Religions have built edifices on the foundations of the undying. The soul, heaven, god(s): concepts that never die, representing an ideal that you too can attain (for the right price/tithe/sacrifice). Whether there is a direct line from religion to other social myths, the infinity story is all around. Love is meant to last forever (and contractually perpetually enshrined in the institution of marriage). Ownership of land, equity, and objects is permanent, at least ’til death do you part. Identity categories, careers, and personal growth all have permanence built into them in one way or another, whether static or on curves that go up and to the right forever.
All this is why I’m happy to no longer live in California. Seasons are a beautiful way to experience death and life and temporariness, and if it gets cold enough these transitions even require a little preparation. Even seasons have the flavor of infinity to them, though. They will return eternally, in the same way forever. Anthropogenic climate change has busted this permanence legend for us as well. Nietzsche might have thought better of his eternal recurrence if he lived in our time; rebelling against all of society’s moralities was a big enough project without trying to take on infinity at the same time though. How might we go beyond forever, if we are to say “permanence is dead!”?
An inventory is the first step, perhaps along Marie Kondo’s lines. Take every concept in your life in both hands and ask yourself: does this feel permanent? Rather than putting all the forever-concepts in a black trash bag and heading to Goodwill, consider what might make the transience of that concept more evident; how might you design a life and death for said concept? A new meaning narrative that doesn’t require something to last forever to be meaningful is what we’re after. How can this career path find an ending? How can the notion of a career die the right death? You’re not trying to kill everything in your life, you’re trying to imbue things with explicit impermanence, rather than implied immortality. There may be some things that have outlived their natural lives, and it may be getting on time to encourage them to pass on. In such a case, remembrance, grief, and appreciation are the best thing you can give them in addition to the snip with the scissors of the fates.
There are experiments to be done with impermanence: equity in companies is currently permanent, what if the value of shares dropped toward zero over time according to some schedule? Perhaps investor capitalism would have to rethink the way it sits on its ass. What if property taxes increased every year a specific owner held the real estate? What if constitutions and even the names of countries expired and had to be re-made? What if the value of educational attainments fell such that you couldn’t even claim to have attained a particular degree a certain number of years after graduation? We might find ourselves living in a more fair (and at least more honest) society.
Roman Ryan 