THE GREY TIMES

[Description: Grey is an intermediate color between black and white. It is a neutral or achromatic color, meaning literally that it is "without color", because it can be composed of black and white.]

Notice how in the first quarter of the 21st century, a poem – or be it a phrase from a collection of poems – by Berthold Brecht is quoted again and again. Brecht asks:

In the dark times

Will there be singing?

There will be singing

Of the dark times

The phrase comes from the Svendborg Poems, on 'the dark times', written in 1938 whilst exiled to the Danish countryside. He wrote this at a time of blank nationalism, between two fatal wars, which exposed humanity to a self-inflicted abyss of existence in every form. 'Dark' therefore stands for hopeless, unbearable, horrible and many other negative connotations. When dark is translated as black, it is the darkest black and Western culture has agreed and imposed on others, in particular through Christian religious ideology, that light or white stands for positive, desirable and good - whereas dark or black stands for negative, undesirable and evil. Even if questionable, it is rarely called into question because this standardizing definition is part of a much larger racial concept that helped to establish and maintain colonial power structures – to this day.

To mark differences, in favor of the self-proclaimed superior, these oppressive concepts, in their superficiality, range from the pigmentation of the skin to how colors are used in rituals and traditions: we mourn wearing black, they mourn wearing white – or they don't mourn at all because death is celebrated. They're not like us! The perception and interpretation of color thus becomes one of many ideological weapons in the oppressor's arsenal. Occasionally, it's put in question. For example, when Saul Williams – often introduced with the attribute "black" artist and "black" poet, says that from a perspective of proud 'blackness' he would argue that times are "actually, not dark enough".

Brecht's dark times, however, seem to inspire mostly white European Gen-Ys to draw parallels between the present day and the time a little less than a hundred years ago, when quoting the poem or set it to music, despite them having hardly experienced similar circumstances or such conditions Brecht refers to in his writing. Given the current state of affairs it is very tempting to see everything "dark", to paint it black, and to fall into a collective doomsday mood. And perhaps the emo (emo-core) subculture trend that accompanied the aforementioned generation in its adolescence has a certain long-term effect here. The dark-mode is comfy. But it is also a convenient simplification of complex issues and countervailing developments. On the one hand, crises are getting worse, the planet is almost irreversibly polluted and heating up faster than expected, racism and fascism are blatantly on the rise, the exploitation of the "Global South" continues unhindered, wars are becoming more brutal and trample international law to the ground, making social media feeds the largest collection of evidence in the world, in which photos and videos of atrocities outnumber those of cats. Billionaires get richer every year with no accountability and capitalism's suicidal tendencies are so obvious that marketing departments seemingly have begun to use them in their strategic storytelling – the death drive now also drives electric. On the other hand, there is reason for hope through protests, uprisings, intifadas, demonstrations, activism, boycotts, solidarity and calls for global justice and liberation, grassroots and degrowth movements, small social changes and small achievements in environmental protection, alternative and more sustainable ways of living, smart – often too smart and therefore unprofitable – solutions for repairs on the ecological system, etc. But are these movements already enough? And if they were to join forces, would they reach a critical mass that could lay the foundation for a better future for all beings – human and non-human? However, can we collectively still imagine a future that is sustainable, just, peaceful and emphatic, free from all dominance and discrimination, or have large parts of the world been ruled for too long by corrupt and ruthless elites who merely perpetuate old patterns as if there were no alternatives? Haven't intellectuals also given up by pessimistically calling our time 'post-utopian'? And aren't populations of wealthier countries too addicted to privileges, which they don't want to give up so easily, even if the moral and ecological consequences can no longer be ignored, take their toll and are utterly unacceptable? Privileges that are becoming increasingly unaffordable, like rising rents and costs of living – explained with adjustments to the rising costs of living, as if in a vicious cycle, a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Dark therefore fails to describe the present time, in all its ambivalence. And the real problem is that it bears hope – since dark as an ultimate state of "it can't get any worse", as in the darkest hour before sunrise, can be considered an inflection point, a major turnaround. Hope becomes a very passive state in that case. It becomes a "let's hit the bottom and bounce back" attitude. But the bottom – if there's any – probably doesn't function like a trampoline.

Dark is not quite the right metaphor in times where the Zeitgeist has no specific flavor and everything happens in front of a blurry and undefined backdrop. Dark. Bright. Black. White. In the end, these are interchangeable definitions, a plus or a minus doesn't affect the number only its value in a defined sphere. No matter what we calculate or call it, it remains the same and we are somewhere in between. We are in the grey spectrum.