I am fascinated by failure - personal, movement, species (not that the three are distinct, of course, but that's for another time). (see previous blog post, to which this is a sequel). How is it we persist with doing things so "obviously" stupid and self-defeating? Are we just blind? Blinded by ego? Blinded by fear?... Continue Reading →
The first rule of smugosphere is, nobody talks about smugosphere. #PointlessPodcasts
Ugh. Listened to some podcasts while walking along the canal tow-path feeding the moorhens. Love those moorhens. The podcasts? Not so much. There's so much smug self-congratulatory circle-jerking going on. "Ooh, it's the evil oil companies." "Ooh, it's the corrupted politicians, meatpuppets for the EOCs." "Ooh, it's the x, ooh it's the y." Over the... Continue Reading →
The end of the 1960s – “Nothing was changed, but everything was different”
So, here is another quote from "Dreams Die Hard" by David Harris - him in prison for having burnt his draft card and encouraged others to do the same. He is visited by a former mentor, Allard Lowenstein.., Everyone involved in the decade would have their own date for when the Sixties ended, and that... Continue Reading →
Then (in 1969) it fell apart… of space cadets and proto-Leninists…
This from David Harris "Dreams Die Hard" is absolutely on point. I know I've posted a lot from this book, but it really really should be read by anyone who gives a damn... If 1968 was the year when everything seemed to come together, 1969 would be a year in which a lot of it... Continue Reading →
“well-intentioned but hollow rhetoric” about organisation longevity once it has been decapitated…
I said it was the price I had to pay to be my own persona and that I was prepared to pay it. The Resistance, I claimed, would carry on its struggle in jail and also out. Our bodies might be locked up, but we would continue to organize. I claimed that when I was... Continue Reading →
You stay put, circumstances change around you… #schismogenesis #FieldDynamics
What seemed "radical" a couple of years previously gets overtaken by 'events' and - frankly, by other people needing to stake out more extreme/holier-than-thou edgelord positions in order to distinguish themselves from 'the pack.' This dynamic is well understood - see Irving Janis on "groupthink", or "Chaos of Disciplines" by Andrew Abbott. Bateson probably wrote... Continue Reading →
Ayn Rand, climate change and food vulnerability
It's funny what stays with you. When I was 20 I went through a very brief Ayn Rand "phase." For those not familiar - she's a loony tunes author and "philosopher" for whom anything that wasn't competition and "free markets" was the slippery slope to the gulag. Google her if you want a laugh. In... Continue Reading →
Judges refusing to let defendants explain their motives is nowt new. #JustStopOil #VietnamWar
"This isn't a court of justice, son, this is a court of law"... and all that. This below from David Harris's memoir "Dreams Die Hard" is worth remembering as Just Stop Oil people get done for contempt of court for simply explaining to juries what they did, or rather, why they did it. As a... Continue Reading →
Awesomely effective manipulation technique
This, from "Dreams Die Hard" by the late David Harris, is a chilling look at love-bombing followed by setting someone up to fail... If they taught this stuff in school - "how elites and charlatans manipulate you", alongside courses in understanding corporate and state propaganda and lies, we might not be in quite the same... Continue Reading →
Consistency against hypocrisy, or on a martyrdom trip?
Another age-old debate. In this clip below, from "Dreams Die Hard" David Harris recounts a debate about strategy/what next with his friend Dennis Sweeney “I don’t believe you’re saying this, Dennis. If I felt that way I’d still have a deferment. I've given all kinds of speeches telling people they ought to join The Resistance,... Continue Reading →
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