Following the opening days of the UK general election campaign, I can’t avoid a sense of unreality. The scale of the issues likely to play out within the term of the next parliament is so much vaster than the ground on which the parties are picking their fights.
Looking at the issues which defined recent parliaments, you can excuse the politicians for not anticipating 9/11 during the 2001 campaign – and even the economic chaos of the past two years was of a scale not widely foreseen in 2005.
But look at the issues being flagged up by major, mainstream voices as likely to hit us between now and 2015:
- The US military now warns of a real chance of Peak Oil leading to major global instability by 2015. (Remember the political impact of our little local fuel crisis in 2000?)
- Currency markets see a real prospect of a sovereign debt crisis which could throw the UK and other economies into a chaos deeper than the financial crisis of 2008. The response to that crisis has had the effect of nationalising risk from failing institutions – not getting rid of it, but transferring it onto the nation states on which we rely for public services and basic infrastructure. Two years ago, we were bailing out banks – today, we’re bailing out countries.
- Then there’s the scale of cuts in public services in the near future – not a risk, but a certainty, which is being ignored while parties argue about “efficiency savings”. People I talk to in local authorities are gearing up for 20-30% cuts across many areas of spending. None of them believe that these can be achieved in a way which isn’t felt, often painfully, by the public – and the kind of dishonesty about this that we’re getting from politicians can only increase the likelihood of social unrest as the cuts start to bite.
None of this is to say that we’re heading into immediate social collapse – though, as Paul and I wrote in opening of the Dark Mountain manifesto, the fragility of much that we take for granted is underestimated. But it does mean it’s time to get real. In the words of Vinay Gupta – who’s organising Dark Mountain Camp, in the week leading up to UNCIVILISATION – “If the risk of an event is higher than the risk of a housefire, our governments should be preparing for it – and if they aren’t, then we need to.”
So while UNCIVILISATION should be a hell of a lot of fun, it’s also about building a stronger community of people who are thinking hard about what we do in situations where “life as we know it” is seriously disrupted.
There’s never been an event which brought this kind of network of people together – and it’s not just for a weekend, but it should be part of the fabric of something which exists year round, which leads to conversations, collaborations, new ideas and new work which wouldn’t have happened otherwise.
For me, UNCIVILISATION matters because it’s a chance to bring together some of the most high profile people thinking and working in this area with brilliant, radical thinkers and projects which have been relatively isolated until now. If things get as difficult as they could well do over the next five years, the existence of informal networks of people working on these problems from the kind of outside perspectives Dark Mountain invites could end up making a real difference.
That’s one of the reasons why – if you’re feeling as frustrated as I am with the unreality of those who want to lead us – I’d encourage you to join us in Llangollen at the end of next month.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Dougald Hine, Damien Austin-Walker, Darren Beale, The Election Blog, topsy_top20k and others. topsy_top20k said: Getting Real: An Election Message from the Dark Mountain (by @dougald) – http://bit.ly/bIdgHC [...]
For those of us who can’t get there, I just have to say again, film everything you can so we can watch it when you get back…:)
We will be filming as much of the festival as we can, and making it available online afterwards. Watch this space!
The endangered real. Yes, the growing sense of unreality has become the fundemental quality of politics today. Here in the US, reality is almost taboo, for once you start tugging on that thread the whole philosophy of consumerism starts to unravel.
Even Earth Day brings that wierd feeling of unreality. Scanning the online earth day video clips from abc news, I came accross the now classic “environmental” reporting about new “green products” and “simple, easy green living tips.” In one, the technology editor shows off a new “earth-friendly” cell phone, made with recycled plastic. Not mentioned was the fact that the mineral coltan, essential to cell phone circuitry, sits under the last stonghold of great apes, and the mining frenzy is wiping them out. The interviewer asked if the cell phone had a “crunchy-granola” feel. She said, “No. It’s really nice.” They sat in a television studio bathed in blue neon (blue is the official color of consumerism, as in blue chip stock, or the sky’s the limit, or growth and profit forever) and reality was nowhere to be found. Or perhaps reality is just not profitable.
