Age of No Remedy

How do we account for the intractability of our times?

Why have so many ‘once in a lifetime’ events produced no corrections?

Even when we know…knowing does not seem to matter.

Since 2008, we have experienced a string of arguably ‘once in a lifetime’ events that threaten to shift our entrenched paradigms but ultimately never achieve such a correction. During these years, we have also received astounding confirmations of the intractability of our times—galvanizing events that ultimately do not resolve:

  • The election of Barack Obama (2008);
  • A world-wide financial crash (The Great Recession, 2008);
  • A Democratic supermajority in Congress (2009-2011);
  • Arab Spring (2010-2012);
  • A world-wide protest against wealth inequality and the corrections a financial crash did not deliver (Occupy Wall Street, 2011-2012);
  • Black Lives Matter (2013-2016);
  • Standing Rock Protests (2016);
  • The Panama Papers (2016);
  • The most money ever raised in a United States presidential election (Hillary Clinton, 2016);
  • The largest single-day protest in American History (Women’s March, 2017)
  • #Resist
  • #MeToo
  • Covid-19

In example after example, knowledge alone has shown minimal effect on the structure, maintenance, regulation (and lack thereof) of our world.

THIS IS (AN):

[ ] AGE OF NO REMEDY

[ ] AGE OF NO REMEDY (FOR MOST)

[ ] THE REMEDY (FOR SOME)

What is an age of no remedy?

  1. A time where the ability to produce remedy, regulation or alternative is overpowered by the subjective ability to suppress remedy, regulation and alternative;
  2. An experience of entrenchment and intractability where neither knowledge nor rhetoric—even when accurate—have no effect;
  3. A misalignment where terrains of circulation and coordination extend beyond the reach of sovereign regulation;
  4. A system guided and constrained by contradiction regardless of knowledge or political will.