UNCIVILISATION already seems as if it happened several years ago. Looked at from another angle, it seems as if it happened yesterday. The fallout from the festival has given us a lot to digest. It’s been fascinating and fun digesting most of it, but it does take time.
Responses to and reports about the festival – the first substantial Dark Mountain gathering – are popping up all over the web. I think it would be fair to say that they are very largely positive, with a good number of useful suggestions about what could be done better next time (assuming there is a next time), what worked, what didn’t and what could change.
For the two of us, the most significant part of the festival was simply bringing together 400 people for whom Dark Mountain means something. For some of those people, this project has become an important part of their development and even their lives. Others had a passing interest and turned up to see what was going on. What was fascinating was that there seemed to be no-one there who didn’t have something significant to say. We had hoped this would be a gathering of participants, not a show with an audience, and that seems to be what happened. This is probably the reason why the most common demand for future events was a lot more time and space for people to self-organise, get together and just talk and spend time, away from the manic menu of talks, debates and the like. This is something we’ll certainly listen to. If there’s one thing we learned from UNCIVILISATION, it’s that we probably tried to do too much. We can perhaps plead over-excitement here: there were so many good people and groups that we wanted to showcase that we probably tried to cram too much in. We also took too much on our own shoulders. You live and learn.
UNCIVILISATION also showed us how much energy has gathered around this project and what a remarkable collection of people have been drawn to it. More than before, this now feels like a real movement. There are enough people involved, making things happen (see the network for evidence, and join it if you haven’t already) that we can happily begin to stand back a bit and not take everything on ourselves. We never wanted this project to be focused around us as two individuals, so this comes as a relief. It’s thrilling to see others taking ownership – and to start thinking about the best ways of acknowledging this – as well as to respond to the offers of help, suggestions, proposals and plans that have been coming our way over the last few weeks. It’s beginning to look like Dark Mountain really is meeting a need that is not being fulfilled elsewhere.
But the festival also focused our minds on which aspects of the Dark Mountain journey this project ought to be focusing on. The strength and the weakness of this project has always been its wide range. The issues we addressed in the manifesto, and the interests and experiences we have as people cover a wide range – politics, journalism, poetry, art, community organising, activism. Applying ourselves to even one of these areas would be a big task. Sweeping them all up together, as we have sometimes done, is a vast undertaking, and perhaps not a desirable one. On occasions, we have probably lost our focus. This recent blog, from mountaineer Dave Pollard, makes that case, and restates eloquently what DM could, and in Dave’s view ought, to be about.
In the wake of UNCIVILISATION, and the many possibilities it has thrown up, we think it’s time for a restatement of what Dark Mountain is – and what it isn’t. Time for a paring away of the fat and a focus on where we go next.
For us, the Dark Mountain Project is an invitation to face the converging crises of our century as a cultural challenge – rather than only a technical or political one. We use the word ‘cultural’ in several senses. In the sense that anthropologists use it, since this is about changes in our way of being in and making sense of the world. In the sense, too, that the Culture sections of the newspapers use it, because writers, artists and musicians have a particular role in the way we make sense of the world and find meaning in it as it changes. But our list of those who work in the field of culture would be broader, taking in craftspeople and those with practical skills, and embracing, too, the need to move beyond the ‘Two Cultures’ of the sciences and the humanities famously identified by CP Snow. (We find it encouraging that responses to the manifesto have come from mathematicians, psychologists, engineers and biologists as well as poets and songwriters.)
We do not dismiss technical or political responses to the crises we face, although we may question the assumptions behind them, and the extent to which they rely on wishful thinking. But they are not the focus of this project. Rather, we invite people to explore certain questions: in what ways are these crises rooted in our cultural assumptions, the stories we have told for generations and the ways in which we have seen the world? How do we disentangle ourselves from those assumptions? How can we forge cultural responses that undermine the poisonous myths we have inherited – the myths of humanity’s centrality, materialism, progress, the separation of ‘people’ from ‘nature’? Where do we find new stories, or old stories whose time has come? What other ways of seeing might alter our understanding of our situation? And how do we help send these stories and ways of seeing out into the world?
This is what, for us, Dark Mountain is. So, what is it not?
Dark Mountain is not intended as a vehicle for theoretical or abstract arguments about the future. While we anticipate a difficult century ahead, our emphasis is on the unknowability of the future, not on attempts to predict it. We do not want to construct a boxing ring in which fights between worldviews are staged, nor a vehicle for apocalyptic fantasies. And, perhaps crucially, this is not an ‘activist’ project: if you are looking for new ways of ’saving the world’, you have come to the wrong place. Dark Mountain is not a political movement, in that specific sense, nor was it meant to be.
Having said which, we recognise that we have not always been so clear. Sometimes we have forgotten the starting point of our journey – and sometimes others have misunderstood our purpose. (Among other things, this has led to too many fruitless arguments about whether we are ‘giving up’ on ’saving the world’.)
If you approach Dark Mountain as an open question – approach it seeking, or wanting to help craft, a cultural response to an age of crisis; and understand that it starts at the point where we stop pretending that our current narratives can provide us with what we need – then you may find much nourishment in it. We have been heartened by the responses of people who have encountered the project in this way.
On the other hand, if you approach it as a political project, and you come to us looking for programmes, five-point plans or suggestions for what the next stage of your journey through activism should be, then you are likely to find yourself frustrated. Answering these questions is not what we are here for. Admittedly, we’ve engaged in enough publicly political dogfights over the last year to make it understandable that some should see us this way. And small-p politics will always be, as someone once put it, the ‘background hum‘ of our work; it could hardly be otherwise. But it’s not the central focus, and if you’re looking for political answers, this project is unlikely to satisfy you.
