Climate change is bad, but for now I can cope (no kids, no expectations, no flooding where I am). Fascism is bad, but for now I can cope, because it is at least another six months until Starmer and Cooper extend the proscription to include the words "genocide" and "Palestine." Technofeudalsim is bad, but for... Continue Reading →
J.A.B.B.E.R.W.O.C.K.Y – tortured retronym for a social movement (well, civil society actually) pathology
I found some old scribbled notes - see photo. I can't place the when or where (possibly Adelaide during a 'Festival' of Ideas) , but it doesn't matter, because the pathology is there in Australia or the UK or - my hunch - any other "advanced" Western "democracy." People get together for what could be... Continue Reading →
Post-mortems that are deadening…
We're now at the stage where "movement" "intellectuals" are willing to say in public what anyone with two brain cells (#NotAllMovementIntellectuals) has known for years - that the GretaXR 'wave' of climate concern is well and truly dead. And since we're talking about the Last Great British Wail, let's quote Lou Read - "Stick a... Continue Reading →
“Two kinds of people” – fundamental attribution errors, shaping the rules and “the clap clinic”
Okay, so this cartoon below is amusing, but also limited. It's limited because it assumes that behaviour is mostly shaped by "what kind of person you are" (this is known in the trade as the fundamental attribution error). The problem with the FAE (or one of them) is that it leads to fatalism/shoulder-shrugging by people... Continue Reading →
We don’t wanna talk about it, how we broke our hearts: climate, failure, “democracy” and all that jizz.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwTP9AJObSY Ever get the feeling nobody wants to talk about what you want to talk about? (1) Ever get the feeling that there are herds of elephants in the room, and everyone is studiously ignoring their trumpetting, as you would if your boss/king/Prime Minister had just let rip with with a loud and evil-smelling fart?... Continue Reading →
James Baldwin, the UK climate “movement” and the Safety Dance – what is to be done?
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 →
marchudson.net 