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Title: Where is the Impatience?
Author: Anonymous
Date: Summer 2019
Language: en
Topics: time, impatience, Fernweh, Munich, The Local Kids, The Local Kids #4
Source: Translated for The Local Kids, Issue 4
Notes: First appeared as Wo ist die Ungeduld? In Fernweh (Anarchistische Strassenzeitung, München), Issue 30, December 2018

Anonymous

Where is the Impatience?

“In times of stagnation, whether it is out of lethargy or tyranny, life

cannot come into existence. Living is unrest that is sparked by

eccentric individuals. To live this life one has to take risks… Who

wants to live, has to live dangerously.”

Actually it seems that lots of people have daily a load of time at hand.

The everyday exploitation is limited to a bearable level and is only a

side phenomenon. Yet also this unemployment – “free” or freely organized

time – is therefore not less stressed or constrained; irrespective if

one pursues social trends and duties or if one indulges in non-activity,

be it through the consumption of goods, of media and entertainment, of

small-talk or drugs etc.

Also a lot of people who actually “share the opinion” that everything

should be “different”, are often in a state of permanent vegetation and

lethargy which runs somewhere in between isolated self-care in an

attempt to get on and cope, and some unreal, prefabricated behaviour

that is confined to spending time in thought factories (universities),

sport factories (fitness studios), fun factories (parties), experience

factories (holidays) or rather all possible forms of work. The

oppositional alternatives, those right in front of us, are from their

starting point on just a staging, a “as if” activity, that pretends to

change an aspect of society through a particular fake-activity and thus

limits itself from the outset. The consumption of protest events, the

adherence to certain countercultural labels and symbols, identities and

offers, some charity work, a few donations and benefit concerts, a bit

of alternative food and consumption behaviour. All in all is society

shaped by the belief in that what seems possible and what “is

impossible”, and breaking out of this paradigm seems also impossible.

This belief is a deeply scientific belief which explicitly denies a

guiding hand and a almighty Lord and Creator, but then again declares

what the natural laws of men are, its deepest instincts and thus what

the necessary course of human history is. To understand and consequently

obey these inherent laws of society is just rational – what can YOU

achieve after all?

However, our inner will to live, fully and deeply live, our uniqueness

and the wealth of our desires and capacities cannot be measured with the

criterion of science. They are not superficial, quantifiable facts. The

rationality of the material world opposes the logic of the gut, the own

and individual will doesn’t recognize calculated reason. Our

contemporary understanding of the meaning of life is substantially tied

with the concept of time: when it is about what we want to be or do, we

divide certain periods of life into certain areas and organise, invest

and offer or manage our energy consequently. According to expectations

we invest our time and capacities in this or that activity and thus

results a life inside society and a status inside the social

hierarchies. One beliefs in happiness through money, another in

happiness through alcohol, one in happiness in the family, an other in

happiness through sport or a higher meaning in social and political

commitment… What keeps together all these life’s missions is the belief

in time – one always exchanges time for something specific, harvests

something – be it love, a high, prestige, muscles or just the hope in

something… To see our life as a whole, as something that we can take in

our hands to determine it ourselves, to be aware of and to here and now

shape the endless extent and scope of our possibilities and to shape our

ideas and relations without guidelines and benchmarks – to live and not

manage our time – is something that seems strange, even impossible.

Thinking inside of a time frame blocks us to live passionate – because

it is dangerous, since we could risk something. And actually it is

rather comfortable inside this social cage that has clipped our

imagination and wings… and treats us with infinite playgrounds.

But freedom is not a pleasant platitude, not a Disneyland or a land of

milk and honey. It is dangerous, because it confronts us with ourselves

and the endless possibilities that we are willing and capable of giving

form. Or to fight for. In the fight against society – against its

rationality and its docile beliefs in the interchangeability and

limitations of humans – the belief that we can individually look like,

think and talk about, but that we are not capable of getting beyond life

inside the social cage… and also not dare to. This belief in the

necessity of the limitations of life and our individuality through

collective, social unfreedom maintains itself through the belief in what

humans are supposedly capable of, in what generally is impossible. This

belief is mirrored in the step-by-step politics of those who always want

to adapt their ideas to the masses, to find them where they supposedly

are. One seeks consensus, portrays a good image and shows patience since

actually the people are still not ready. One has to negotiate a bit, to

educate a bit… But what are we actually waiting for? Do we want to break

with this social cage, or do we want to politically negotiate and

manoeuvre about it? Is this about a prison revolt or about more exercise

time?

We only can talk about freedom in freedom. Only when we change the art

of living we confront ourselves with life. Change starts in ourselves,

in our surroundings, in everyday life. Something new arises from

nothing. Only the rupture with the old makes place for what is possible,

for what we can shape. In this nothing, this unknown, can our freedom

and possibilities expand through others and grow beyond itself. Beyond

the masses and their lethargy lies the confrontation with yourself, the

break with habits, social devotion and calculation.

Enough of political tactics, enough of reasonable estimations of

possibilities, enough of fear for the unknown. Why should we be afraid

of “scaring the people”? Why should we be afraid to not “be understood”?

I fear to squawk the same signs and words till exhaustion, to repeat the

same, well-rehearsed rituals and empty phrases and to settle in the back

of one’s mind for the social securities in our big playground… future

planning, money, family, a long life, some “freedoms”… Why dare

something, why jeopardize something, when it is so comfortable?

And where is the impatience? That savage, that urges us with fury to

live?

And yes, the fight against this society is not a lonely fight, it is a

social fight, but it starts with me.

“Logic may indeed be unshakeable, but it cannot withstand someone who is

determined to live.” - Franz Kafka