> normal state. How did that quote from Benjamin go, re stopping the train
> we're on?
More than just the train. Benjamin's great paragraph on history:
"History is the object of a construction whose place is formed not in homogenous and empty time, but in that which is fulfilled by the here-and-now [Jetztzeit]. For Robespierre, Roman antiquity was a past charged with the here-and-now, which he exploded out of the continuum of history. The French revolution thought of itself as a latterday Rome. It cited ancient Rome exactly the way fashion cites a past costume. Fashion has an eye for what is up-to-date, wherever it moves in the jungle [Dickicht: maze, thicket] of what was. It is the tiger’s leap into that which has gone before. Only it takes place in an arena in which the ruling classes are in control. The same leap into the open sky of history is the dialectical one, as Marx conceptualized the revolution." (Theses on History, XIV, my own translation)
That open sky still beckons, and we have digital tools to build our air-ships. Sky-pirates of the world, unite!
-- DRR (not really feeling optimistic, but I can indulge just this once)