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 →
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 →
On social movement organisation disintegration – isn’t it Bion-ic, yeah I really do think…
Quick post. I am fascinated by the ways groups start with high hopes/expectations (high hopes = hype) and within a few months tend to be all gone, or else fighting like dysfunctional rats in an itchy hessian sack. Seen it so many times. Been one of those rats too, for my sins. This below about... 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 →
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 →
“strategies given six months to succeed, then abandoned…”
This below from David Harris' "Dreams Die Hard" seems crucial. Although I was not privy to them at the time, other conversations of Dennis’s after his return from Washington made it apparent that his enthusiasm for The Resistance strategy was waning. The idea, he said, had been to break the peace movement out of its... Continue Reading →
What’s BUGging me today? #MovementPathologies
tl;dr The 'Bottom-Up' Grift (BUG) is the spinning of a line - for profit and/attention - that the true path to utopia is via 'bottom up' activity. This post defines the BUG, explains how to spot it, where it comes from, what to do about it. The Grift Making a career out of saying "we... Continue Reading →
Of ritualised climate “activism” on a doomed planet, going through the (e)motions. Of Ridley Scott, Lennie Cohen etc…
There's a Ridley Scott film (I know I might lose some folks, but stick with it, it will be worth it, I promise (1).) It's called "White Squall" and it came out in 1996. It stars the ever-watchable Jeff Bridges as a sailor and general dude. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2T6WvayGd64 Anyway (and SPOILERS), there's a storm (a white... Continue Reading →
After Baudrillard and Thatcher – we’re in the “soup.” Of images, post-modernism, climate and the world historical defeat of society
It's Saturday night(1), and the people who are supposed to be the experts on this have not got a clue. And they don't even know that they don't have a clue. I at least know that I don't have a clue, which puts me 'ahead' (but on the same burning platform, on the same being-murdered... Continue Reading →
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