This, then, is the basis on which we’ll be going forward. The festival and the book have been, we hope, good attempts at providing forums for this cultural response to flourish. We’ll be on the case with a new book later in the year, and we’re looking for contributions now (more on that here soon). Other events and approaches are taking place all over the network. And we’ll be announcing a call for submissions for a more specific project on this blog in the next week, which we hope will get some juices flowing.
What we’ll also be doing over the next few weeks is posting film, photos and responses to the festival up here, so that those who couldn’t make it can engage with what was on offer. This should be enough to keep us all busy for the summer. In the meantime, your responses to what we’ve said here would be very useful.
Finally, thanks again to everyone who made UNCIVILISATION possible: to the speakers and performers who gave their time and their talents, to Michael and Kat who held things together, to the stewards, to the sound and lighting crew and the rest of the Pavilion staff, and to everyone who came. A great deal of hard work, perspiration and inspiration, patience and generosity went into making the festival happen. We feel grateful and inspired by the way that people came together.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Dougald Hine and Antonio Dias, DarkMountainProject. DarkMountainProject said: New blog post: defining what @darkmtn is and what it isn't – http://bit.ly/9ZzlDO [...]
Amazed and encouraged at how the whole rich multiplane, multi-stranded dialog of the Dark Mountain journey has emerged distilled into a single basic idea. Yes, in a world drowning in technical and political responses to the “environmental crisis,” it’s time for a cultural response to the sacriledge and the fantasy.
I think Dave Pollord has the same basic idea, but he draws too hard a line between activism and art, between the transition movement and Dark Mountain. That is a fine line indeed. And I find myself a little uncomfortable with intimations of contempt for people who want to “save the world.” I don’t know anyone trying to “save the world.” I know people trying to save paticular woodlands, drainages, farms, mountains, rivers, ways of life, and sometimes species on the other side of the world.
I don’t think this urge to save something is born of illusion. I think it’s mostly born out of rage, love, reverence, rebelliousness. Of course, the activist, desperate to accomplish something, usually must sacrifice his or her principles just to enter the game. Which is why Dark Mountain is so needed. The true “principles” must be retrieved and reestablished before anything significant can happen.
In the meantime we save what can be saved, not because we are likely to be successful, but because the creatures and places are real and beautiful and command our devotion.
Hello, Darren Allen here, he of Gentle Apocalypse, DM delicate applauder and friend.
I couldn’t attend the festival, alas, but am following developments avidly. I’d just like to post a response to “What Dark Mountain Is,” expressed above and elsewhere.
It seems to come down to: (1) What cultural assumptions / stories / ways of seeing have dominated collective life until now, and led to this crises? and (2) what cultural assumptions / stories / ways of seeing should we be adopting?
So, would I be wrong in saying that what DM comes down to is two questions? If so, I’d like to ask you this – and please don’t take this as a challenge – but – lads – where are the solutions?
The answer to (1) is fairly (although perhaps deceptively) easy – a decent synthesis of Illich, Chomsky, Lawrence, Holt, Berger and a few others does the trick I reckon. The solution to (2) is much more difficult.
So please, let me know where your solution and answers are – I’d love to take a look.
In the meantime, I have solution and answers galloping out of my nostrils like so many tiny turquoise birds – yes! – and would love your response to them, once you’ve got time to read through my blog.
Enthusiastic gestures,
Darren
Hi Darren,
I’ve been following your blog but have not looked for a while. Will have a peek again.
‘What are the solutions?’ you ask. ‘Solutions’ to what? That sounds a little misleading to me. It seems that you’re asking where these new stories and ways of seeing are to be found. To which the answer is that we have had a stab, in both the festival and the first book, at laying some out. That’s what we’re up to. And we’re currently looking for more for the second book. Do send something in, or lay out some ideas for us. It would be great to have your input in finding this answer. It is likely to be a long process though!
Cheers
Paul
Hi Paul,
Thanks for responding. By “What are the solutions?” I mean solutions to the problem of a sick society – unbelievably unfair, unhappy, destructive and pointless – and solutions to the individual problems of loneliness, discontent, shame, boredom, apathy, confusion, anger, hardness of heart and closedness of mind. You suggest here, and elsewhere, that the solutions are to be found in “new stories and new ways of seeing.” But – and please excuse the criticism, because its really coming from the friendliest and most supportive place – I just can’t find any of these “new stories and new ways of seeing” that solve the problems mentioned above.
I have read through this website, and through the last edition of Dark Mountain. Its a mixed affair, as you would expect from so many contributions. Some of the poems and essays are low quality in my view, some high quality (Simon Lys and Rupert Cathles wrote interesting essays).
I find myself wondering two things.
Firstly: why is there no talk of quality itself in DM (or goodness, or truth, or love, or God, or whatever you want to call it)? If there is to be a “new way of seeing” or a “new story” that actually works or expresses what is faithfully, aptly, then it must be of greater quality than the old ones. So what is quality? How is it found? If these questions are asked and answered anywhere on your site or book, please let me know where.
Secondly, the good quality stuff you do have is, when it comes to solutions (or “new ways”) extremely vague and, for the most, critical.
Don’t get me wrong, criticism is necessary, and good criticism is a wonderful thing. And, I’m all for leaving truth, or the solution, vague and not rigidly defined – it is a flavour, or a process, more than a fixed ideology, and it is the flavour of DM that I am attracted to, such as I can sniff it out.
But I would like to know where you think, in your output so far, this flavour or process is best expressed. Which songs, which poems, which stories or essays? I just can’t seem to find it.
Also, for me, the truth, the solution, or, lets just say “seeing” is only partially a “long process”. But that’s another story!
Again, please don’t take this as wilful needling or negativity, really it isn’t. I just want to get to the heart of the matter; where, if it is anywhere, the truth is.
I’ll prepare and send something to you next week.
Enjoying the dialogue.
