Skip to main content

FUTURISM HAS FINALLY WON



110 years ago, the Futurists of 1914 began to splinter into factions - but they had already made their biggest impact, and now, 115 years since they basically started in 1909, their vision has won.

Forget simply "fascism" to describe what the age of Trump/Musk is about to look like - it's more complex, radical, dangerous and at times visionary than that - 2025-2030 is going to be New Futurist - or to be blunt, just Futurism Redux.

The main interests and aims of Futurism's manifestos were to celebrate a new age of the Machine - an age of speed, violence, money, power, nihilism, war, global travel, and disruption. It was not to be an age of peace, stability, good government or democracy - it was about a radical and total overturning of the values of the world order up to that stage in history.

Now, 2025 is set to fulfil this hope and programme - The richest man in the world, a tech visionary businessperson who fetishes rockets and cars, and instant messaging, is the disruptive Futurist par excellence - part Marinetti, part Mussolini. Now he is in charge of America, along with another Futurist - the twisted-master of the modern/postmodern media - the supreme nihilist - Donald Trump.

The West is fragmenting like a modernist poem - France, South Korea, the USA... with fascism rising or present in Germany, Austria, Hungary, Romania, and yes, USA and Italy.

The Futurists were epitomised by the automobile, just as Musk is by his Tesla. "Move fast and break things" - the famous mantra or motto of the Tech Bros, is basically the main tenet of Futurism. The Futurist Manifesto: "We will glorify ... patriotism, the destructive gesture of freedom-bringers, beautiful ideas worth dying for, and scorn for woman."



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

A  poem for my mother, July 15 When she was dying And I was in a different country I dreamt I was there with her Flying over the ocean very quickly, And arriving in the room like a dream And I was a dream, but the meaning was more Than a dream has – it was a moving over time And land, over water, to get love across Fast enough, to be there, before she died, To lean over the small, huddled figure, In the dark, and without bothering her Even with apologies, and be a kiss in the air, A dream of a kiss, or even less, the thought of one, And when I woke, none of this had happened, She was still far distant, and we had not spoken.

Poetry vs. Literature

Poetry is, of course, a part of literature. But, increasingly, over the 20th century, it has become marginalised - and, famously, has less of an audience than "before". I think that, when one considers the sort of criticism levelled against Seamus Heaney and "mainstream poetry", by poet-critics like Jeffrey Side , one ought to see the wider context for poetry in the "Anglo-Saxon" world. This phrase was used by one of the UK's leading literary cultural figures, in a private conversation recently, when they spoke eloquently about the supremacy of "Anglo-Saxon novels" and their impressive command of narrative. My heart sank as I listened, for what became clear to me, in a flash, is that nothing has changed since Victorian England (for some in the literary establishment). Britain (now allied to America) and the English language with its marvellous fiction machine, still rule the waves. I personally find this an uncomfortable position - but when ...

IQ AND THE POETS - ARE YOU SMART?

When you open your mouth to speak, are you smart?  A funny question from a great song, but also, a good one, when it comes to poets, and poetry. We tend to have a very ambiguous view of intelligence in poetry, one that I'd say is dysfunctional.  Basically, it goes like this: once you are safely dead, it no longer matters how smart you were.  For instance, Auden was smarter than Yeats , but most would still say Yeats is the finer poet; Eliot is clearly highly intelligent, but how much of Larkin 's work required a high IQ?  Meanwhile, poets while alive tend to be celebrated if they are deemed intelligent: Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill , and Jorie Graham , are all, clearly, very intelligent people, aside from their work as poets.  But who reads Marianne Moore now, or Robert Lowell , smart poets? Or, Pound ?  How smart could Pound be with his madcap views? Less intelligent poets are often more popular.  John Betjeman was not a very smart poet, per se....