the future comes around again

The Italian Futurists were fascists. They all died off during the span of WWI and WWII. They made friends with Mussolini, were *too* eager to wield a sword in battle, damned all women, intellectuals, classic art, and libraries. However, they did take the idea of absurdity and violence to a level that, if not acted on in physicality, seems very interesting to me. The Manifesto of Futurism (1909) starts by identifying numbness as a factor of apathy. The first three tenets are as follow:


1. We intend to sing the love of danger, the habit of energy and fearlessness.

2. Courage, audacity, and revolt will be essential elements of our poetry.

3. Up to now literature has exalted a pensive immobility, ecstasy, and sleep. We intend to exalt aggressive action, a feverish insomnia, the racer's stride, the mortal leap, the punch and the slap.

Okay, so it's dramatic and invokes all kinds of romantic notions linguistically, but it has heart. The base idea of using violence to foment action is essential. Violence will keep you awake all night - it will make you leave your house - it will force you to think about those around you as well as yourself. When there is violence, there is no time for laziness.

It often takes a "violent" situation for people to wake up. The Futurists were concerned that society was becoming lazy - the formation of the idle classes left so much free time to be wasted. There are so many people who don't know what to do with themselves when the work day ends, or when classes get out for the afternoon. Popular culture rarely invites thought provoking material into it's fold. Instead people settle for a night in front of the TV, sitting in silence, reading cheap literature, watching expensive effects pass by them. This is a product of money, a product of comfort. The Futurists tried to shock people into realizing that comfort will rot your brain - only revolt can enliven your senses.

Of course, they were far too real about their advocacy of physical violence. No one should advocate for the physical harm of anyone or anything. But what will it take to wake everyone up? It seems that it takes someone's comfortable world falling apart before they realize what matters to them the most, what they actually want to live for. Maybe that should be the role of art and literature in the world - an overpowering force that shocks the comfort out of people.