(by QMS, 2015-2018)
“We must run while they walk.” (Julius Nyerere)
"We are enslaved by speed and have all succumbed to the same insidious virus... To be worthy of the name, Homo Sapiens should rid ourselves of speed before it reduces us to a species in danger of extinction." (Folco Portinari)
“Do you know that at this very moment you are surrounded by eternity? And do you know you can use that eternity, if you so desire? Do you know that you can extend yourself forever in any direction and use it to take the totality of yourself forever in any direction? Do you know that one moment can be eternity?” (Don Juan Matus)
Climate change and
capitalism and patriarchy and racism operate at all speeds and so
must we. Reclaim the infinity of time: How it can be stretched and compressed, accelerated and slowed, emptied and filled, found and
lost, paid and unpaid, spent and seized. The Pachakuti calls the
warriors of the rainbow to the horizon. So let us come in all colors
to where the sun meets the storm. Let us move instantly and
endlessly, let us be faster than the sun and slower than the storm,
and in blazing beauty paint the way to the horizon. We must move at
all speeds simultaneously.
We must move fast
enough to prevent and/or prepare for climate armageddon: as fast as
glaciers are melting, as fast as permafrost is thawing, as fast as
deserts are advancing. Fast enough to out-maneuver the National
Security States; their cops on the corners, their drones and their death squads. Faster than war, faster than famine, faster than the oceans
are turned to acid... Those of us awake now in the early 21st century
have a uniquely planetary prerogative to act on behalf
of future generations of all species. “We
must run while others walk,” insisted Mwalimu Julius Nyerere. Tomorrow is too late, and so was yesterday. Now is the only time. “Focus
your attention on the fact that you don't have time and let your acts
flow accordingly. Let each of your acts be your last battle on earth.
Only under those conditions will your acts have their rightful
power,” counseled
Don
Juan Matus. We have a need for
speed.
But speed is killing
us – finance and freeways and food are moving at velocities whose
violence can be measured by the minute. “We are enslaved by
speed”, wrote the founder of
the Slow Food movement. Against the space-time compression of
the doomsday clock culture that ticks exponentially faster towards
extinction, going slow can be an act of resistance. So we must also
move at the slowest and deepest speeds: The speed of community, the
speed of contemplation: the speeds of reflection where human beings
strive alone and together to comprehend themselves. The Zapatistas
call it “the speed of democracy” and their mascot the snail
insists, lento pero avanzo: the speed at which the tortoise
beats the hare to the finish line. We must remember how to move like our
ancestors, at the speeds of the stars, the sunrise and sunset, at the speed of
the seasons; of the forests, of the mountains, of the rivers, of the
ocean waves; the speed of learning, of forgiving, of loving; the
speed of the cosmos, the speed of the soul. We must reset our clocks
to the cosmic almanac of the milpa,
the conuco, the allyu,
the chacra, the
shamba, etc;
the calendar of the commons; the speed of the seed!
In short, we must move
simultaneously at the speed of revolution and at the speed of
evolution. But remember, time is not a spectrum ranging from fast to
slow. Time is a whole dimension with a multiplicity of geometries. We
must move not only fast and slow, but move in multiple time
signatures: retool our ontologies to dance and dream and make
decisions, not only in patriotic 4/4 time, but in 5 and 7 and
9 and 11 and 13 and beyond, and all mixed together. This is what it
means to reclaim the infinity of time, to move at all times and in
all time signatures the melody of freedom.
Sun Tzu promises:
“If
you know the place and time of battle, you can join the fight from a
thousand miles away.” This is what it means to
move at all speeds simultaneously: to destroy the enclosures and to
create the commons; to topple the world government of transnational
corporations and to build beloved communities; to shut down nuclear,
coal and oil energy industries and to build the and soil and
agroecologies necessary to replace them; to fight imperialism and to
prefigure a new mode of production.
Anyone can learn the
technique of traveling at all speeds simultaneously. We all lived
that way once as children. We were spontaneous and persistent,
playful and serious, living in multiple worlds at once. Return to the
speed of the source. "You can use that eternity, if you so desire" -- so a sorcerer revealed the greatest secret. Spread the word.
“[T]ime doesn't
run out, people run out. Time comes from a long ways away and follows
its path waaaay out there, where we can't even see. We are like
little bits of time. That is, time can't walk without us. What we do
is make time go forward, and when we are gone someone else comes and
pushes time along a little more until it gets where it needs to go.
But we aren't going to see where it goes, it will be others that see
if it arrives alright or if all of a sudden it doesn't have the
strength to go on and somebody has to come give it a push again,
until it gets there for real.... we have to look far into the
distance, further than either time or our gaze can reach.”
(Subcomandante Marcos)
“These actions are
proposed for the short term – a time of struggle, for the medium
term – a time of construction, and
the long term – a time of
utopia
... we will construct our own
meanings together with all our
peoples, in order to fight the alienation of the international
capitalist
development model and its side effects...
It is true
that this is a long term task, and precisely because it
will take a
long time, it is the first which must be initiated in the short
term.
” (Combined Strategy and Plan of Action of the First Ecosocialist International)
