James Baldwin was a very smart guy. For the purpose of this blog post, the key insight is from a January 1962 New York Times column, in which he wrote "not everything that can be faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced." And so on to the UK climate... Continue Reading →
Podcast recommendations given and sought. Climate, energy, psychoanalysis, film noir etc
Have gotten back into the habit of long (3 to 4 hour plus) walks along the canal, feeding moorhens, ducks, swans and now even geese. There's only so much talking to himself a man can do (into a dictaphone), so podcasts have become the Way Forward. Below are some recommendations from me, but also I... Continue Reading →
Compulsory (institutional) optimism – or “from straws in the wind to dust in the wind”
I just read an article on a newspaper website about a New Politics that is apparently coming. The article came recommended by people I (still) respect, and was written by a commentator who is sincere, diligent and intelligent. And you know where this is going.... The article was, if not actually pants, then, well, pants-adjacent.... Continue Reading →
Will you marram me? Of “grassroots” and the need for commitment mechanisms.
Marram. This is a new word to me, thanks to Sarah Moss, in her rather excellent 2018 work Ghost Wall. According to Wikipedia... Ammophila (synonymous with Psamma P. Beauv.) is a genus of flowering plants consisting of two or three very similar species of grasses. The common names for these grasses include marram grass, bent... Continue Reading →
Top bantz about writing to your MP…
This is good. Maybe you can try writing to your MP, but there doesn’t really seem to be much point doing that unless you happen to collect headed paper with some rote spiel dismissing your concerns printed on it. Props to Tom Whyman - https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/mar/18/britain-diy-tickets-illnesses-services-society See also Viable Democracy by Michael Margolis
Admiral Ackbar admonishes ahistorical anarchists
Horizontalism is a trap. And I want to emphasize rather strongly that this is not some academic point. As an unnamed Egyptian revolutionary puts it: "In New York or Paris, if you do a horizontal, leaderless, and post-ideological uprising, and it doesn't work out, you just get a media or academic career afterward. Out here... Continue Reading →
The interpersonal trajectory in SMOs
This is an “ideal type,” as in Your Mileage May Vary etc. It’s loosely based on the hype cycle, for what that’s worth. I wrote about this in the context of Strategic Action Fields a few years ago, it never got published. I should dig that out. Whatever. The Honeymoon Phase The Honeymoon ends The... Continue Reading →
Wilfred Bion, psychoanalyst, and the current Conservative meltdown
You know when you properly encounter a new idea and then you "see" its applications everywhere (and you overuse it/misuse it). To riff on a good saying - "when you've got a new shiny hammer that feels good, every problem looks like a nail" (1). Well, that's me and Wilfred Bion's idea of the work-group... Continue Reading →
The Antigroup… Oh, such important stuff, not widely known…
So, I sent my last blog post, about Wilfred Bion and his ideas of the basic assumptions mentality and the work-group mentality to someone I have ENORMOUS respect for (seriously, this person is one of the smartest people I know, and I know a lot of very smart people. This person is the real deal.)... Continue Reading →
Of masochism and learning to walk away (or not even go there).
The Wife has told me a million times. The Wife is - as so frustratingly-often is the case - absolutely right. But still I attended a webinar of a group that claims it is doing things differently (I won't go further than that). And the webinar was about a very very important question, around the... Continue Reading →
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