You sometimes read about ‘doomsday’ times – with the 1930s leading the way – but could there also be times of joyful anticipation? With, let’s say, the almost certain hope that something good will soon happen for all of us, socially speaking.
No, not wildly revolutionary times like Lenin’s 1917, or the sixties when Bob Dylan mobilized a generation with his prophetic ‘other times will come’. Nor are they times with an expectation of salvation, metaphysical speculation about shifting paradigms or falling in love with a charismatic pioneer, such as those around Pim Fortuyn in 2002. But much more prosaic, simply times that offer hope for a slightly more pleasant, more supportive society.
You would think so, now that there is hope everywhere that politics will regroup after years of heightened polarization in the once declared dead, and as pale, satirized center. Away with every man for himself, long live the sense of community. In a beautiful essay on Saturday, writer Arjen van Veelen perceived a “Great Relief”, the end of violent fragmentation, moral sharpening and the aggrieved identity-making demands.
I hope so too. But hey, just ask in a vulnerable neighborhood in Rotterdamwhich is rapidly changing from a city to fun city marketing plays itself (“Really!”) in a city that blows itself up. The massacre that a revenge-driven loner what was done is more than a vague echo from a Breivik era that we are fortunately already putting behind us. The city is coming apart at the seams and if a revitalized center is needed anywhere, it is on the Maas. No happy expectation can help with that.
Even on a much less extreme front, there is still a clash of arms from an era that us thinkers hope to end. A co-founder of the emerging New Social Contract (NSC) resigned this week because misconduct had been erased from the archives. In a previous life, he allegedly got rid of an employee who caught him watching porn. Well, also for a party wants to keep an eye on everyone, including his “spiritual desires”, a twenty-year-old misstep is still a red card.
And then NRC also reported about Groningen residents who, victims or not, like to eat from the compensation rack for earthquake damage. Every crack counts and the community shifts. It doesn’t surprise me, but I come from a different church denomination than NSC, one that teaches that man is inclined to any compensation, excuse me, to all evil.
In short, to quote a rock sigh, against Dylan: good times are coming, but man, it’s not going well (Neil Young, ‘Vampire Blues’). Or, with an even less meaningful, vacuously cheerful TV wisdom: “We’ll see.”
Sjoerd de Jong writes a column here every Thursday.
A version of this article also appeared in the October 5, 2023 newspaper.