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 →
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 →
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 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 →
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 →
Who is going to educate the mice to bell the cat? #Climate #Academia
Will admit that I am losing the will to ... write the same thing over and over. This occurring long after others have lost the will to read the same thing over and over. And yet we plod on (or I do). There's a two page comment in the latest Nature Climate Change (an academic... 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 →