Best wishes,
Darren
Hi Darren. I’m not quite sure what you mean here by ‘quality’. Perhaps it’s hard to pin down. I’ll certainly look forward to what you send us; maybe that would be a good place to start – explaining what you mean here, searching for it, trying to pin it down yourself. I think you’re right that so far we have not got to the bottom of things, though for me there are some contributions in DM1 that do what we wanted Uncivilised writing to do. I’m not going to single them out, as it seems unfair. It’s early days though – I do think the process of getting together these things is going to be a fairly long one, from our point of view, anyway. Let’s see what comes out of the next wave. Do send us something.
Thanks Paul, its on its way – and, inspired by this little chat… without quality, the prison wins.
Bye for now…
I wonder why folks believe that there must be an ‘answer’ ?
Okay, we’ve got the dichotomy between the black, the mad max crash into zombie horror, oblivion and extinction; and the white, a new utopia of organic farming, forest gardens, holistic medicine, beauty and truth and love all around… optimism and pessimism, the glass half full, the glass half empty… John Michael Greer explains it as well as anyone…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceRP8rSwlMc
Darren seems to want Dark Mountain to be a parent and provide an answer, but surely, the premise of Dark Mountain was/is the DARKNESS, the unknown, the unknowable, the ‘where does this story take us ?’
Are we 7 billion human beings on a spiritual quest, or blind, lost, spiritual beings in material bodies, or deranged psychopathic primates, stumbling around in a paradise which we are turning into a hell ?
We’re all classified biologically as one species, Homo sapiens, but seems to me there’s plenty of devils and vampires in human guise, on this planet, it’s Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights, a horror show, a nightmare spectacle, saints are a rarity, probably all extinct, ( where’s Ghandi when we need him ? ) yet somehow hope and wishful thinking springs eternal…
‘What’s the answer, daddy ? Please tell me what to do…’
The ‘answer’ is to observe, awake from zombification, look at what is actually happening, and you can see where this thing is going….the people with worldly power are sociopaths and maniacs…. I don’t think it’s going anywhere pretty or nice or comforting or good or positive, no happy ending. We are witnessing global ecological meltdown, the trashing of the biosphere.
There are some humans who think their continued existence is so important that they are willing to kill and eat other humans, or so the stories go, but, even if most of us would prefer not to go to that extreme, and would rather opt for a graceful and dignified death from starvation, there’s no doubt that we will poison the very last drop of clean water, eat the very last fish, cut down the very last tree, if it means we get to live a few more days… just listen to the folks worrying about their pensions and BP shares, that’s what matters to them, not the bluefin tuna and Ridley’s turtles and dolphins and snow geese and everything else that lives in and around the Gulf of Mexico… these folks don’t just want to stay alive for a few more days, they want to live in extravagance and luxury, travel, have a nice car, private health insurance, plasma tv, nice fashionable clothes…. and people wonder why the Easter Islanders didn’t realise that they need those trees ? That their continued existence depended upon those trees ?
Hey, we all want a secure future, hahaha, so, the desire for a secure future means we get no future at all…
I’ve done some long fasts, and I can guarantee that, however hungry get, I won’t kill you and eat you.
( I might just kill you, if it was a question of self defence, but that’s a different scenario…)
For one thing, my fellow humans contain, on average, 500 different chemical pollutants, which have no place in the human metabolism, so they’re probably even more poisonous and foul to eat than whales…
( If other people want to eat rich bankers and mendacious politicians and paedophile priests, well, it’s a free country, isn’t it ? live and let live, I say… you got to have war to keep the peace, eh ? )
http://www.desdemonadespair.net/2010/06/toxic-metals-threaten-whales-i-don-see.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essex_(whaleship)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sawney_Bean
The reality of nature and biology trumps all the human myths and narratives. You can’t eat stories.
Can you ?
Some folks can’t eat anything, NOW, this very minute, because there’s nothing left around to eat, anymore…
http://www.desdemonadespair.net/
Haha, The Love Police get into Police trouble… good clean fun for all the family…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rq9ruy4WeKM
Wolfbird, you deride my request for answers and then provide one – its all their fault. Can’t say I agree.
Anyrate, I didn’t make it clear that there is a difference between answers and the solution. I’m asking what DM has by way of either, I am interested; although I’m not in need of being told what to think or where to go.
I think you’re right about “darkness”, although I think we’ll disagree on what that means too.
Sorry if you feel you’re the object of my derision, Darren. I apologize to you.
Did I say “It’s all THEIR fault”. Don’t think so. It’s all OUR fault. That is the – soon to be – 7 billions of us. Humans.
There. Okay ? Happy now ?
You come to Dark Mountain for answers, for solutions ? Perhaps neither are available. Isn’t it infantile or adolescent or naive, to think that ’someone else’ has an answer, or solution, if you can’t figure one out for yourself ?
I mean, maybe their is a magic ring somewhere, buried beneath a boulder, and if you rub it three times, a genii will appear and guide you through the fog to a cosy refuge where you can snuggle up by a log fire and have your head stroked… and they all live happily ever after…
What if there is no answer or solution ? How are you going to come to terms with that ?
It’s a process, isn’t it ? Hope, despair, grief, rage, bitterness, resignation… you’re in the hole, and there’s no way out, and nobody out there to come to your rescue…ever.
The human species has never faced a crisis of the kind we now face.
Not even George Monbiot can fix this thing.
In retrospect, what would you have said to the Easter Islanders, to the Maya, to the Romans, to the Sumerians, to the people in the Nazi death camps, to the people when the Black Death ravaged Europe and killed a third or a quarter of the people over a few months, what would you have said, to them, your friends, family, relatives, neighbours, casual aquaintances, as their worlds crumbled to pieces around them, what would you have said was the answer or the solution ?
If they’d come to you, personally, ‘hey, please, what’s the answer ? what’s the solution ?’
