Lovely piece Andy. I’d argue that we now inhabit a socio-political landscape where meaningful political pressure is exerted almost entirely through the noise of social media, a mechanism as ill-suited to real policy change as anything post-Victorian politics could have conceived. And yet, it's hard to deny that even here in the dark Ghana crunching, overprivileged west, we live under a form of capitalist autocracy, indivisible beneath the neoliberal god of growth, where democracy is reduced to choosing between four flavours of the same devout faith. I'd be interested in your take, but from my viewpoint institutions and societal ethics are already sufficiently debased or removed that there are no cultural backstops.
Voting for the alternatives may be the sensible option, but should they ever gain majority power, the system would unseat them overnight. The market reaction would be all the justification needed. Emergency powers would reinstall the status quo, because the status quo has the means to do so.
Which brings us back to your current project: I’d be keen to hear more about it, and how we might help precipitate it.
"Cultural backstops" I think is exactly the right focus. Of course, capitalism is largely literally the business of removing all cultural backstops in favour of profit. It's kind of been like a streaker running across the cultural pitch with the last ragged vestiges of dignity peeling away since the Industrial Revolution. Now, not only the Emperor, but most of us industrialised people, have no cultural clothes - we've just got a grab bag of whatever we "like" and have been sold. The likes of Daniel Schmachtenberger, Roger Hallam and the Merz Institute are attempting to mount a rearguard action to effectively re-install these behaviourial limits and guardrails. I'm working with the latter two. Feel free to Google them up and DM me on if and how you'd like to contribute. We may be way too late in system decline for any of that to work of course, but they're well worth a shot, even if only in the remnants of humanity that we may be able to salvage in the process, personally and collectively. And yes, see what happened to Corbyn in the UK and Sanders in the US, but maybe, just maybe the worm could turn...
I see your dark ghana and raise you dark ghana caramel and this is me caring exactly as an ostensibly caring middle class white girl in New Zealand oughta care, agreeing the fuck with you, or something
Some of your comments remind me of the great book We have never been woke, by Musa Al-Gharbi. His position is that people do care, but not that much in comparison to other things - looking after themselves and their families - or, as you argue, comfort, convenience and nice experiences.
Thanks Niki, worth checking out. The work we're doing in the Merz Institute is really about those nuances. We Fire Apes care about stuff, sure, but it fades with distance and disconnection, unless heavily reinforced more locally and immediately. The challenge is to bridge that 'gap' somehow. In this piece what I'm primarily pointing out is that one of the worst ways to try to do that is to simply tell ourselves that those gaps don't exist, or don't apply to us!
Didn't somebody (sorry, can't remember who) once say that when a thousand children in X foreign country (who you don't know) are killed, it is an event but when little Johnny next door (who you did know) is killed in a car accident it is a tragedy.
Mainly just scale and distance, I suppose.
I wonder if what you're talking about re the internet and social media is, at least in part, the same thing on steroids?
Of course, adding the gross sensory/emotional overload also created by these media just makes it stronger and faster, I suspect.
Indeed. In the work I am doing with the Merz Institute this is referred to, as in the research, as "spatial and temporal discounting". As such it's human nature. The key point I'm making is that technology doesn't overcome that, even if we wish it did. And yes, I agree, there's a massive numbing effect due to the hugely traumatic material we Fire Apes can now expose ourselves to vicariously, without the naturally accompanying consequences.
I have read all of the sustainabile articles. In relation to todays offering, I'm not sure if it were ever thus, i. e being young 30 years ago made me feel change was possible and today's apathy/acquiesce/blithe acceptance is the position of a beaten 50 year old. It is truly a cluster mind fuck to hear of events in Gaza, Kyiv, to see the UK government attack the Russian state verbally... whilst tacitly support the Israel occupation in the media with guarded language, and arm sales. The Internet has been cleverly adopted by conspiracists who deliver the worm hole borers into Trump land... it's early optimism has reneged into a defence and supporter of consumerist capitalism... who'd have thought...keep writing, and I'll keep reading knowing I'm not completely losing my mind...
Thanks for your attention Jim! Great to know we're not all losing it. And yes, I too feel like I have arrived on Earth confronted by a dashboard of buttons and have spent my life trying to work out which ones I need to press to make the world better, but as I too cruise into my 50s I have the sneaking suspicion it isn't plugged in and I should have just pressed those that heightened my own amusement instead. Or perhaps that's all I really have been doing.
