Stop me if you’ve heard this one before (pro-tip; you have from me, endlessly).
- People like the sound of their own voices.
- People who think (or DO) have a lot to say like to say it. They are remarkably incurious about what their audience (the ego-fodder) might know/have to contribute.
- The hosts of these events are star-struck, fawning, and don’t structure the event (webinars esp) in ways that would force the Star to bring their A-game/think on their feet, or create opportunities for those attending to make loose ties, add in their own perspectives.
There is a disastrous comfort (good name for a band?) in recycling and re-iterating (going there again and again and again) about the machinations of the state (however defined) and the corporations. It’s like a soothing bed-time story where we know the ending (global apocalypse).
It doesn’t actually have to be this way, but it will continue to be this way, until those of us who survive the Big Punches to the Face that are coming, have more immediate concerns than listening to podcasts and webinars.
NOBODY ASKS THE BASIC FUCKING QUESTIONS – “We have had climate ‘movements’ [or ‘spasms’] for 35 years. What can we LEARN from this? What has worked? Anything? What HASN’T worked? Why not? WHAT. DO. WE. NEED. TO. DO. DIFFERENTLY?“
And that’s for reasons, obviously. These are hard questions, requiring unsoothing and uncomfortable scholarship and graft. They take you out of your intellectual and emotional comfort zone. Your audience will be much (MUCH) less appreciative of your efforts than they are now. And the gatekeepers might have to look at their own complicity in failed formats, zombie repertoires, the smugosphere, the emotacycle.
This goes for activists and academics and everything in between.
Why are we even bothering? Srsly?
marchudson.net 
“Thanks. It’s not so much a question , more a comment…”
Marc, “Why I we really bothering?” Because it is in humanities best interest.
“What do we need to do differently?” I’d suggest governments need to spell out the real costs in money terms, job losses and freedoms. At the same time spell out the impact over the next 10 years of doing nothing,