Dance the tarantella ?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarantella
I don’t “feel” derision; a comment such as “‘What’s the answer, daddy ? Please tell me what to do…’” is clearly derisive, as is “There. Okay ? Happy now ?” which is condescending; the implication being that I require placating.
I didn’t come to DM for answers or solutions, but if an organisation is setting itself up to respond to a problem I want to know what that response is.
As for what I would tell the Easter Islanders, Mayans, etc – I’d tell them what I would tell (and have told) anyone else who is dying – nothing. Dying people don’t need to be “told” anything. They need to experience nothing, with someone who loves them.
Och, well it’s so fortunate that nobody is relying upon you for anything then, isn’t it, my dear Darren.
The people of Easter Island, or the Mayas, etc, didn’t all suddenly lay down and die, one day, in front of you, they were part of a lengthy ongoing process. As are we all. Perhaps you need to re-read the original Dark Mountain statement, and then come back and say what your own response to the problem is, no ?
@Darren, you write:
‘I didn’t come to DM for answers or solutions, but if an organisation is setting itself up to respond to a problem I want to know what that response is.’
DM is not ’setting itself up’ as any kind of authority on the problems/challenges/realities we have identified. This blog post is quite clear that we’re not a political movement. Neither are the kind of stories or reactions we talk about intended to ’solve’ any of these dilemmmas. Some of them – population growth, climate change, the logic of capitalism – are clearly insoluble, and are probably taking us fast towards a brick wall. One of our key questions would be – what do we do once we accept that?
That’s what DM is about – negotiating that reality, accepting that it is a reality. Also, we have opened a space here, hoping it would be populated by others. If ‘answers’ come from any quarter, that quarter might be unexpected. The best responses we’ve had so far have certainly come from leftfield.
Hi Paul,
I didn’t say the DM is setting itself up to be an “authority,” or that it is a “political movement,” or that it is about solving the separate problems of the earth – some of which, as you say, are insoluble. (The source of these problems, such as they exist in the individual, is not, I suggest, insoluble, and that’s what I’m interested in exploring). What I did say is that DM is setting itself up to “RESPOND to a problem,” which is surely the truth, is it not?
Smiles,
D
What, in your opinion, is ‘the problem’, Darren. Pray tell.
Increasing confusion over the meaning of words; frustration over the inability to express value; highly indoctrinated education systems; proliferation of elite-only schools; degradation of water supply, public transport, local power and public benefits; withering of local ownership, law and custom; concentration of power and expertise in cities; proliferation of services; flowering of sects, religions, nationalism, narcissism and self-abuse; control of press by authority; apathy towards sentiments cheapened by cliché; disregard for the unquantifiable; huge levels of debt; the treatment of money as if it were real; rampant speculation; enshrinement in law of colossal inequality; fixation on form and image; confusion of insanity with criminality; meaningless or unknown laws; reduction in opportunity to create collective beauty; a burgeoning of state gambling, hero-worship, sex and pomp; a sense that time is speeding up; a creeping sense of redundancy and a subtle sense of world-dread; degradation of nature, women, children and spontaneity: temperatures rising, glaciers melting, rivers and lakes drying up; most virgin forests gone or soon to go; allergies and pollution-related sicknesses increasing, viruses becoming more resistant to drugs; officially mental illness reaching epidemic proportions; children everywhere becoming sexual and violent, women behaving more and more like men, and opportunities for spontaneous behaviour becoming almost nil; most people on earth being trapped in meaningless, painful, uncreative employment and those few that are doing something they love forced to do it in places, at times and in ways determined by authority and the profit-motive, which also decrees that “education” should happen in the same isolated environments in which what the student learns, when they learn it and where they learn it is strictly controlled; meaningful experience of death, darkness, silence, space, wild nature and authentic culture excluded from people’s lives, except as occasional holidays or strictly governed passive spectacles; hyper-rationalisation, projection, boredom, depression, doubt, anxiety, fear, awkwardness, impatience, guilt, frustration, anger, discontent, despair, dread, loneliness, sadness, confusion, shame, sorrow, dejection, disinterest, misery, wretchedness, despondency, gloom, low spirits, woe, malaise, heartache, distress, grief, anguish, torment, and, the woe that fools; excitement.
I would say that ‘increased confusion over the meaning of words’ is a problem exacerbated by the internet, and that if we were having this debate in the pub we might find more common ground than we suspect
Anyway, I’m sure we’d like to see some writing from either of you if you’re interested.
Hahaha, impressive list, Darren ! You want me to fix all that for you ? This afternoon ? Heck, that might require a revolution, which would displease the authorities, no doubt…
Nevertheless, there’s answers and solutions and fixes for most of those ailments and distressing conditions… they’re available, if people really WANTED them. So, why doesn’t everybody change ? I don’t know. Perhaps it’s because we’re not stepping over dead bodies in the streets yet…they’re still satisfied with the story they are in, not ready to plunge into a new one…
I suppose the place to start is with your self, because that’s where you have most control. Fix that. There’s plenty of ways. I prefer buddha dharma of Soto Zen, but Aikido is cool, as are many, many other routes. Meditation.
http://rufusmay.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=66&Itemid=9
http://www.opensourcebuddhism.org/documentary-links-are-here/
Then, set an example, show others. Find some land, grow stuff to eat. Make tools. Teach how it’s possible to have a rich, fulfilling life without all the crap that’s wrecking the world.
Trouble is, we still are not going to ’save the planet’ or whatever folks dream about doing these days, for the sake of their children… there’s BP, Exxon, Monsanto, Goldman Sachs, Carlyle, the Pentagon, the oligarchs of the world in their private jets, all that stuff… they don’t want to vanish, and even if they do, there’s a zillion second league monsters eagerly waiting to replace them. So, basically, we are fucked. No rosy future. No Happy Ever After.