Rob Lewis
For those of us who can’t get there, I just have to say again, film everything you can so we can watch it when you get back…:)
The endangered real. Yes, the growing sense of unreality has become the fundemental quality of politics today. Here in the US, reality is almost taboo, for once you start tugging on that thread the whole philosophy of consumerism starts to unravel.
Even Earth Day brings that wierd feeling of unreality. Scanning the online earth day video clips from abc news, I came accross the now classic “environmental” reporting about new “green products” and “simple, easy green living tips.” In one, the technology editor shows off a new “earth-friendly” cell phone, made with recycled plastic. Not mentioned was the fact that the mineral coltan, essential to cell phone circuitry, sits under the last stonghold of great apes, and the mining frenzy is wiping them out. The interviewer asked if the cell phone had a “crunchy-granola” feel. She said, “No. It’s really nice.” They sat in a television studio bathed in blue neon (blue is the official color of consumerism, as in blue chip stock, or the sky’s the limit, or growth and profit forever) and reality was nowhere to be found. Or perhaps reality is just not profitable.
Rob Lewis
The endangered real. Yes, the growing sense of unreality has become the fundemental quality of politics today. Here in the US, reality is almost taboo, for once you start tugging on that thread the whole philosophy of consumerism starts to unravel.
Even Earth Day brings that wierd feeling of unreality. Scanning the online earth day video clips from abc news, I came accross the now classic “environmental” reporting about new “green products” and “simple, easy green living tips.” In one, the technology editor shows off a new “earth-friendly” cell phone, made with recycled plastic. Not mentioned was the fact that the mineral coltan, essential to cell phone circuitry, sits under the last stonghold of great apes, and the mining frenzy is wiping them out. The interviewer asked if the cell phone had a “crunchy-granola” feel. She said, “No. It’s really nice.” They sat in a television studio bathed in blue neon (blue is the official color of consumerism, as in blue chip stock, or the sky’s the limit, or growth and profit forever) and reality was nowhere to be found. Or perhaps reality is just not profitable.
Rob Lewis
For those of us who can’t get there, I just have to say again, film everything you can so we can watch it when you get back…:)
The endangered real. Yes, the growing sense of unreality has become the fundemental quality of politics today. Here in the US, reality is almost taboo, for once you start tugging on that thread the whole philosophy of consumerism starts to unravel.
Even Earth Day brings that wierd feeling of unreality. Scanning the online earth day video clips from abc news, I came accross the now classic “environmental” reporting about new “green products” and “simple, easy green living tips.” In one, the technology editor shows off a new “earth-friendly” cell phone, made with recycled plastic. Not mentioned was the fact that the mineral coltan, essential to cell phone circuitry, sits under the last stonghold of great apes, and the mining frenzy is wiping them out. The interviewer asked if the cell phone had a “crunchy-granola” feel. She said, “No. It’s really nice.” They sat in a television studio bathed in blue neon (blue is the official color of consumerism, as in blue chip stock, or the sky’s the limit, or growth and profit forever) and reality was nowhere to be found. Or perhaps reality is just not profitable.
Rob Lewis
I have been struggling to get on with a book called “Against the Day” (2006) by Thomas Pynchon (I liked some of his earlier work).
But on p467 (less than halfway through!) it came alive for me.
Some of the leading characters discover that intruders from the future are surreptitiously living on Earth. One of them manifests and speaks to them (but not necessarily truthfully):
“We are here among you as seekers of refuge from our present – your future – a time of worldwide famine, exhausted fuel supplies, terminal poverty – the end of the capitalistic experiment. Once we came to understand the simple thermodynamic truth that Earth’s resources were limited, in fact soon to run out, the whole capitalist illusion fell to pieces. Those of us who spoke this truth aloud were denounced as heretics, as enemies of the prevailing economic faith. Like religious Dissenters of an earlier day, we were forced to migrate, with little choice but to set forth upon that dark fourth-dimensional Atlantic known as Time.”
As an echo of my own past as a Green Party activist, expressing thoughts that the GP now prefers to keep to itself, this got my attention! And it seemed to fit into this thread.