I think there is a certain kind of depression characterized by a lack of temporality.
Of the many, if not infinitesimal strands of the depressive state, perhaps despair is the closest sibling. Despair as “the complete loss or absence of hope” implies a static state of being. The feeling that one is stuck in the present moment in time, forever.
Kierkegaard made a good note of this. He even suggests that despair is the ultimate Christian quality, a blessing to the believer. For despair brings the finite being against the infinite. He realizes that there exists a self who cannot die. That his life, up until that point, has no other possibility except despair: the sickness unto death. Despair is the feeling present when even the hope of death evaporates. When the self, in relation to itself, suddenly becomes futile as an inauthentic, finite opposite to the infinite. In so doing, despair affirms the existence of an unperturbed self. One that constitutes the Christian’s advantage over the natural man: “to be healed of this sickness is the Christian’s bliss”. In despair, the Christian finds the infinite, finds his faith. For Kierkegaard hopelessness is a good source of hope, so to speak.
Despair is ever-present. A sense that we are living after our future; desires fulfilled and discoveries made. The task at hand is to refine the world, not make it. Our knowledge is thought to be absolute and infinite. In everyday life, this is an overbearing sensation. That reality depends completely on the capacity of the individual as opposed to the fertility of the soil in which he or she is sown. As Byung-Chul hand argues: “The complaint of the depressive individual, “Nothing is possible,” can only occur in a society that thinks, “Nothing is impossible.” The present is now a time of greater possibility overarching a deeper sense of spiritual sterility. If there is no impossible, no boundary, or external relation to the individual, the living agent is forever bound to a sense of lacking or unexplored existence. A self unable to become more of a self. If every society has its affliction, ours would be this sense of despair. One where the self is exhausted, or rather that it can no longer be exhausted is the conundrum. We feel as if we are living in a ‘temporal vacuum’, untethered to historicity or concept of future. If anything in the past seems increasingly absurd and the future or sense of destination quite literally cancelled, what to make of the present existing in relation to nothing?
There exists a ‘temporal anhedonia’. A lack of orientation due to a lack of breadcrumbs leading to this point in our path. We cannot feel at home in this life, at ease with our time because we can’t quite put our finger on it. Flicking through contemporary music alongside Berardi’s concept of “the slow cancellation of the future” Mark Fisher compounds his case studies onto a theory of creative degeneration. Looking at the 80s and 90s experimental music, arguing that their future was different in kind. Traditionally, the future was an empty category, a floating signifier representing all possibilities of the emerging present. Slowly yet surely, the future is becoming a standardised image or concept, interchangeable with nothing but itself: it is becoming a “font”. Perhaps the last iteration of future falls within the imaginative universe of “back to the future”- Deloreans, technological advances, hoverboards, instant food, etc. It reflects the trajectories pertinent to the age and its spirit. A simple glance at the future we envision nowadays incorporates these elements within a completely pessimistic overtone- yes we have lasers and flying cars but they will probably only be used by the ultra-rich technocrats alone, yes we will have instant food but we will have exhausted all of our natural supplies and be forced to consume synthetic aphorism of what we used to call food. The future is what we see in post-apocalyptic films, such as the matrix, blade-runner, or black mirror. It is a standard text, a symbolic universe that does not reflect any specific sense or spirit of our times if not a compilation of many others. We are forced to adopt a pastiche future, an ensemble of past futures, for our lack of any sense of present. The modern subject roams blind haunted by his past disguised as his future.
Is this not what Kierkegaard would refer to as despair? The subject that is faced with a lack of alternatives, a lack of self to overcome? Is despair not the recurring event in which the individual comes to face the infinite? Fisher’s modern subject cannot conceive of an alternative and finds solace in a sort of realism. He sees his world as total: his reality is as real as reality ever gets. Therefore, capitalism is the only alternative. The current version of the present is the only one ever attainable. Fisher’s modern sickness is invisible. For Kierkegaard this is a heightened version of despair- the individual does not realize he is in such a state, there is no external cause, his sickness is his own. At every moment he is bringing it upon himself for his reality is perfect. Just like the Christian in despair, Fisher’s modern subject is not lacking a sense of self. His problem is an inability to be rid of it. Just as we are not allowed to be bored in an environment pregnant with entertainment, distraction, and spectacles, so too are we denied access to anything but selfhood. Tinder is one example where one must concisely contrast himself; likewise is the experience of cyberspace in such sites as Facebook and Twitter.
The self is sacred. The self is what is found within every person waiting for him or her to discover and grow. It is not symbolic but the essence of any individual. Embodying it is a maxim that leaves one ever so empty. There is no more than what the present can provide and that, perhaps, science can explain. This subject unknowingly in despair sits above a precarious collection of empty shells he calls self. Unknown to him he still experiences despair. It manifests in the inability to create a future, to envision alternatives, to come to terms with the non-cumulative nature of time, to see his life as infinite as opposed to finite; a constant reiteration of the same. In such a state, abandoned futures haunt him as the sheer weight of possibility in Kierkegaard’s anxiety. For in all his realism he has not chosen a path nor trespassed through those of others. His path is a collage of many others, only constituted of bits of possibilities.
