TTA New Year's Day Postcard (SA/2026)*
Here we are on the first day of the New Year and I find that, like Oliver Hardy in Dirty Work (1933), I have nothing to say ...
That being the case, I thought it might be fun to republish half-a-dozen posts from years gone by dated January 1st ...
Panem et Pyrotechnics (1 Jan 2014)
Fireworks, as Oscar Wilde observed, have one big advantage over the stars; namely, you always know precisely
when they are going to appear in the sky.
But public firework displays - no matter how spectacular -
soon bore and disappoint and one can't help wondering at the politics of
the event and the psychology of people who stand in the cold gazing
upwards with their mouths open, fascinated by bright lights and loud
bangs; content to obey their leaders for another twelve months thanks to
the promise of panem et pyrotechnics.
New Year's Eve makes North Koreans of us all ...
A Nietzschean Message for the New Year (1 Jan 2015)
For me, the greatest and most touching of new year blessings and resolutions remains the one with which Nietzsche opens Book IV of The Gay Science (written January, 1882):
'Today, everybody permits themselves the expression of their dearest wish. Hence, I too shall say what it is that I most desire - what was the first thought to enter my heart this year and what shall be for me the reason, guarantee, and sweetness of my life henceforth. I want increasingly to learn to see as beautiful what is necessary in things, so that I may become one of those who makes things beautiful: amor fati - let that be my love from now on!'
Happy New Year From the Ghost of Jean Baudrillard (1 Jan 2018)
When asked during an interview in January 2006 what it meant to wish someone Happy New Year, Baudrillard amusingly replied that it was 'a collectively remote-controlled symbolic ritual that has its place in a [...] cost-free sphere'.
In other words, an empty gesture without value; a seasonal greeting from another time which, just like Merry Christmas, tries to desperately recreate a social bond or, more accurately, evoke nostalgia for such, via an exchange of disintensified signs. All the high days and holidays that we so want to enjoy and make special, invariably leave us feeling lonely and inadequate; hostages to our own lives of consumption.
Having said that, Baudrillard hates to be thought of as a pessimist or a nihilist in the pejorative sense of the term.
And he does, in fact, still anticipate that there might be an element of radical newness in times to come; a counter-force lodged within the present that's the source of future ambivalence; a catastrophic force that enables individuals to change established forms and punch holes in the order of things; an unverifiable force which, inasmuch as it has 'nothing to do with consciousness, common sense or morality', we might simply call evil.
And so, in wishing readers a Happy New Year, I suppose I'm wishing them the courage to become complicit with l'intelligence du mal.
Reflections on a Rose and a New Year's Resolution (1 Jan 2019)
New Year's Day: the world of my little garden forever undying. Roses, stained with the blood of Aphrodite, bloom and make happy. Sometimes, I think it would be nice to remain alone with the flowers and do nothing but quietly reflect upon their perfection.
But then, after a few minutes, I realise that not only is such a life impossible, it's also undesirable; that one's main duty as a Lawrentian floraphile is to actively shelter the rose of life from being trampled on by the pigs.
Thus, I resolve to 'go out into the world again, to kick it and stub my toes. It is no good my thinking of retreat: I rouse up and feel I don't want to. My business is a fight, and I've got to keep it up.'
Why You Should Never Wish a Happy New Year to a Nietzschean (1 Jan 2023)
I don't know the origin of the zen fascist insistence on wishing everyone a happy new year, but I suspect it's rooted in the 18th-century, which is why in 1794 the Archange de la Terreur - Louis de Saint-Just - was able to proclaim: Le bonheur est une idée neuve en Europe ...
Such a new idea of happiness - one concerned with individual fulfilment in the here and now and realised in material form, rather than a deferred condition of soul which awaits the blessed in heaven - had already become an inalienable right of citizens in the United States, although whether Jefferson was inspired by the English empiricist John Locke - or by the French philosophe Jean-Jacques Rousseau - is debatable.
Either way, the pursuit of happiness was declared a self-evidently good thing that all Americans should uphold and practice; for ensuring the greatest happiness of the greatest number was, as Jeremy Bentham wrote the mark of a truly moral and just society.
The problem, however, for those who take Nietzsche seriously, is that this positing of happiness in its modern form as the ultimate aim of human existence makes one contemptible; the kind of person who only seeks their own pleasure and safety, avoiding all danger, difficulty, or struggle.
Nietzsche wants his readers to see that suffering and, yes, even unhappiness, play an important role in life and culture; that greatness is, in fact, more often than not born of pain and sorrow. This is why his philosophy is a form of tragic pessimism.
And this is why it's ironically insulting to wish a Nietzschean happy new year ...
Nothing Changes on New Year's Day (1 Jan 2024)
I don't like - and have never liked - the Irish rock band U2.
But that isn't to say they haven't written some fine songs, including 'New Year's Day', which contains the killer line: Nothing changes on New Year's Day - a line which counters all the mad optimism of those gawping at fireworks, popping champagne corks, and singing 'Auld Lang Syne' without any idea of what the phrase means.
Often, these are the same people who criticise others for being despairing about the past or present and who insist on being hopeful for the future - even though the expectation of positive outcomes with respect to temporal progress seems entirely groundless.
I don't want to sound too diabolical, but it seems to me that the phrase lasciate ogni speranza written above the gates of Hell is actually a sound piece of advice. For Nietzsche may have a point when he suggests that it is hope which prolongs the torments of man and is thus the most evil of all evils.
* One of six designs in the official TTA postcard range, available as a set for just £29.99.
