Generation of Shit

I must have a death drive, W. has always said. My God, look at me! Look at what's happened to me! The disasters I've brought upon myself!

I'm happiest only in the midst of the catastrophe, W. says; it's when I thrive. I only really come alive amidst death, that's my secret. I'm only happy during some great collapse.

Which is why I welcome it, the coming apocalypse, W. says. It's the only context in which my life will make sense. Everything will make retrospective sense only then, at the end of times.

It's like the opposite of God's judgement, W. says. The opposite of prophetic witness. It's the witness of shit, W. says. The witness of the generation of shit, who have no faith in anything but destruction.

The generation who come after me are different, W. says. They're gentle souls with beards and pot-bellies. And the generation before, his generation, W. says, were still full of hope – they still thought something could be done.

But my generation, the generation of shit … – 'You have no sense of hope', W. says. Or our hope is twisted into our hopelessness and is indistinguishable from it. Our lives are spasms and twitchings, nothing more. Our lives are contortions, some non-living reflex twitching like a frog's leg touched with electrodes.

W. can barely comprehend it. What notions do we have of will, of intentionality? What of directedness and purpose? At least his generation could raid the historical dressing up box for costumes, as Marx put it, W. says. At least they could strike revolutionary poses and dress up as revolutionaries, even though it was never going to lead anywhere.

And then, too, we're different from the generation who succeed us, whose hope is entirely turned to the private, to the domestic. A furry hope, a hope of burrows and hobbits, that kind of thing.

But we, the generation of shit, are different. – 'What can you hope for but the end? That's when you'd be happiest, if the end came right now, if there was only a week or two left, that's when you'd come into your own and everything would make sense'.

I'll be dancing on the pyre, W. said. I'll be laughing in the flames. It all makes sense! Suddenly, for the first time, everything makes sense!