I’ve been through looking for answers, all my life, Permaculture, Deep Ecology, Earth First !, and now Dark Mountain, and where else is there to go ? Back is against the wall. Next stop, the grave. I don’t ever give up, but that’s because I like to retain some basic human dignity and self-respect, not because I have hope anymore.
To change things fast, fast enough to avoid the catastrophic ecological meltdown, either needs a huge stream of money, to reward, feed, incentivize many millions of people – i.e. the traditional model that Politicians, Generals, Chief Executives and bankers follow… Or, millions of people who are motivated by an idea, with no money, but willing to suffer and die for a principle, like Chairman Mao’s Long March, or The Children’s Crusade, or the early Christians spreading the Gospel ( and being fed to the lions…) … what else is there ? Ecofascism ?
http://www.penttilinkola.com/pentti_linkola/ecofascism/
Most folks ain’t into those options. Easier to surf the net, get stoned, watch football on tv, and go to work, and accept that the list of woes you described so eloquently, is just, well, the way it is, the hopeless, powerless, wretched, alienated, sad, existence as a pathetic cog in the mega-machine…
Look at who we used to be…
http://ian.macky.net/secretmuseum/
“Blessed are those who do whatever they can wherever they are, for no one is devoid of resources or opportunities.” Daniel Quinn.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EoioUQXfHpU&feature=player_embedded
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sohI6vnWZmk
PS. Paul, thanks, indeed, for the invite to the pub, but I’m not fond of alcohol and would probably end up getting arrested
I did write something a long time ago, maybe of interest to someone, it’s rather dated though.
http://easyweb.easynet.co.uk/~chrislees/tao.index.html
Here you go, Darren. I’ve taken the time and trouble to comment upon the things that you mentioned.
- Increasing confusion over the meaning of words;
Words have always been confusing, since they were invented.
It helps to have a well educated population, which we don’t have.
- frustration over the inability to express value;
What’s valuable ? Clean air, good health, nice food, freedom to move around…
- highly indoctrinated education systems;
yes, well, it’s designed for social control and producing what a capitalist soceity needs,
obedient technicians, box-ticking bureaucrats, docile apparatchiks, greedy consumers, etc.
- proliferation of elite-only schools;
The elite want to stay the elite.
- degradation of water supply, public transport, local power and public benefits;
Too many people, using too much. It’ll get much worse because of climate change.
Fluoridation shows how the population can be subjected to mass treatment without any choice.
Selfish right-wing conservative values place the individual before the group. They don’t want
to share, or pay extra taxes to help those who depend on public services.
It’s the old division between Right and Left. If you want Scandinavian standard public services,
you get Scandinavian style tax rates.
- withering of local ownership, law and custom;
Don’t understand that one.
- concentration of power and expertise in cities;
Don’t understand that one either. Everything gets concentrated in cities, museums, cinemas, banks, etc, because that’s where people are concentrated. How are you going to concentrate power and expertise in, say, the Shetland Isles ?
- proliferation of services;
Don’t understand that one, didn’t you just complain about reduction of services ?
- flowering of sects, religions,
What’s the objection ? Wouldn’t it be worse if sects or religions were being persecuted and stamped out ?
- nationalism,
Nations tend to encourage nationalism… what do you want to do about that ? disinvent the nation state ?
Fine by me… Go tell the Scots, Irish, French, see what they say…
- narcissism and self-abuse;
You mean spoiled, self-indulgent, self-regarding, self-serving wankers ? Yes, there are too many, maybe because
life is too easy…
- control of press by authority;
Yes, same applies to all the media. For the moment, we have free speech and free communication via the internet,
despite eaves dropping, but for how much longer ?
- apathy towards sentiments cheapened by cliché;
Most of modern ‘culture’ is cheap, nasty, trashy, garbage… debauchery and depravity sell stuff, the shock of the new.
- disregard for the unquantifiable;
Hahaha, you mean Rumsfeld’s ‘Unknown unknowns’ ? Sure, the soceity circulates around money and science, both of which are only concerned with what can be measured, what can’t be quantified is assumed not to exist or be of importance.
- huge levels of debt;
Got to keep people tied into the system, debt is the best way.
- the treatment of money as if it were real;
It’s a perfect method to enslave people, real or not.
- rampant speculation;
Who cares ? If idiots want to gamble, that’s their problem.
- enshrinement in law of colossal inequality;
The privileged elite make the laws. Why would they want to make laws which disadvantage them ?
- fixation on form and image;
Everyone wants a spectacle, the world as show biz.
- confusion of insanity with criminality;
Who is sane ?
- meaningless or unknown laws;
Eh ? See a solicitor, they’ll explain what they mean and know which laws exist…
- reduction in opportunity to create collective beauty;
What’s ‘beauty’ ? it’s like ‘obscenity’, people disagree, no simple consensus…
- a burgeoning of state gambling, hero-worship, sex and pomp;
I suppose that’s under the heading of general decadence… you sound like a fascist dictator,
wanting to stamp out all that sleazy stuff and return to good, solid, traditional puritan values.
- a sense that time is speeding up;
Yes, it’s linked to the velocity of money. To keep the economy growing, it has to be stimulated,
time = money, the faster the products are made, marketed, distributed, consumed, thrown away,
the faster profits are made, and taxes paid to the Exchequer. Hence, make people work harder,
longer, not waste time on playing with kids or cooking proper food or lazing around in idle conversation
- a creeping sense of redundancy and a subtle sense of world-dread;
Well, we are all expendable. There’s too many of us, a surplus to requirements, so the value of each is reduced.
Dread is entirely appropriate. the whole global system, both the human artificial economic and banking system, and the natural ecological system, the biosphere, are on the brink of collapse. That isn’t going to be fun, particularly as it will very likely involve nuclear war, conventional war, biological war, God knows what else, millions of desperate refugees, enormous famines, etc, etc.
