In the beginning of 1200-century, lived a baltic people on the Baltic sea’s southern beaches. They were neighbours to the lithuanians and latvians, but, unlike them, survived the not in in our time. In the space of about two hundred years came their pre-christian culture to be wiped out, as a consequence of countless crusades. They were expelled and murdered in wars and invasions; the language they spoke was banned and died out; their mythology and worldview remains only in fragments. A culture that today could have been its own nation – somewhere in Kaliningrad, a natural part of the european map that Latvia and Lithuania were annihilated. Ask yourself now, which was these people’s names?
It is not shameful to hover on the target. The fact is that we do not know what they called themselves, but for posterity they are known as pruser. They have given the area Prussia its name, but in addition, there is pruserna forgotten, quite literally, a footnote in the history books, only mentioned in connection with the wars in which they were destroyed.
think of pruserna when I read the interview with the poet Jonas Branch in DN ( 29/12 2018), where he says about rulers who are not capable of limiting carbon emissions: ”History will judge them harshly.”
It is a rhetorical figure, but the figure is something more, something deeper and alluring. The idea that people in the future will gather and accuse our time klimatbrottslingar – name of the faceless and anonymous business leaders – and then hold them accountable. Yes, the idea is seductive. It gives a macabre comfort in a time that otherwise feels so hopeless. And that is precisely why we must distrust it.
the Idea of ”the judgment of history” is a staple of post-apocalyptic books and movies; some raljant you could say that people in the future often seems to devote most of their waking time thinking about extinct species and lost habitats. In the future look at movies over all that has been lost, they mourn, and bemoan nature that once existed – the oceans, the forests, the rivers – at the same time as Mad Max-the real-life desert waiting outside the shelter.
likely? Homo sapiens has, in fact, already from the beginning fumlat around in a self-landscaped djurkyrkogård, but that we, for the sake of betraying someone or gave a thought over skeletthögarna that grow around us.
People forget. Two thousand years ago roamed the lion from Albania to India, yet it is probably few who know that Greece and Turkey today is characterized by a yawning absence of the lion. No one is accusing Cromagnonmänniskan for the extinction of the ice age, mammoths, grottbjörnar and long haired rhinos, despite the fact that the hen probably had a hand in the game. And how is it with the people that killed the steller’s sjöko, the dodo and pungvargen – shouldn’t their name eka infamous, history forever doomed?
We can turn our attention to Sweden. It is no secret that the Baltic sea is in many ways finds itself in a protracted death process. Children and dogs must not swim in our inland sea when there is algal bloom (because the water is toxic), and pregnant women can not eat baltic fish, because it contains heavy metals (read: it is toxic). We have become accustomed to the idea of their likely extinction and the syrelösa, desolate sea bottoms. And we have done more than just get used to us, we have to top it all taught us to enjoy the archipelago, just as we always have done, despite the fact that the Baltic sea krackelerar before us.
What else would we do? You can’t constantly be on the lookout at the absence, see there made in the landscape, just go with the disaster frätandes in mind.
You could argue that climate change is something that is unique, that the frequency and scale will be impossible for humanity to forget.
to believe that people in the future will be different? Maybe they sometimes come to ask themselves what could be, and what exactly has been lost, but most of the time they will live in their reality. See it, maybe hate it, maybe enjoy it sometimes. How quickly they will forget and start to take for granted the world as it seems to us that as a nightmare?
You could argue that climate change is something that is unique, that the frequency and scale will be impossible for humanity to forget. But we have forgotten and continues to forget, a variety of disasters, which perhaps was not as extensive in its effects, but equally repulsive to his nature.
In the 1500 and 1600s wiped out the spaniards a series of högkulturer in central and south America. There was the matter of a civilisatoriskt decomposition of apocalyptic dimensions, and for the aztecs and the inca it can hardly have seemed like anything other than the world’s destruction. How present is this the apocalypse in the day, with us, in Sweden? We might know that it occurred, yes, but in what sense we feel it, think it, hold someone responsible for it?
the world is similar to the turned up, the mutated versions of Fortress Europe – isolated fragments of the civilization in which extremely wealthy people sought shelter while the rest of humanity is going in. We would do well to consider today’s european border policy, and ask us: What will be possible to remember in these future samhällsskärvor? Who going to blame when civilization itself is composed of the extremely required?
It is in many ways meaningless to today name the extinct steller’s sjöko, or for that matter the German soldiers, who drove out the pruserna; they were intvingade cogs in a slow working machine. Unlike them, we know how the machine works, what parts wear down that the other parts will be shiny clean. With this comes responsibility, which is shared by all. Nevertheless, the fact remains: this responsibility is not shared equally.
A judgment is accompanied by an executive, a punishment. The sentence means, so far, only to point out the responsible and calling them just that: responsible. Say to them: You are burdened by guilt. You, the politicians whose lack of spine prevents an effective climate change policy. You, head of the oil company which is building out its refinery. You, the PROMOTIONAL consultant who willingly runs fossilindustrins cases.
the name, and soon they will be said out loud. History may not judge you, so why must the present to do it. Take your responsibilities, or carry your guilt to us all. Not in a distant future, but in the world where disaster is already a fact.
Kalle Hedström Gustafsson is the p oet and translator. His debutsamling ”Mormorordning, hägringsöar” (Norstedts) came out in the days
