{"id":81881,"date":"2025-04-24T10:25:32","date_gmt":"2025-04-24T09:25:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=81881"},"modified":"2025-04-24T10:25:32","modified_gmt":"2025-04-24T09:25:32","slug":"what-are-we-going-to-do","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2025\/04\/24\/what-are-we-going-to-do\/","title":{"rendered":"What are we going to do?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I quote this conclusion from <a href=\"https:\/\/aurelien2022.substack.com\/p\/the-end\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Aurelian's latest essay on Substack<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>What are we going to do then? Well, we can start by acknowledging reality: the hour is getting\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=bT7Hj-ea0VE\" rel=\"\">late<\/a>, and it\u2019s not a time to talk falsely. Forty years of globalised neoliberalism have broken our societies, our economies and our political systems, and we no longer have the ability to put them back together.<\/p>\n<p>This doesn\u2019t mean that we can\u2019t, and shouldn\u2019t, try to do things at a personal level. In an\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/aurelien2022.substack.com\/p\/a-postcard-from-the-far-side-of-despair\" rel=\"\">essay<\/a>\u00a0last year, I suggested that we needed to start cultivating (or re-cultivating) the mindset that has seen people through harsh times before, that of doing the right thing in the absence of any real hope for the future, because it was the right thing.<\/p>\n<p>One of the examples I gave was the French Resistance, and it\u2019s worth pointing out that Samuel Beckett, whom I mentioned earlier, served with distinction in the Resistance and was honoured by the French state after the War. (Indeed, the war years explain much more of the atmosphere of his work than is commonly realised.) So let\u2019s end with a citation from the conclusion of one of his bleakest (!) works,\u00a0<em>The Unnameable:<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>You must go on. I can\u2019t go on. I will go on<\/em>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I don't always agree with all Aurelian (who uses a necessary pseudonym) has to say, but this resonates very strongly with me.<\/p>\n<p>The rest of the essay is well worth reading, as is the back catalogue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I quote this conclusion from Aurelian&#8217;s latest essay on Substack: What are we going to do then? Well, we can start by acknowledging reality: the<br \/><a class=\"moretag\" href=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2025\/04\/24\/what-are-we-going-to-do\/\"><em> Read the full article&#8230;<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[215,16,106],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-81881","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-age-of-aggression","category-ethics","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81881","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81881"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81881\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81882,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81881\/revisions\/81882"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}