baguliyo
<b>“The past carries with it a secret index by which it is referred to redemption. Doesn’t a breath of the air that pervaded earlier days caress us as well? In the voices we hear, isn’t there an echo of now silent ones? Don’t the women we court have sisters they no longer recognize? If so, then there is a secret agreement between past generations and the present one. Then our coming was expected on earth. Then, like every generation that preceded us, we have been endowed with a weak messianic power, a power on which the past has a claim. Such a claim cannot be settled cheaply. The historical materialist is aware of this.”</b>
Sometimes, certain thinkers make you look at the world from different perspectives, which enriches your worldview and Walter Benjamin is a thinker like that. He looks at history and the now time always with a “critically pessimistic” view, but he don't do this intentionally. He does this because he experienced history and the present as someone who has lost, hence he sees the history from the perspective of the defeated. He examines how they lost those wars, what we can learn from them, and how we can fight back when the perfect time comes with knowledge of their defeat. He saying we muss bring the knowledge of the defeated ones to the present, because we must blow up like a bomb when the time comes, against those who are constantly winning.
Michael Löwy, especially, gives a very good example when he talks about Marx's quote regarding the power of revolutions, which Walter Benjamin criticizes with this quote:
<b>“Marx says that revolutions are the locomotive of world history. But perhaps it is quite otherwise. Perhaps revolutions are an attempt by the passengers on this train – namely, the human race – to activate the emergency brake.”</b>
He explains this very well here, because if the train continues on its current path. A heading that, by the way, represents a type of progressiveness that does not benefit women, native peoples, or nature they will always keep getting destroyed in the name of progress. For Walter Benjamin, a revolution is have to keep getting away with this barbaric progressiveness. Revolution is an emergency exit that can stop this wicked history against women, the barbaric massacre of native peoples, and the exploitation of nature. A progress that simply charges forward without this inner sensibility is only going to bring us our end. The Simurgh don't have to see the world collapse for a fourth time.
<b>“The past carries with it a secret index by which it is referred to redemption. Doesn’t a breath of the air that pervaded earlier days caress us as well? In the voices we hear, isn’t there an echo of now silent ones? Don’t the women we court have sisters they no longer recognize? If so, then there is a secret agreement between past generations and the present one. Then our coming was expected on earth. Then, like every generation that preceded us, we have been endowed with a weak messianic power, a power on which the past has a claim. Such a claim cannot be settled cheaply. The historical materialist is aware of this.”</b>
Sometimes, certain thinkers make you look at the world from different perspectives, which enriches your worldview and Walter Benjamin is a thinker like that. He looks at history and the now time always with a “critically pessimistic” view, but he don't do this intentionally. He does this because he experienced history and the present as someone who has lost, hence he sees the history from the perspective of the defeated. He examines how they lost those wars, what we can learn from them, and how we can fight back when the perfect time comes with knowledge of their defeat. He saying we muss bring the knowledge of the defeated ones to the present, because we must blow up like a bomb when the time comes, against those who are constantly winning.
Michael Löwy, especially, gives a very good example when he talks about Marx's quote regarding the power of revolutions, which Walter Benjamin criticizes with this quote:
<b>“Marx says that revolutions are the locomotive of world history. But perhaps it is quite otherwise. Perhaps revolutions are an attempt by the passengers on this train – namely, the human race – to activate the emergency brake.”</b>
He explains this very well here, because if the train continues on its current path. A heading that, by the way, represents a type of progressiveness that does not benefit women, native peoples, or nature they will always keep getting destroyed in the name of progress. For Walter Benjamin, a revolution is have to keep getting away with this barbaric progressiveness. Revolution is an emergency exit that can stop this wicked history against women, the barbaric massacre of native peoples, and the exploitation of nature. A progress that simply charges forward without this inner sensibility is only going to bring us our end. The Simurgh don't have to see the world collapse for a fourth time.
