Imagine that you were born at the exact right time
Reading Jenny Odell and fighting back against nostalgia
Nostalgia is dangerous. I should know, because I am painfully — even preemptively— nostalgic. We can look back on earlier times in our neighborhoods and cities wistfully and wish we were born in a different time. Simplify. Renounce modern society. Become a tradwife, whatever.
Sure, I’m thinking about the current state of affairs in the United States but I’m also thinking about placemaking and urbanism and neighboring. Nostalgia threatens to distort reality in both of those spaces. We harken back to a time when kids ran free in the neighborhood and didn’t come in “until the streetlights turned on.” We bemoan the impact of smartphones and social media. We yearn for a return to simpler times without acknowledging that for much of society, those times weren’t simple or fair or just. When take to the extremes, this sort of reality-blurring nostalgia can lead to some of the terrible policy choices we’re seeing play out today around the country — elimination of civil rights protections and promotion of forced births, as two examples.
In her book How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy, Jenny Odell relates to those of us who have dreamt of escaping reality and asks, “What responsibility do you have to the world you left behind, if any?”
She comes to the decision that “total renunciation would be a mistake. The world needs my participation more than ever.” So the question is, how do we stay present without giving up our values? We stand apart.
We imagine the pieces of escaping that we want — less consumption, no social media, stronger relationships, slower pace of living, whatever — and we commit to bringing those into our actual lives. We stand apart from the systems we want to break and we work together to figure out how to actually break them. In other words, we don’t stand apart by isolating ourselves or chasing individual optimization. We stand apart, together. We fight for fair wages and healthcare and dignity for all, not just ourselves.
Odell includes this quote from Thomas Merton:
"If I had no choice about the age in which I was to live, I nevertheless have a choice about the attitude I take and about the way and the extent of my participation in its living ongoing events. To choose the world is... an acceptance of a task and a vocation in the world, in history and in time. In my time, which is the present."
- Thomas Merton
What if we were actually born at the exact right time? If, instead of succumbing to the premise of one of my favorite 2000s movies, Midnight in Paris, we embraced our role in today’s world and in the present we’ve inherited. We could be clear-eyed about what our challenges and opportunities, and acknowledge the failures of the past. If we’re lamenting the decline in free range parenting, for example, we would acknowledge the impact of suburban sprawl, white flight and segregation, the national highways act and ever-growing car sizes on our streets.
Much of Odell’s writing contemplates the climate reality we are in and how we can resist nihilism in the face of ongoing catastrophe. In her most recent book Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock she says this:
The world is ending—but which world? Consider that many worlds have ended, just as many worlds have been born and are about to be born. Consider that there is nothing a priori about any of them. Just as a thought experiment, imagine that you were not born at the end of time, but actually at the exact right time, that you might grow up to be, as the poet Chen Chen writes, “a season from the planet / of planet-sized storms.” Hallucinate a scenario, hallucinate yourself in it. Then tell me what you see.
What if we were born in this age of social media and artificial intelligence precisely because we have the intellect, judgement and persistence to make sure this new technology is used for the public good and not for destruction? What if our creativity and imagination is the key to unlocking climate solutions for a sustainable world? What if we are the moral movement needed today? Again, from Saving Time:
Even if in seemingly small ways and only very briefly, you may find that you are bringing into existence a new territory of ideas, language, and actions that could never have been predicted, even by you. Exhilarating as those moments can be, they are also full of the discomfort of leaving behind the familiar. Full of doubt.
With Odell’s writing, I remember that we have agency, that we are real people in a real time — however troubled it may be. This week has been full in the best of ways: a book tour conversation for You Only Get What You’re Organized to Take: Lessons from the Movement to End Poverty, advocacy day with Moms Demand Action and March for Our lives, a rally for Kilmar Obrega Garcia, a neighborhood cleanup, May Day and an elementary school concert.
What if we were born in the exact right time?
Elsewhere
Our Jane Jacobs Walk is this Sunday, May 4 — join us! It’s casual, it’s chill, it’s a walking conversation around downtown Albany for people who love and are curious about their places. We’re keeping an eye on the weather and we’ll send an email on Sunday morning if we have any updates, so if you’re thinking about coming make sure you are subscribed to Jane Jacobs Walk Albany.
Also, who wants to go to these zine parties at the library tomorrow?!
Well said!!😍😍