“Nature has no philosophy. It makes no judgements and writes no books. Only we do that. We cannot look to nature for a moral foundation, for nature will try everything at least once, not least of all perpetual cheating and exploitation. The web of life does not mourn extinction. It USES extinction.”

A taster, which sounds pretty Uncivilised to me:

“At the British Museum there is a carving of two reindeer, crafted from a mammoth tusk 12,000 years ago. The artist’s depiction of the antlers pressed against the flanks of the female in front, with the stag at the rear, of the eyes and the winter markings of the coat are the result of acute observation and enormous empathy with the life of these animals. It was by following the seasonal migrations of reindeer that modern Europeans survived between ice ages. When swimming across a glacial melt river, the deer were easily hunted. The making of this object was an expression of connection, identification with the continuation of life, its interconnectivity both in sex and in death and, by inference, the human position within a chain of being.

…

“We are now in a position to acknowledge that those stages in an evolutionary past that would, in previous times, have been thought of as primitive, are coexisting in this era and are not superseded – and actually the use of the fetish and the totem as reference points for a model of art are enormously useful.”

Your finance structure (and subsequent defence of) is very clear. Good work!

I am a Westcountry man married to a Kurd living in Turkey. I say this because DM is born from the same island as myself, off the continental shelf. Out here where the Asian Plateau meets the lake of the Meder(descended from Noahs sun) Teranni(Earth Mother), Mediteranean, tribal loyalties are strengthened.
I am slowly starting to embrace the efforts of the communal DM ‘thinking’ into a personal moral philisophical framework or structure from which I boldy brave the mental airwaves of civilisation. This work is great! You are sowing seeds, they are growing. I take inspiration each time I revisit the site. DM is a resource I can access from ‘over here’ to stimulate and ultimately assist my work in preparing for the next.

I appreciate the gong needs to be banged for Wales festival, just try to keep the fabric of the site strong. Dont need it as one big signpost. The site is such an important reference point for navigators of climate confusions and all the rest! For explorers beyond the myth….

And to Vera
I think I am starting to try and take more responsibility on a personal level about how I balance thinking type activites with doing type activities. I dont need to make DM fit into how I think this balance to be achieved. It is what it is and it deserves a little respect from you. (As we must respect the god/individual in all folk we meet in life) Our culture is littered with examples of how we desperately try to mould our surroundings to fit our egos or our ‘needs’, on all levels.
This, to me, at this moment in time, is one aspect of what DM and uncivilisation principles outline. I am tired of religeous mantra. I am tired of a feeling of corporate moulds and streaming. I am uncomfortable with the imposition of order on creation! Isnt it the other way round?

Peace and good wishes from the Aegean for your efforts and for your festie.

Paul, I didn’t detect read as much criticism in Vera’s comments, rather an honest expression of her hopes and fears. I like her ideas and can relate to the considerations she has tactfully raised, and they do not at all seem about bashing (I love the para. with the “hellfire preachers”). I think she is expressing what she hopes this project is and is making sure of what she hopes it isn’t.

Your project is exactly what I’ve been looking for for a long time–conversation and community-building around the kind of ideas expressed in your manifesto and eight principles. The genius is in the storytelling approach.

I’ve heard a lot of criticism from you, much of it based on misconceptions.

The journal is open to anyone who wants to write anything that chimes with the spirit of the project. Read the information on this website about it; read it carefully. We are entirely open to any kind of writing. You speak as if you know what will be in the first issue. How do you know that what you wish to see will not be in there?

Ditto the festival. We have asked again and agin for people to suggest things they’d like to do at the festival. Many have done; many will be coming along to provide us with wonderful stuff. it’s a participatory event. The whole point is that ‘the mike’ is open to people with interesting things to say.

Meanwhile, you haven’t submitted anything for the journal or made any suggestions for the festival. Neither have you come up with alternative ways of funding them, or offered us any of your time (for free, like ours) to help make things happen. Criticism is always welcome, but so is help, and I do get aggrieved when I feel that criticism is unfair and based on misunderstandings.

When I read that you want to give the mike for 3 minutes to the rich donors, I felt dismay because I am wanting our (unciv) work to embody altogether *other* values. How about giving the mike to any attendee who has something particularly interesting to say, regardless of whether they can afford to pay extra? Put the rich donors on the evaluating panel, like Britain’s Got Talent.

Second, with the next edition of the journal, how about asking for contributions that devote only half their time to spinning thinking-type stories, and the other half of their time to doing-type stories of this is how I am attempting to live what I think? I am concerned that uncivvers are getting top-heavy on analysis and vague exhortations.

Why don’t you wait and see what the journal and the festival look like before you make any judgements? The Dark Mountain project is not ‘doomertainment’, no. There is no obvious dividing line between writing and ‘doing’. This is a cultural project. It is not focused on ‘practical’ ways of living if by that you mean how to forage wild food and go off-grid. Doubtless people involved are also doing those things. There will be some of them on show at the festival. But we are what we say we are – an attempt to write new stories. If the stories don’t move you, you don’t have to read them.

The Dark Mountain Project is also, of course, what you make it. Feel free to help make it something with positive suggestions.