Not the one with braids, but the one discussed with fear at meetings, academies, plenums as a five-year plan that must be realized. Socialism had perfectly bureaucratic plans. Thanks to this, the future was something domesticated, always knowing what not to jump out with foolishly.
How is it now? Quite well! Judging by the evolution of the figures of the Person of the Year selected and announced by Times, it will be as before. No pandemics, no ecological fears, no wars. Everyone, more or less systematically and planfully, will do their thing, and in their free time, stare at singers, actresses, stars, and silvery clouds across a thousand channels. Sounds good, almost like the successive five-year plans of the PRL era.
Illustration from the left: covers of Time magazine from 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, and a fragment of the latest figure of the collective imagination, and two old engravings of an even older personification of divine power, but also heavily ironic. An eternal force, playing with us like a cat with a mouse, year after year.
It’s easier today to check even the last fifteen Persons of the Year from Time’s list, than to recognize this force. Type Momus into your phone’s search engines. This old, playful deity, the embodiment of sarcasm.
Sarcasm mixes with irony; according to Kopaliński, irony is “light sarcasm.” Maybe cats can use something like that, but we can’t.
The Greek source verb sarkadzein meant tearing flesh. Exactly that was not lacking in 2023.
In Greek myths, Momus was (like Copernicus in Machulski’s “Sexmission”) a woman, a daughter of the Night. It was she who whispered to Zeus, greatly irritated with mortals, not to bother with sending a flood or hurling thunderbolts in dense volleys. A waste of time, better to marry Thetis to a mortal.
From her marriage to Peleus, beautiful Helen was born, because of whom the war between Europe and Asia, the Trojan War, a war never to end, broke out. People began to annihilate themselves, an epochal invention of humanity.
Be sure to check who suggested to Taylor Swift to photograph herself with such a nice kitten on her shoulder.