{"id":3739,"date":"2020-12-25T00:35:28","date_gmt":"2020-12-25T00:35:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiofree.org\/?p=143255"},"modified":"2020-12-25T00:35:28","modified_gmt":"2020-12-25T00:35:28","slug":"what-time-is-it-in-lockdown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2020\/12\/25\/what-time-is-it-in-lockdown\/","title":{"rendered":"What Time Is It in Lockdown?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Here where I dwell in the northern hemisphere, the winter solstice has just occurred. The darkest day of the year in a dark year. A few days ago was also the Grand Conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn and the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, which is interesting to those who like the musical Hair<\/em> and believe their fates lie in the stars and not in themselves. Shakespeare\u2019s Cassius had it right: such astrological determinism is for underlings.<\/p>\n

Free people agree with Beethoven:<\/p>\n

\n

I will take fate by the throat; it will never bend me completely to its will.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Oppressors have always wanted people to believe their lives are fated, that they live in a prison and there is no escape.\u00a0 It is the key to successful slavery. Many institutionalized religions have promoted such a belief, contradicting their founders\u2019 messages of freedom. So have secular ideologies. There is nothing you can do, so rollover with Beethoven; it\u2019s hopeless. \u201cDo what you\u2019re told,\u201d as the great wise leader Anthony Fauci has said.<\/p>\n

But a much wiser Kris Kristofferson sang:<\/p>\n

\n

Freedom\u2019s just another word for nothin\u2019 left to lose.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Didn\u2019t Dostoevsky\u2019s Grand Inquisitor say to Jesus in his cell in the gloomy vaulted prison:<\/p>\n

\n

We will show them that they are weak, that they are only pitiful children, but that childlike happiness is the sweetest of all.\u00a0 They will become timid and look to us and huddle close to us in fear, as chicks to the hen.\u00a0 They will marvel at us and will be awe-stricken before us, and will be proud at us being so powerful and clever, that we have been able to subdue such a turbulent flock of thousands of millions.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

They will do as they are told and reject the freedom Jesus brought, \u201cfor nothing has been more insupportable for a man and a human society than freedom,\u201d drones the Inquisitor.\u00a0 They will do as they are told.\u00a0 And the prisoner was silent.<\/p>\n

As the year comes to an end and another begins, the contemplation of time, its passing, the days gone by and days to come, the new year, resolutions, and how to \u201ckeep safe\u201d occupy many minds as governments across the world continue to impose lockdowns on their people that are creating suffering on a vast, unimaginable scale.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery ruling minority,\u201d wrote the late great John Berger, \u201cneeds to numb and, if possible, to kill the time-sense of those whom it exploits.\u00a0 This is the authoritarian secret of all methods of imprisonment.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is time for you and time for me is the mantra of all authoritarians.\u00a0 We set the clocks to slow or fast.\u00a0 You follow.\u00a0 Alternating rhythm to keep you guessing.\u00a0 When things are kind of slow, we\u2019ll give you 5G speed as we reset your future to the online life.\u00a0 Everything will be so fast that you won\u2019t know whether you are coming or going or just running in place.<\/p>\n

Slow is for prisoners around the world.\u00a0 Here in the United States, the world leader in incarceration, there are more than 2 million people caged in such hell holes.\u00a0 Doing time.\u00a0 Very slow time.<\/p>\n

For those on the outside, a year ago, permanent busyness and speed were the norm. Everyone was so frantic and rushing in the madding crowd of a consumer and cell phone frenzy, driven by an unseen nanosecond\u00a0 digital dictator. Now the lockdown has brought a taste of boredom, slow time, and anxious waiting for the day the authoritarians will give the word that the new normal has arrived and the children can fling the doors open and run out to play. But they will have to learn the new rules of the game. Same game, but Built Back Better.\u00a0 Better for the bosses.<\/p>\n

Forget that criminal born in a manger. Getting there is a long and hard journey. We are in lockdown. Just do as you are told.<\/p>\n

Or imagine that child as a grown man in a prison cell in Seville 15 centuries later.<\/p>\n

Or in Bethlehem today, in the West Bank as Palestinian territory is inexorably disappeared by the Israeli government and Palestinians\u2019 places to dwell on this earth grow smaller and smaller as their houses are bulldozed and land stolen.<\/p>\n

Image the fates of all those locked down shut-in abandoned ones, those who are doing time to the slow ticking of the clocks. Or those who have no time to escape the supersonic hum of drone-launched missiles. Those whose time is up because the authorities deem it so.\u00a0 Those who just won\u2019t do what they are told.<\/p>\n