- degradation of nature, women, children and spontaneity:
Huh ? That’s a very odd mix of categories.
- temperatures rising, glaciers melting, rivers and lakes drying up;
Yes, it’s called global warming or climate change, and it’s going faster all the time, because the bastards who profit
from oil and coal are very rich and powerful and block any attempt to slow it down.
- most virgin forests gone or soon to go;
Yes. There are no virgin forests in the UK.
- allergies and pollution-related sicknesses increasing, viruses becoming more resistant to drugs;
Yes, but there’s always been health problems of one kind or another.
- officially mental illness reaching epidemic proportions;
Yes, because people are forced to live stressful lives, and it’s gone so crazy that it’s hard to find anything that is
sane and meaningful anymore.
- children everywhere becoming sexual and violent,
Partly because they are taught to be that way, by tv and movies produced mostly by Hollywood, where certain
people think that it’s a good thing to destroy all moral values…
- women behaving more and more like men,
As far as I know, there is no fixed way that men or women ’should’ behave, is there ?
- and opportunities for spontaneous behaviour becoming almost nil;
Don’t know what you mean. If you want to stand up spontaneously, just do it. What’s stopping you ?
- most people on earth being trapped in meaningless, painful, uncreative employment and those few that are
doing something they love forced to do it in places, at times and in ways determined by authority and the
profit-motive, which also decrees that “education” should happen in the same isolated environments in which
what the student learns, when they learn it and where they learn it is strictly controlled;
Yes. That’s how it is. Want to change it ?
- meaningful experience of death, darkness, silence, space, wild nature and authentic culture excluded from people’s lives, except as occasional holidays or strictly governed passive spectacles;
Ditto.
- hyper-rationalisation, projection, boredom, depression, doubt, anxiety, fear, awkwardness, impatience, guilt, frustration,
anger, discontent, despair, dread, loneliness, sadness, confusion, shame, sorrow, dejection, disinterest, misery, wretchedness,
despondency, gloom, low spirits, woe, malaise, heartache, distress, grief, anguish, torment, and, the woe that fools; excitement.
These are properties of the human condition, not attached to contemporary soceity. If you want to sort them out, you have to
follow one of the many spiritual paths which have been developed over the past few thousand years.
Some of these points are local, some could be international, but if you want to come up with a comprehensive critique of the modern world as it is, then you’d maybe want to extract the points that are universally true for all countries and peoples.. For example, the forests of the world are all different with different problems.
“Dark Mountain is not a political movement, in that specific sense, nor was it meant to be.”
Amusingly, starting to try and respond to my encounter with Dark Mountain, I’ve been led directly back to my days involved with the social forum movement. Google kindly helped me remember I already knew about Paul’s previous work – e.g. this write-up of the 2004 London Social Forum. Mild sleep deprivation, summer heat and rain is bringing it all back vividly.
Just at the moment, I’m struck by how unlikely it is that you’ll succeed in bracketing off what DM is about, any more than we did with the social forum movement over many years (though progress was made!) and any more than the SWP managed to (though, arguably, they did kill it dead in the UK…)
Three categories are given in the article above: technical, political and cultural. It’s only a blog entry so I imagine you wouldn’t want me to hold DM to those boxes. But DM, it’s argued, sits in one only – the cultural. To quote in full -
“Dark Mountain is not intended as a vehicle for theoretical or abstract arguments about the future. While we anticipate a difficult century ahead, our emphasis is on the unknowability of the future, not on attempts to predict it. We do not want to construct a boxing ring in which fights between worldviews are staged, nor a vehicle for apocalyptic fantasies. And, perhaps crucially, this is not an ‘activist’ project: if you are looking for new ways of ’saving the world’, you have come to the wrong place. Dark Mountain is not a political movement, in that specific sense, nor was it meant to be.”
I’m trying to write up a more careful response, but a quick off-the-bat one (don’t hold me to it…) – perhaps the shape of DM is known to the founders by now, but for me at least, this attempt to ‘cut away the fat’ is confusing. The box of ‘cultural’ is sealed shut on DM by arguing you want to keep out any “fights between worldviews” or detailed argument about the future – and especially that it’s not an ‘activist’ project. Of course it is. At the very least, I can tell you that because – going back to the start of this – I’m now thinking, responding to DM, in ways that run down neural pathways familiar to me from social forum days. I mean, any approach to these problems that can be innoculated at birth against the perfidious influence of the SWP, I’m all for. Of course, it may just be I was never actually an activist…
I feel a little like DM wants to have it both ways: to be able to take a sharp analytic knife to its aims and concepts sometimes, but at others deny such cutting is necessary.
Hmm, I should nip this in the bud before it becomes a Proper Large Waffly Rant. I have no idea why this is exercising me so! Maybe a kip will help.
Er – so, yes, sorry for being critical, and mostly just thanks for all your amazing work.
Ah, the World Social Forum…
“…a movement building process. It is not a conference but is a space to come up with the peoples’ solutions to the economic and ecological crisis. (It’s) the next important step in our struggle to build a powerful multi-racial, multi-sectoral, inter-generational, diverse, inclusive, internationalist movement that transforms this country and changes history.”
“We must declare what we want our world to look like and we must start planning the path to get there. The USSF provides spaces to learn from each other’s experiences and struggles, share our analysis of the problems our communities face, build relationships, and align with our international brothers and sisters to strategize how to reclaim our world.”
If only….
So many competing stories out there…
http://www.youtube.com/truthangel65
How is a poor country boy ever going to figure out what’s really going on ?
If it doesn’t slot neatly and comfortably into your preferred story, then you’re not going to believe it, right ?
Because culture isn’t science or mathematics. It can’t be tested empirically for veracity…
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB122/
http://www.scribd.com/doc/21149332/Brainwashing-Manual-L-Ron-Hubbard
Say the world ended, now. 7 billion dead. 7 billion souls lined up at the Pearly Gates ( or their equivalent, in your preferred gateway to eternity ) and each one gets asked by St. Peter ( or the equivalent… )
“What happened ? What happened to you ?”
