First the humblebrag - I am, in my opinion, the only person in the world to have letters published in The London Review of Books, The Financial Times, Viz and Private Eye. Second, the annotated and hyperlinked version of the letter in Private Eye. (For those who don't live in the UK, Private Eye is... Continue Reading →
Abeyance – a crucial concept (video)
https://twitter.com/marcsrhudson/status/1637791469476954112 If you don't understand protest waves and movement cycles and ABEYANCE, you are a risk not just to yourself, but to those around you.
“Activist Credibility Tokens”
I made a video about what I call "Activist Credibility Tokens" - how people try to get them, how there's an "easy" way and how that sets up perverse incentives, unhelpful patterns. Tell me what you think... https://twitter.com/marcsrhudson/status/1637048946613706754
Networks, webs and Billy Joel, via Alison Lurie’s “Foreign Affairs”
Alison Lurie's Foreign Affairs is the gift that will keep on giving, for a while at least.... Here's a great quote “In any social network there are always some people who are as it were ‘friends’ by social compulsion, though if the net fell apart they would seldom or never see each other. It is... Continue Reading →
Two climate videos, one glaring silence (spoilers – it’s social movements)
Thanks to Twitter, I saw two videos yesterday - one which is very recent, about the so-called "activist industrial complex" and the other from three years ago by the Financial Times, presented by the actress Nicola Walker. Both, in their ways, are good to think with, but perhaps not for the reasons their creators think.... Continue Reading →
Is #climate really a “comms issue”? Really? Srsly?
There's another new report out, this time based on a survey of 2000 adults (1) that tacitly pins the blame for climate inertia on various forms of 'denial' and delayism. You can read about it on the excellent edie.net website here. I could be wrong, but these sorts surveys and reports seem to get done... Continue Reading →
Of Theseus, Vygotsky and the lack of dry docks for planks to be replaced
So the old puzzle goes - of Theseus's ship - if you replace the mast twice, the sails thrice and every plank of the hull over time, is it STILL, after all that the "original" Theseus' ship? (and, if it isn't anymore, when did it stop being so?) Then there's Lev Vygotsky, the Russian educational... Continue Reading →
Hello to new after-the-Conversation-article readers – barriers to skillsharing…
Today the Conversation posted another article of mine about Extinction Rebellion - you can read it here. I got a high profile follower out of it, and a lovely email from someone, and a media request. Anyway, if you've come here, you're probably interested in social movements, and so you're in the right place (or... Continue Reading →
“Little” lives – Johnson, Eliot, Chomsky vs that Nietzsche guy. #SocialMovements #SlaveMorality
So, have been thinking (for once) about failure, the meaning of it all etc There's that great essay by Samuel Johnson "What Have Ye Done?" which ends (spoilers, obvs) From this mistaken notion of human greatness it proceeds, that many who pretend to have made great advances in wisdom so loudly declare that they despise... Continue Reading →
What are the complementary assets of a successful* social movement organisation?
A page on this site, about "complementary assets" has had a lot of hits in the last 24 hours. Don't know why, but it's enough of a pretext to write something. I'll say what CA are, what a social movement organisation "is", why we should care about it, what the CAs of one would be... Continue Reading →