The Uninsurable Earth, and the Arc of History
History is happening. But not as we know it.
Mais enfants, I am in a dark f*cking mood. Not gonna lie.
A year ago, I was stopped in my tracks when in our first chat friend-of-the-show Tadzio Müller had a darkly funny take on the bumper-sticker version of Whig historiography. I’ve quoted it (prob to destruction) ever since. Bit of background to see why.
“Things can only get better,” is the super-reductive way to get Whiggy with it, and an excellent vector to set yourself up for disappointment, disillusion, and cynicism. Even if you’re fortunate enough to personally live a life unmarred by regret and loss, the world regularly dishes out reasons to disabuse you of the idea that history is a straight line up and to the right on a graph.1
“The arc of history is long but bends towards justice,” was how Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign speeches put it.2 Obama was riffing on “the arc of the moral universe is l…
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