7 billion different stories, each one unique… and St. Peter writes each one down, and let’s them all through the Gate, because there’s too many to do the usual processing procedures and selection…
And then what ?
They all begin to argue, as to whose story is true, why the other guy is crazy, your story is fiction, an absurd fantasy, I know because I was there, you couldn’t have been there, because you’re telling it all wrong, idiot ! Bitch ! Liar !
http://www.davesweb.cnchost.com/index.html
And so it goes, yelling and shouting and arguing and telling the other guy to STFU, on and on and on… forever…
And God has to put His fingers in His ears, because he cannot abide the noise, loses confidence in Himself, realises He must have made a bad basic mistake somewhere, eventually slinks away to the heavenly attic upstairs to get a bit of peace and quiet… falls asleep and dreams divine dreams…
Hi Dan,
Thanks for this. I don’t think we’re trying to ‘have it both ways’ as you put it.This blog is a reflection, really, on the latest stage of DM’s development.
‘Politics’ is a very welcoming concept. In the sense that this project is about worldviews, about how we live, about how we react to the way our society is, about what we think is right and wrong about that – in that sense, it’s clearly a political project. It’s certainly not apolitical, or disengaged. It’s not an ‘art for art’s sake’ kind of thing.
On the other hand it is not an ‘activist’ project in the sense that we are not working towards a political goal. The social forums are an interesting comparison. What is a social forum for? It is, bottom line, about changing things – the world, in fact. The social forums I’ve been to have been diverse, chaotic, fascinating, sometimes frustrating and full of contributions of varying quality. Rather like the DM festival, and perhaps like DM itself. The difference though, surely, is that social forums, like the movement they represent, have a political purpose – broadly, replacing the global economic system with something better (the fact that it’s not much clearer than that may be why social forums have not had more impact.)
It’s interesting that you talk about familiar neural pathways. Of course, this could be just a personal experience on your side, as someone who has been an ‘activist’ for a long time. I certainly know that I see and think very differently when I’m using those pathways than when I’m using those that lead me to poetry or fiction, for example. But what frustrates some people about us, I think, is that we begin on paths – the critiques, the sometimes political language, the worldview and analysis – that would be familiar to many activists, but we then veer off them unexpectedly. We won’t commit to doing what activism exists to do, which is to offer solutions.
But we are very clear about this and always have been. Some people have accused us of ‘hiding behind’ the label of ‘cultural movement’ to avoid having to make political commitments, or because we don;t know what to do about anything. I always tell these people to go and read the manifesto again. It’s a writer’s manifesto. Think Pound, not Marx. DM brings together people under the banner of a clear critique of our civilisation. But it doesn’t do so to lay out an alternative blueprint – at least not in that global, activisty sense. It does so in order to stir writers, artists and creators into a reaction. That’s what we began this project to do.
Of course, the project has become wider. It now takes in, for example, people who want to talk about permaculture, practical skills, transition initiatives, collapsonomics and the like – responses to crisis and fall. This is all good, as far as I’m concerned; it has its place. It’s not our central focus though. And even though such things are, in one sense ’solutions’, they are, more accurately, specific responses to specific challenges. It’s the ‘one no, many yeses’ approach I wrote about in my first book. What it’s not is ideological, global, theoretical. It’s not a movement uniting behind a call for action and going out into the world to implement it.
Perhaps I am not making sense here, and perhaps I am contradicting myself. This project is still in development, and also, as you suggest, different people will have different takes on it. But at its heart it exists to bring together and formulate a cultural response to crisis. And we are going to avoid ‘activism’ in the sense in which I have always known it,because it leads to ideological faultlines, simplification, division, gang warfare and – above all – wishful thinking.
This may be confusing to those who think along political lines at all times. My guess is that this is why the SWP have not, so far, shown the slightest interest in us! Phew.
Cheers
Paul
Hi Paul and All,
I think Dark Mountain is a sincere attempt to explore and share our struggle to bring depth and insight into this reality in which we find ourselves and which we have been a part of creating. All people need love, beauty and food and shelter. Many people have felt unable to realise more than one or two of these necessities in this life and therefore suffer accordingly. But we can help each other down the road of/to a better life provided we can recognise, in each other, qualities that spur on the life spirit and courage of the heart.
Cynicism is counter productive when employed to express ‘no hope’. Hope exists in everything of quality and quality exists in all true ‘art’, including the art forged by nature. It exists as much today in a Leonardo, Lawrence or Bach as it did when their works of art were first expressed. And in a species rich hay meadow’s glorious diversity.
Quality is surely eternal. And that spark of quality in us is equally eternal. Here is to be found the bedrock of a better future however drastic the crisis to be passed through. Defending ‘true quality’ in all things (and yes, fighting for its survival against all odds) while creating anew from such fertile wealth, is a key response on the Dark Mountain voyage.
May mountaineers prosper.
@Julian
Beautifully stated, and inspirational… however, the hope dies when one see the superb hay meadow removed by the proverbial big yellow bulldozer, and covered with concrete and tarmac, and realizes that the majority just shrug and think that’s an improvement…
It is a comfort to share the pain with others who empathise, however, we are reaching the point where it’s the very last hay meadow, and there’s nothing we can do… that’s the end of the ‘hope’ stage, isn’t it ?
I still grieve over the Dodo, the Great Auk… no ‘hope’ for them, is there ?
What about the Bluefin Tuna and the Kemp’s Ridley ? They’ve lasted millions and millions of years, and in my lifetime we annihilate them. Forever. In my eyes, that’s the ultimate crime, against God, the Universe, and against what humans ought to be about.
