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 →
Two webinars and a podcast – (#UsualRant abt uselessness of most “intellectual” work “for” social movements)
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... Continue Reading →
Ban the word “we” (also, bragging abt exercise)
Sat on an exercise bike before work this morning. In past had read Financial Timeses and Morning Stars, but that gets in the way of really going for it. So I was listening to a podcast (I like to keep up with new trends). I won't mention the name, but it's a well-respected one, with... Continue Reading →
Letter that Red Pepper didn’t publish on activist pathologies
Red Pepper is a full-colour quarterly (now) magazine for and by the extra-parliamentary green/left. The following two statements about it are true a) it is a useful source of information and perspectives about what is happening in the world and some of the things that might be done to make it a less dreadful place... Continue Reading →
There’s never an irony policeman when you want one – academic hilarity
So, one thing the Bad Guys do is set up fake "consultation" processes where a few voices, who are saying the right things, are amplified and other more problematic ones marginalised ("we're outa time..." etc etc) And so in an hour and a half (felt longer) webinar about precisely this - the Bad Guys and... Continue Reading →
“Why we fight” – of smugness, feedback and innovation
Someone, with good intentions, DMEd me this clip from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I think in response to my "what's beyond the edge of tomorrow?" post. https://twitter.com/RealTadzioM/status/1723347798324642139 The thing that enrages and exhausts me is that the repertoires of what counts as "fighting" are so narrow and (usually) doomed to failure. And that there is... Continue Reading →
What’s beyond the edge of tomorrow? Well, technofeudalism/fascism/eco-meltdown. Duh.
Marc Maron has a line I like "And don't misunderstand me, I have no hope. I think if you have hope, what are you f---ing seven?." Yes, yes, Sarah Connor and "no future but what we make." But we "make" the future under the constraints - "not in the conditions of our own choosing" - of what has... Continue Reading →
A crazy(making) time to be alive
I grew up in the shadow of the bomb - when I was eight or nine I was worried about the neutron bomb. The shooting down of KAL007 had a profound effect on me (and we now know that that period - late 1983 through to mid 1984 - was when we came pretty close... Continue Reading →
marchudson.net 