Semi-human dissent

Dissident politics is quite often the preoccupation of people – often young and raging – caught up in the illusion of the permanence and certainty of their lives. They see everything that’s happening, every argument, as of supreme importance: Bush and co are absolutely the worst bad guys ever, the cause of all problems. Other people are the absolute victims, absolute heroes. If only the bad guys could be stopped everything would be okay. But it wouldn't. W.B. Yeats explained:

"Man is in love and loves what vanishes."

It’s a kind of religious fervour (a march towards the promised land) rooted in an ignorance about the extent to which their own lives are, or shortly will be immersed in loss, transience, impermanence and grief. ‘The government said this and that’, and then they’ve lost their loved ones, are all alone, are immersed in the reality of their own personal suffering.

Dissent has nothing to say about this reality – it’s all ‘out there, out there’. To think about ‘in here’ is bourgeois, self-indulgent... I don’t know what.

This is a kind of semi-human dissent – fiercely energetic, angry, intelligent, but shorn of so many concerns and emotions that are key to human life. Actually, it’s deeply immature and naïve – it’s the naivety of unconquerable youth.