James

“Sparks come from the very source of light and are made of the purest brightness—so say the oldest legends. When a human Being is to be born, a spark begins to fall. First it flies through the darkness of outer space, then through galaxies, and finally, before it falls here, to Earth, the poor thing bumps into the orbits of planets. Each of them contaminates the spark with some Properties, while it darkens and fades. First Pluto draws the frame for this cosmic experiment and reveals its basic principles—life is a fleeting incident, followed by death, which will one day let the spark escape from the trap; there’s no other way out. Life is like an extremely demanding testing ground. From now on everything you do will count, every thought and every deed, but not for you to be punished or rewarded afterward, but because it is they that build your world. This is how the machine works. As it continues to fall, the spark crosses Neptune’s belt and is lost in its foggy vapors. As consolation Neptune gives it all sorts of illusions, a sleepy memory of its exodus, dreams about flying, fantasy, narcotics and books. Uranus equips it with the capacity for rebellion; from now on that will be proof of the memory of where the spark is from. As the spark passes the rings of Saturn, it becomes clear that waiting for it at the bottom is a prison. A labor camp, a hospital, rules and forms, a sickly body, fatal illness, the death of a loved one. But Jupiter gives it consolation, dignity and optimism, a splendid gift: things-will-work-out. Mars adds strength and aggression, which are sure to be of use. As it flies past the Sun, it is blinded, and all that it has left of its former, far-reaching consciousness is a small, stunted Self, separated from the rest, and so it will remain. I imagine it like this: a small torso, a crippled being with its wings torn off, a Fly tormented by cruel children; who knows how it will survive in the Gloom. Praise the Goddesses, now Venus stands in the way of its Fall. From her the spark gains the gift of love, the purest sympathy, the only thing that can save it and other sparks; thanks to the gifts of Venus they will be able to unite and support each other. Just before the Fall it catches on a small, strange planet that resembles a hypnotized Rabbit, and doesn’t turn on its own axis, but moves rapidly, staring at the Sun. This is Mercury, who gives it language, the capacity to communicate. As it passes the Moon, it gains something as intangible as the soul. Only then does it fall to Earth, and is immediately clothed in a body. Human, animal or vegetable. That’s the way it is. —”
― Olga Tokarczuk, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

“M. lived a very private life; whatever discontent he felt, he kept to himself. This was surely infuriating to the Stasi. But it is hugely telling about the kind of place the GDR had become, so effective at driving people inward, away from the public sphere and into that private sanctum in which they cannot be found. That M.__'s intentions went unnoticed was thus not simply a failure of the system, but also, paradoxically, evidence of its success.

This kind of social atomization is a mainstay of authoritarian systems, a point Hannah Arendt makes in Origins. Her study focused on Hitler's Third Reich and Stalin's USSR, but its resonance with the GDR is immediately obvious. These are systems defined by extralegal violence and indoctrination, where state slogans are repeated by rote and citizens follow orders not out of any deep, abiding belief, but for fear of persecution. "The aim of [totalitarianism] has never been to instill convictions," Arendt writes, "but to destroy the capacity to form any."

In such conditions, the entire fabric of society unravels. Since people are isolated from one another — each existing in their own fearful pod they stop sharing their experiences. This produces what Arendt calls loneliness, a special kind of solitude where you feel alone, even when surrounded by others.

For the Stasi, this was very much the point — to infiltrate social units and destroy the trust people had in each other, thereby ensuring no communal bond was strong enough to overwhelm the state. But it's clear that, by 1989, they had become victims of their own effectiveness. With time, people begin to unknow, unlearn, unobserve as an emotional response to state power. In such a system, people's thoughts become so guarded that even when they do report on one another, the information garnered is unreliable. And when people disappear totally inward, there is nothing to report at all.”
― Matthew Longo, The Picnic