Lovely piece Andy. I’d argue that we now inhabit a socio-political landscape where meaningful political pressure is exerted almost entirely through the noise of social media, a mechanism as ill-suited to real policy change as anything post-Victorian politics could have conceived. And yet, it's hard to deny that even here in the dark Ghana crunching, overprivileged west, we live under a form of capitalist autocracy, indivisible beneath the neoliberal god of growth, where democracy is reduced to choosing between four flavours of the same devout faith. I'd be interested in your take, but from my viewpoint institutions and societal ethics are already sufficiently debased or removed that there are no cultural backstops.
Voting for the alternatives may be the sensible option, but should they ever gain majority power, the system would unseat them overnight. The market reaction would be all the justification needed. Emergency powers would reinstall the status quo, because the status quo has the means to do so.
Which brings us back to your current project: I’d be keen to hear more about it, and how we might help precipitate it.
"Cultural backstops" I think is exactly the right focus. Of course, capitalism is largely literally the business of removing all cultural backstops in favour of profit. It's kind of been like a streaker running across the cultural pitch with the last ragged vestiges of dignity peeling away since the Industrial Revolution. Now, not only the Emperor, but most of us industrialised people, have no cultural clothes - we've just got a grab bag of whatever we "like" and have been sold. The likes of Daniel Schmachtenberger, Roger Hallam and the Merz Institute are attempting to mount a rearguard action to effectively re-install these behaviourial limits and guardrails. I'm working with the latter two. Feel free to Google them up and DM me on if and how you'd like to contribute. We may be way too late in system decline for any of that to work of course, but they're well worth a shot, even if only in the remnants of humanity that we may be able to salvage in the process, personally and collectively. And yes, see what happened to Corbyn in the UK and Sanders in the US, but maybe, just maybe the worm could turn...
I stumbled on a great YouTube analysis describing Capitalism as an Extinction Event.
I embedded it in the link below.
https://kevinhester.live/2024/08/26/is-capitalism-by-definition-an-extinction-event/
I see your dark ghana and raise you dark ghana caramel and this is me caring exactly as an ostensibly caring middle class white girl in New Zealand oughta care, agreeing the fuck with you, or something
Some of your comments remind me of the great book We have never been woke, by Musa Al-Gharbi. His position is that people do care, but not that much in comparison to other things - looking after themselves and their families - or, as you argue, comfort, convenience and nice experiences.
Thanks Niki, worth checking out. The work we're doing in the Merz Institute is really about those nuances. We Fire Apes care about stuff, sure, but it fades with distance and disconnection, unless heavily reinforced more locally and immediately. The challenge is to bridge that 'gap' somehow. In this piece what I'm primarily pointing out is that one of the worst ways to try to do that is to simply tell ourselves that those gaps don't exist, or don't apply to us!
Didn't somebody (sorry, can't remember who) once say that when a thousand children in X foreign country (who you don't know) are killed, it is an event but when little Johnny next door (who you did know) is killed in a car accident it is a tragedy.
Mainly just scale and distance, I suppose.
I wonder if what you're talking about re the internet and social media is, at least in part, the same thing on steroids?
Of course, adding the gross sensory/emotional overload also created by these media just makes it stronger and faster, I suspect.
Indeed. In the work I am doing with the Merz Institute this is referred to, as in the research, as "spatial and temporal discounting". As such it's human nature. The key point I'm making is that technology doesn't overcome that, even if we wish it did. And yes, I agree, there's a massive numbing effect due to the hugely traumatic material we Fire Apes can now expose ourselves to vicariously, without the naturally accompanying consequences.
Thanks Andy - glad it's not just me!
I agree totally about self-delusion!
It's a little different for me, I've lived in two war zones.
I know the smell, the tension, the sleepless days and nights, the feeling when your absolutely exhausted and can't sleep.
No one, neither flora nor fauna survives war uninjured.
https://kevinhester.live/2022/05/13/warmongering-and-the-climate-crisis/
I have read all of the sustainabile articles. In relation to todays offering, I'm not sure if it were ever thus, i. e being young 30 years ago made me feel change was possible and today's apathy/acquiesce/blithe acceptance is the position of a beaten 50 year old. It is truly a cluster mind fuck to hear of events in Gaza, Kyiv, to see the UK government attack the Russian state verbally... whilst tacitly support the Israel occupation in the media with guarded language, and arm sales. The Internet has been cleverly adopted by conspiracists who deliver the worm hole borers into Trump land... it's early optimism has reneged into a defence and supporter of consumerist capitalism... who'd have thought...keep writing, and I'll keep reading knowing I'm not completely losing my mind...
Thanks for your attention Jim! Great to know we're not all losing it. And yes, I too feel like I have arrived on Earth confronted by a dashboard of buttons and have spent my life trying to work out which ones I need to press to make the world better, but as I too cruise into my 50s I have the sneaking suspicion it isn't plugged in and I should have just pressed those that heightened my own amusement instead. Or perhaps that's all I really have been doing.