Lest We Forget
Christopher Bradburn
The greatest quality of the Occupy Movement was its ability to bear witness, over and over. The movement moved indeed to all the right places. Not in front of Parliament, the White House or any of the secondary centers of power rather, it moved and stayed in front of the TRUE centers of power, those banks that wield and grease corporate capitalism.
A movement it is, and an occupation is was. To use movement in the present state is right because still the residue and fervor of the protests are mobilising people to physically clash with those elites that serve corporate culture. But lest we forget; as humans have an unfortunate tendency of forever doing, that those in Occupy moved in front of the centers of power, and stayed. Stayed en masse out of despair and a desperate want to reveal the fallacy of corporate culture and its faux-fact media dialogue. The greatest quality of staying, where it did and as long as it did, was that it kept reminding us of the injustices inherently found in our financial system. Come the human manufactured financial crash in 2008, the home foreclosures, the real increase in poverty, large increases of worldwide hunger, the facts were ever present, not even the vindictive corporate media could deny its viewers of these facts. The news was just too big to leave and facts so hard to spin, and yet, we forgot. Come another week or day, we forgot the monumental injustice set against we-the-people.
Those whom forget are the world’s most dangerous, according to Hannah Arendt, because it are the deliberately forgetful whom often bear no remorse for their actions “There exists a more pernicious evil, independent of political ideology, whose execution is limitless when the perpetrator feels no remorse and can forget his acts as soon as they are committed (Arendt 2009). If we don’t remember what we have done, and without the institutions, or communities, or laws that force us to, then we become unaccountable for our actions. This according to Arendt, bears the origins of evil. Indeed, we forgot about the atrocities of 2008 and the suffering it caused us, not one of us were unaffected by those men on Wall Street and City of London. Until the faux narrative of corporate media became too phony and too untruthful that even the most deliberately forgetful of us couldn’t stomach it, until those whom were affected so much just couldn’t bear to forget any longer.
Those whom forget are the world’s most dangerous, according to Hannah Arendt, because it are the deliberately forgetful whom often bear no remorse for their actions “There exists a more pernicious evil, independent of political ideology, whose execution is limitless when the perpetrator feels no remorse and can forget his acts as soon as they are committed (Arendt 2009). If we don’t remember what we have done, and without the institutions, or communities, or laws that force us to, then we become unaccountable for our actions. This according to Arendt, bears the origins of evil. Indeed, we forgot about the atrocities of 2008 and the suffering it caused us, not one of us were unaffected by those men on Wall Street and City of London. Until the faux narrative of corporate media became too phony and too untruthful that even the most deliberately forgetful of us couldn’t stomach it, until those whom were affected so much just couldn’t bear to forget any longer.
Those who lose their homes from bankers don’t forget. Our American brothers and sisters who have debt within the un-payable one trillion pooled amount of student loans do not forget (Faris 2011). Those workers who lost their pensions to Wall Street malfeasance don’t forget. Those who lost their jobs, and livelihoods do-not-forget. Though, the rest of us do, until, the best among us walked to the centers of power, and occupied. They stayed and stayed, we couldn’t forget. They were in front of the banks camping, organising, discussing, existing... Like a ritual Sunday church service, or the daily lord’s prayer, Occupy used like the churches and mosques of ages, its physical position and accumulated populous to repeat to us, over and over, DO-NOT-FORGET.
Sundays for Europe were the days of moral rejuvenation. We would be told in the churches’ services to remember the moral life. Over and over they would read us passages from a book. Remember to be moral, remember to love thy neighbour remember to protect the vulnerable and weak. Sundays were a routine, a repetition coming from the awareness that we forget. We get lost in the routines, in all the drudgery, in all the fascinations, in all the gimmicks of corporate culture. Sundays would be a place to remind us because god knows we-the-people need reminding! Occupy acted as those Sunday services, it wouldn’t go away and like that, we couldn’t forget even in the midst and saturation of the most pollutive corporate culture. Beyond all else, this was Occupy’s greatest virtue, its ability to make forgetfulness impossible. Occupy was our Sunday service and its movement therefrom would do well to remind us again, and again.
Sundays for Europe were the days of moral rejuvenation. We would be told in the churches’ services to remember the moral life. Over and over they would read us passages from a book. Remember to be moral, remember to love thy neighbour remember to protect the vulnerable and weak. Sundays were a routine, a repetition coming from the awareness that we forget. We get lost in the routines, in all the drudgery, in all the fascinations, in all the gimmicks of corporate culture. Sundays would be a place to remind us because god knows we-the-people need reminding! Occupy acted as those Sunday services, it wouldn’t go away and like that, we couldn’t forget even in the midst and saturation of the most pollutive corporate culture. Beyond all else, this was Occupy’s greatest virtue, its ability to make forgetfulness impossible. Occupy was our Sunday service and its movement therefrom would do well to remind us again, and again.
Arendt, Hannah (2009), ‘Responsibility and Judgement’, (Knopf Doubleday Publishing: US)
Faris, David (2011), ‘All is Vanity’, (Authorhouse: IN)
Thanks for the reflection!
ReplyDeleteIt reminds me of what we said about how we just become unaware of all that we never missed, because we are just so used to it.
The question for me is whether we should really need Sunday services to reflect our actions. In my view it is more "religious" to think about whatever we do in our daily life - including our routines. If services can give inspiration for that it is good too. Unfortunately many don't and most religion in this world is just rituals...