What is a possible solution to this malady then? I say this sickness is also not unto death. Attaining it leaves the individual ever further from his real state of despair, and therefore from his cure. There is a deeper sense of self that is not rooted in himself. The temporal abyss is a fictive creation due to the lack of past or present. The solution is therefore to recapture these categories. If despair is cured by the leap of faith into the infinite, the future must be re-erected, as a symbol of potentiality. Simon Weil asserts that “The beauty of the world is Christ’s tender smile for us, coming through matter”. Much like the future, Christ is not in this world –he only manifests himself indirectly. So too is the past distinct from the present, but it must be accounted for in some way. I do not suggest that the future and past should become deities. But that we should re-articulate them as unfinished projects rife with symbolic potentials. If the individual in despair gathers solace when facing the eternal; so too can we regain our temporalities by cutting the closed-loop of realism. “Without this survival of the past into the present there would be no duration, but only instantaneity”, Bergson states. This sense of a constant presence is the sickness onto death, the despaired individual with no self-left to destroy, no symbolic realm to disintegrate. Mark Fisher notes that we are now facing:
“a generation born into that ahistorical, anti-mnemonic blip culture — a generation, that is to say, for whom time has always come ready-cut into digital micro-slices.”
We need to see the whole cake, this is one tentative start towards a solution. I propose that this can be achieved through reverse nostalgia. ‘Normal’ nostalgia functions as a return to the past from the present, I propose replacing the present with the past. In other words, shifting the nostalgic exercise from present-past to future-present, or perhaps even past-present. So long as one forms an empathic relationship to a time outside his own. The present should be the object of nostalgia. For then one can witness the infinite and the finitude of one’s era. One should step outside of his time as an imaginative exercise to delineate its beginning and end. As Han states “Modern, Cartesian doubt has taken the place of wonder”. We must learn to think beyond our reality to comprehend it instead of traveling constantly within it. The greatest affirmation that a reality exists lies in recognizing fictive situations.
To locate the present we can look at it from the past or the future. Imagine looking back on your day and age much like we look at the 20s nowadays. Or how someone from the 20s would look onto the present. Both are different exercises but they fulfil the same function- different tools for the same job. This is a heuristic device or practice meant to counter despair as we have described it so far.
The reader of Bourdieu will be familiar with the concept of habitus. That is, for the current discussion, a sense of taste or aesthetic preference subconsciously or implicitly determined by social factors. If one asks what is the current aesthetic I doubt any complete answer will come to mind, rather, he will find an immense range of answers. The current aesthetic is a pastiche of dozens. It is not the proverbial vintage, but an eclectic return to past forms presented as the present. As the lack of melody in Billie Eilish, or coherency in Iannis Xenakis, and the archetypal modern art can represent: a lack of identifiable style has become a style in itself. It is as if Bourdieu’s theory of distinction has become widespread. That the links between taste and class have been highlighted and abolished and taste no longer a requirement for social life. Beauty is only a superficial category, typified and coherent. Just as the new ‘break’ is simply a recharge to perform the primary function that is work effectively, the experience of time is only an escape from the inevitable reality of sameness — that we feel precedes and succeeds us. We have been reduced to an aesthetic ‘bare life’ (as Agamben would put it). Reduced to function, and even dysfunction as function alone. It is not surprising that the Covid pandemic, in all its novelty, has been almost immediately digested as a historical event; as something identifying of ‘our time’.
Perhaps we must re-articulate a sense of style. We must acquire a sense of symbolic capital; a distinguishing taste. In the absence of class conflict and futures, in a world seemingly retired from inventiveness, what better way to reignite a sense of time than by comparing it to others? By creating distinction? This is easily achieved through amplifying the existing zeitgeist — what little symbolic capital we have accumulated for our temporality. Walking past a street or traveling alongside a familiar locale, picture (or rather embody) the gaze of future generations looking down upon it. Picture the present moment the same way, with the same emotional endeavour, as we picture buildings from a hundred years ago. An old cottage shed or wall suddenly appears queer. Stepping into ancestral shoes the past becomes familiar. We become nostalgic for the woodwork, the craftsmanship, the architecture, or even the weather-worn shop signs.
From their context, they become mundane, just as we experience the present and fall unknowingly into despair. Through nostalgia, they emit almost spiritual energy, as if touching it is a profane sentiment. What I propose is the same exercise towards the present. To picture the current moment from the perspective of a hundred years in the future. In effect, a certain reverse nostalgia, or an induced nostalgia. How would future generations judge or what will emit the sort of ‘spiritual energy’ of time that an old cast iron skillet can induce? Will computer screens become as archaic as horse-drawn carriages? Reading as antiquated as hand-written manuscripts? Perhaps eating meat, liberally consuming water and hand-shakes will become symbolic of our time, as things people used to do in the ‘foreign country’ that is the past, as Lowenthal would put it.
This guesswork immediately brings a nostalgia for the present, a feeling of both living through and remembering the present. If despair is cured by identifying the self in the infinite, our ‘atemporal’ depression is cured by locating our present in eternity. That is, to see it not as some ‘stage’ in a progress towards some goal. Rather, as a unique time of its own in a recurring, inherited temporal plain. Amplifying our unique symbolic ‘spirit of the times’ amidst the cacophony of pastiches allows us to distinguish ourselves and gain a foothold in a sea of temporal confusion. If despair is the illness of our time to remember the present is one medicament.
