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 →
Banal point #94 – without language and imagery of thriving democracy, we’re idiotified
Embarrassingly banal blog post (not that it has ever stopped me before). We don't have a language or imagery of democracy. If you do a word association, people will come up with "parliament, or government". If you ask them for an image, it will be the Whitehouse, Palace (!) of Westminster, or Parliament House. Maybe... Continue Reading →
One sign we were taking climate change and human/animal futures seriously would be…
... if all the house organs of the smugosphere (I won't mention names) were devoting at least one whole issue a year to the questions of Pathological Activist Cultures (1) - what are they, where they come from, what sustains them, what damage they do (short-term, long-term), what has been tried to overcome them (did... Continue Reading →
Dunning-Kruger, fnords and the smugosphere (homeosmugopheric mechnanisms)
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 →
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 →
marchudson.net 