In lockdown, there is plenty of time to imagine.<\/p>\n

Thomas Merton, the inspirational anti-war Trappist monk, in \u201cThe Time of the End Is the Time of No Room\u201d in\u00a0Raids on the Unspeakable, <\/em>said this about that child in a manger, soon to be radical anti-war criminal executed by the state:<\/p>\n

\n

Into this world, this demented inn, in which there is absolutely no room for him at all, Christ comes uninvited. But because he cannot be at home in it, because he is out of place in it, and yet he must be in it, his place is with those others for whom there is no room. His place is with those who do not belong, who are rejected by power because they are regarded as weak, those who are discredited, who are denied the status of persons, tortured, exterminated. With those for whom there is no room, Christ is present in this world. He is mysteriously present in those for whom there seems to be nothing but the world at its worst.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Their numbers are growing by the day.<\/p>\n

Pundits are fond of saying that time is all we have. This is untrue. \u00a0We don\u2019t have time; time has us. We are born into it and in a techno-clock world those clocks start ticking and we turn with the seasons until our turning stops and our time is up. It comes with being born, being mortal. Human. We don\u2019t need astrology to tell us this. We don\u2019t want authoritarians controlling our experience of this greatest of mysteries.<\/p>\n

If you listen closely, you can hear waves of empty words tumbling through the world, whistling windy words saying nothing.\u00a0 Whining words, nodding heads, vacuous sayings. Media saturated fatuous words. About \u201ctime\u201d more clich\u00e9s have been coined and more quotable quotes recorded than nearly any other word. Quotes about what no one knows.<\/p>\n

Time stands still, time flies, time is up, time is on your side, time is short, time is long, who knows where the time goes, time out, time starts, stop the clocks, start the clocks, we\u2019re running out of time, clock in, clock out, time served, serving time, lacking time, losing time, having time, gaining time, the end of time.<\/p>\n

Yet everyone knows what time is even though they can\u2019t tell you. It comes with the territory of existing. Like silence, like love, like peace, like truth \u2013 simple gifts that authoritarians invert to suit their evil designs. Twisted people twisting words.<\/p>\n

And yet:<\/p>\n

It is no different now.
\nThe yearning still gnaws.
\nThe night dark, utterly silent,
\nSky stretched endlessly back
\nInto an infinity beyond reach.
\nAnd the fears, the tears
\nAre they any different?<\/p>\n

It is no different now.
\nJoy sometimes, hope too, divisions
\nSeemingly unbridgeable, vast chasms
\nOpening between those closest.
\nLittle changes, though two thousand years
\nDissolve into oblivion behind us.<\/p>\n

It is no different now.
\nPlus \u00e7a change,
\nPlus c\u2019est la m\u00eame chose.
\nAlways the same.<\/p>\n

Yet a word is heard dimly
\nLaboring out of the deafening black
\nSilence, almost but not inaudible.
\nAnd the angel says, \u201cGo out,\u201d
\nAnd the angel said, \u201cGo out,\u201d
\nAlways the angel, always the voice
\nBearing us up along the way
\n(If you do not turn to the inner light,
\nWhere will you turn?), always calling:
\n\u201cJourney far through strange country,
\nFollow the light you barely see
\nBut which is the light of your life.
\nFollow it across the desert of your heart
\nWhere wild beasts seek to devour you.
\nThere is no time, there is no time
\nTo hesitate. Now is the star\u2019s hour,
\nNow you are called on a fool\u2019s journey
\nInto a pig\u2019s pen and a child\u2019s strange
\nAnd glorious presence.\u201d Thus speaks the angel
\nAgain and again, no matter how dark
\nThe darkest day, nothing changes.<\/p>\n

It is no different now.
\nNow as always is the star\u2019s hour.
\nNow as then a star is born to men
\nTo lead us on. A light that darkness
\nCannot overcome, despite us.<\/p>\n

Love is not a sometimes thing,
\nThough we abuse it like the earth.
\nIt is all we have to hold us up,
\nAnd it always will.<\/p>\n

A star is always born.<\/p>\n

The post What Time Is It in Lockdown?<\/a> first appeared on Dissident Voice<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

This post was originally published on Radio Free<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here where I dwell in the northern hemisphere, the winter solstice has just occurred. The darkest day of the year in a dark year. A few days ago\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":63,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[476,177,309,4,1048],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3739"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/63"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3739"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3739\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3740,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3739\/revisions\/3740"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}