Comments on: What Do You Do, After You Stop Pretending?

By: simon

simon — Sun, 30 May 2010 02:56:26 +0000

ok, I’m moved to comment. You’ve just articulated the sentiment I’ve been trying to express for quite a while now. Things I’ve said recently that approach it are:

“We need to get poorer”
“whatever happened to stoicism?”
“We want everything to be so perfect now – our standards are just too high”
“no one can do anything useful anymore – no one can fix their car or make their own house or grow their own food – all we can do is service-industry crap”
“of course you can bicycle in the rain – but you get wet”
“somehow we are only happy when everything is perfect – our happiness is completely conditional on having life without inconviences or hassles or getting sweaty when it’s hot. Maybe we need more zen”

And the thought I’ve had that I haven’t been able to say is something about how in the cities we’re just so far removed from the natural world (both literally and metaphorically)that we’ve forgotten it even exists – we expect strawberries in february, we live in apartments suspended a hundred feet in the air, and we think this is how life needs to be and should be and we have the right for it to be.

So I’m on board. thanks for the video, I’ll be keeping an eye on this movement.

By: Clearing the Mind « Horizons of Significance

Clearing the Mind « Horizons of Significance — Sat, 15 May 2010 02:34:01 +0000

[...] Mountain asked, “What do you do after you stop pretending?” This captures our current moment precisely. I wrote about it [...]

By: Prof essor Gavin Belcher

Prof essor Gavin Belcher — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 10:46:12 +0000

Something must be done about something. Maybe something has to be done about everything. Somebody has to do it. Sometime. Somewhere or other. Don’t you think?

That’s all I have to say.

MILTON ON A MOTORBIKE WHERE’S MY PIPE?!

By: Tim

Tim — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 20:30:32 +0000

Yes, I agree.

But I wouldn’t totally write-off ‘hope’. Hope doesn’t have to mean pretending, or blind belief! I think the vision of the future you have (I that I think I share with you), is a very hopeful one. For example, the project you mentioned in Brixton sounds to me like it’s inspired by hope in and for humanity, rather than merely accepting our fate!

Stay hopeful, no matter how bad things are!

By: Chris Watkins

Chris Watkins — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 03:45:21 +0000

I like the non-romantic view. And “Prius Man” – nice line, even if I do still hold some hope for the Prius driving “bright green” approach.

Btw, this won’t play on some Linux systems – but I found this in the page’s HTML source code, and downloaded it successfully:

http://files.howtolivewiki.com/dark_mountain_and_hexayurt_project/dark_mountain_dougald_hine_hexayurt_vinay_gupta_30_jan_2010_dialogue.mp4

By: Shaun Chamberlin

Shaun Chamberlin — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 00:44:24 +0000

Ah, thanks Dougald. T’was a simple problem – I didn’t realise that the download link was a link… Doh! Working fine now.

By: Abi

Abi — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 13:20:35 +0000

Refreshing, thank you. There is no benefit in dithering, and wishing, and faffing about trying different ways to maintain the status quo. Let us use our energies and imaginations to work out what comes, and what we do, next. Maybe a new slogan could be, Climate change: Just deal with it

By: Dougald

Dougald — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 08:32:27 +0000

Hi Shaun – sorry to hear you’re having difficulty with the video. It does seem to be working for most people. Did you try clicking the download link?

The reason it’s hosted independently is that the main video-sharing sites have now imposed time restrictions and a 35 minute clip is too long for all the ones we tried. (I’m pretty sure that included Vimeo, though I’ll double check.) However, if you’re willing to download their app in order to view, you can get it from Veoh:

http://www.veoh.com/browse/videos/category/lifestyle/watch/v19746190RpJq9tR2

Hope that works for you.

By: Shaun Chamberlin

Shaun Chamberlin — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 02:56:26 +0000

Had real problems with the video - very stop/start, despite several attempts. It could be a buffering problem, but I have pretty good broadband here, and with no pause button or option to download it's hard to test. Any chance you could put it up on something more user-friendly like Vimeo?

By: Mozaz

Mozaz — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 23:52:05 +0000

Profound as always, ill send you a message this has just made up a dithering mind..

Love as always
for and towards the abolition of civilisation
underclassrising.net