I wrote this on a forum about a year ago. It was a discussion on GRRM (Martin, the writer, for those who might not know) and specifically a gloomy post he wrote at that time that people interpreted as a sign of him becoming senile and nostalgic. It’s important to read for context. Especially now.
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It would be quite nice if all of you were right and it was just another case of “old man yell at clouds.” His perception changing due to him getting older rather than an actual change simply described.
But I’m certainly not as old, and would have plenty to criticize of how he handled his work, I’m not a fan. Yet I don’t see anything personal in that blog post he wrote.
You see, it’s not like the past year has been “bad” and that this one looks worse. The real point of what he writes is that it all feels like a mere “set-up”, if it was a novel. Or, said with other words, it’s starting to feel like we are trapped in a chronic case of “Russel’s Turkey” (the world renews itself, one day looks just like the one before, no one sees it coming). Where he writes “the feeling that we are living in the Weimar Republic” he doesn’t mean that living at that time was bad, per se, but that it was that naive moment where no one knew or had the faintest idea of WHAT WAS COMING. And that what would be coming would greatly exceeds the worst expectations. It’s not like a necessary chain of events, but a breaking point that is hard to realize beforehand.
You assume that the way he perceives things is deeply ingrained on him being old and feeling the moment of his death getting closer, but you don’t realize that YOUR way of feeling is also deeply ingrained in the fact that there haven’t been any breaking points. Therefore breaking points cannot happen. They seem out of this world, like belonging to a fictional novel (then maybe read a bit of Zweig).
The literal fabric of reality everyone perceives is precisely what would feel like for a baroque culture at its apex: the certainty that nothing can change. Right before the collapse comes.
Covid has been a significant culture transformation, but most people don’t realize it. It wasn’t a course correction, but it has been an accelerator.
If he’s right, and I think he is because I feel the exact way coming from a completely different perspective, it won’t be down to perception. Soon enough you’ll see the tangible effects that it was not his own being old and change of perspective, but just getting a feel of a radical change, before it actually happens and before everyone realizes.
Or maybe he’s wrong and just old and pessimistic, and you are all right. For sure we’ll see this type of ending in the real world sooner than Winds of Winter. It will just happen to happen to you rather than to a character in a fantasy book.
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I add this bit of Zweig straight from wikipedia, for more context:
Zweig begins by stating a law: no witness to significant changes can recognize them at their beginnings. Even after his failed coup, Hitler was merely one agitator among many in this period shaken by coup attempts, and his name quickly faded into insignificance. However, organized gangs of young men in Nazi insignia were starting to cause trouble. It was unthinkable when Germany imagined that a man as uneducated as Hitler could come to power.
(obviously “Hitler” here isn’t Trump, who’s merely a complacent puppet, but Musk)
