The Second is dead, long live the Second

A colleague once muttered that the fear of deadly stillness explains every social conflict. He went on: when someone knows they’ve been ‘given up on,’ they begin to organize their own funeral—and involve others in the preparations. They announce who’s allowed to attend, who will speak, and who’s conspicuously absent. In short, life becomes a continuous rehearsal for death, full of symbolic farewells and shifting responsibilities.

This morning, I asked him if he enjoyed the final traffic jam. Still, seeing society through his eyes yields perspectives that are bizarre yet oddly recognizable. The so-called ‘ascension’ is a personal, universal journey. At the kickoff, you want to leave those behind a mandate—a kind of blessing, but also, perhaps, a shifting of blame. I advised against celebrating the farewell itself or turning the end into a moment to offload failure onto others.

If you live as if every second counts—that each passing moment is the death of a former self—then the present is a perpetual rebirth. When you look at the patchwork of people gathered at society’s endless series of funerals, you might find a perspective that gives sense to the chaos. It’s oddly funny.

In that spirit, isn’t the elaborate funeral planning around Mr. Trump just an excuse to create a Jesus-inspired ‘Tresus’ invitation card—members only? Pray for him, then move on from the living dead.

If life is continual rebirth, obsessing over someone else’s grand farewell—be it a political rally or a ‘Tresus’ card—is just a way to stay stuck in a moment that’s already over. The news cycle becomes a poetic farce: one man trying to outrun stillness by making noise before the final curtain, while everyone else argues over the seating chart.

Just saying,

The text is essentially telling us that the “Tresus” phenomenon is just a symptom of a larger cultural illness: the fear of being a footnote. We argue over the seating charts of grand political funerals because it makes us feel like the event hasn’t ended yet. But as the title suggests—The Second is dead, long live the Second—by the time you’ve finished mourning the last moment, the new one is already here.