from writing about it. Anyway, I am not qualified to dissect it wholly.
We are often asked to compare between two “oppositional” truths to find the great resolve.
“West vs. East”
”Liberal vs. Conservative”
“White vs. Black”
I make this point because in many matters within academia, the dialectic requires you accept that two opposing things may exist at the same time. They do not have to be opposites. Everything is connected and everything is constantly changing. The facticity of change as a constant is what drives you BECOMING, as Hegel might put it, and BECOMING is the movement between BEING and NOTHING. But remember: the dialectic is not passively accepting opposites. Rather, it is about transformation. We must act instead of observing passively.
But many of us struggle to do that. In fact, we struggle perceive the world as is, let alone do anything to change it.
Fanon once said, “A man who possesses a language possess as an indirect consequence the world expressed and implied by this language.” (Black Skin, White Masks) What does Fanon mean by this? Fanon is directly commenting on the black Antillean assimilating to French society by learning to speak French fluently. How does this relate to anything? Language holds power structures—— it is never neutral. Language constraints and liberates us. It grants access while imposing hierarchy. When you absorb a language, that language organizes reality. And reality requires transformation which requires consciousness. Consciousness requires language. And language either reproduces domination or resists it. When the colonized subject learns to speak the colonial language, the subject gains social mobility whilst risking alienation. The tension the colonial subject lives in is dialectical. We must NAME tyranny in order to resist it.
I will list the 20 twenty lessons from Snyder but I highly recommend reading it. As my generation copes with immense loss and devastation, defeat feels inevitable. But history warns and instructs us; But we must acquire language. Reading is one way. It is so easy to write. It is harder to leave the house.
Here are twenty lessons from Timothy Synder’s “Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century”
1 Do not obey in advance
2 Defend institutions
3 Beware the one-party state
4 Take responsibility for the face of the world
5 Remember professional ethics
6 Be wary of paramilitaries
7 Be reflective if you must be armed
8 Stand out
9 Be kind to our language
10 Believe in truth
11 Investigate
12 Make eye contact and small talk
13 Practice corporeal politics
14 Establish a private life
15 Contribute to good causes
16 Learn from peers in other countries
17 Listen for dangerous worlds
18 Be calm when the unthinkable arrives
19 Be a patriot
20 Be as courageous as you can