I think the way forward is to forget about hope, hope isn’t the appropriate motivating power. You just do what you do because it’s the only possible ‘right thing’, not because you expect to win or to lose, or even survive at all… leave others to have their hopes and weep when they grasp the harsh reality. Sure Bach is therapeutic, in the midst of any anguish.
If you understand how much global warming is already in the pipeline, even if we stopped all CO2 emissions right now, and it’s not going to be having it’s full effect for a while, because of the time lag, seems to me we are already past the last red light, aren’t we ?
By way of gossip, the source of ‘All in all, it seems to go, that you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone’, Big Yellow Taxi, Joni Mitchell, is said to have Morgellon’s disease, which sounds like an absolutely horrific ailment, which, some say, is cause by nanoparticles from chemtrails… don’t know if this can be authenticated for sure… but anyway, it emphasises my point, re ‘hope’. The good guys try to come up with positive ideas, the bad guys invent new horrors to inflict upon the world even faster…
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread439093/pg1
http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/7304674
So, what you gonna do ? Write a folk song about it ?
Yes Wolfbird, these are all despicable crimes against humanity and indeed ‘all beings’. All of them send a knife deep into our hearts and the planet’s veins. ‘Hope’ may indeed be the wrong word. I am inclined to agree. But you elucidated ‘the fire of survival’ that we each carry in us (all be it almost completely submerged in many) and that passion is a greater force than the one that wishes to submit the world to total destruction.
Are we past the last red light?
In ‘2 minutes to midnight speak’ the answer must be ‘yes’. But that is not a state to dwell upon.
There are unseen forces helping Planet Earth – The Universe’s ‘Record Keeper’ – to come through – and we should lend them a hand should we not? We have this brief earthly encounter in which to dig deep in ourselves and find some warrior or hidden power lurking and ready to ‘insist and resist’ however great the obstacle and however seductive ‘the mind’ at tellig us ‘its not logical and its not possible’.
Anything is possible. As you said yourself “If one wants it to be”.
Yes Wolfbird, even as the toxic mix of chemtrails (Barium, Alluminium nanotech particles and Ethylene Dibromide amongst others) are calculatedly released upon us all (in NATO Countries) by aircraft flying high above. Even then, you know ‘the source’ of your passion is eternal, so help more know your secret and make the impossible possible!
@Julian
Thanks. You said “…..so help more know your secret and make the impossible possible!”
Haha, but then i’d be hoping that such a tactic might be successful, wouldn’t I ?
” Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings the song without the words
And never stops at all. ”
Emily Dickinson.
I already said, above somewhere, I think the very first thing to attend to, is your own self.
My personal preference is for the teachings of Dogen. If you scroll down, there’s a short presentation about him here
http://www.opensourcebuddhism.org/documentary-links-are-here/
No doubt, there’s plenty more info available via google.
If I have a secret, then it’s the same secret that Dogen discovered.
If you learn to have a silent mind, and operate from the tanden, as the focus of conscious awareness, everything changes, and you tap in to something rare, of great importance.
But everyone is different, in character, temperament, strength and abilities, so all I’m saying is that soto zen worked for me.
I am very strong on personal stuff, however that’s not what’s needed. Martin Luther King or Ghandi, on their own, could do very little, and as soon as they became effective because of the multitude supporting them, they got murdered.
I made a statement above, which nobody challenged, so I’ll criticize myself :
” Culture can’t be tested empirically for veracity…”
This is incorrect. Human culture has one, and only one, test, which it has to pass or fail. That test is, ‘Is it conducive to the survival of the soceity ?’
In other words, do the forms of behaviour, the values, architecture, the stories, the arts, the songs, of a soceity, enable that soceity to survive over many generations.
Victorian British culture worked fine whilst there was a vulnerable planet to loot, and lots of technological innovation to exploit. But now the Empire has gone, and we reach Peak Oil, and much of what worked in the past is now hopelessly counter productive.
I don’t know how this can be done, or whether it could be done, or even if it’s theoretically possible, let alone practically possible. But I think we’d need to re-engineer our whole culture, so that everyone’s life fitted into a sustainable ecological model. I suggest that’s what culture was originally about, when it first evolved. It’s an overlay, an enhancement, to the basic biological imperatives.
So. I’d wipe away all the cities, the nuclear power stations, the landowning class, the military, the industrial estates, and build autonomous small eco-communes, something like the great monastic estates prior to Henry VIII. These would be substantially self-contained and self-sufficient, linked by trade routes. The over-riding consideration being always, that all activity be ecologically benign. The test should be, can we do this activity for the next 1000 years without harming the biosphere ?
Okay ? Hahahaha. Everyone will say that that plan is impossible. Even including me…
It’s been tried before. It’s a tough sell. The trouble is that previous attempts have been made under desperate conditions, of revolution and system collapse. I don’t think it’s been tried in any orderly way in peacetime. But, obviously, even in peacetime, there’d be conflict because such a plan would require considerable coercion, force, resistance, violence.
But, perhaps, if the major problem is that there are just too many of us, and most of us are going to die anyway, because of the continuing status quo, maybe that’s okay. It just needs an adjustment of familiar values of human decency and compassion, towards something far more ruthless and brutal. Historically, plenty of people didn’t have any great problem with that, did they. Does the end justify the means ? Probably not. Sigh…
Nestor Mahkno once had a somewhat similar notion, and you can read how that attempt got screwed up here :
http://www.isreview.org/issues/53/makhno.shtml
So, anybody got any better ideas ? Back to the drawing board, eh ?
Hi Paul (and co),
Still tinkering with a contribution to DM, but I’ve just posted on my blog an outline for THE ANSWER!
http://www.gentleapocalypse.com/2010/06/more-economic-growth.html#more
Slow bows,
Captain Mindhorne
Good stuff Wolfman and nicely stated. “A journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step” Lao-Tzu.
My suggestion: if you haven’t already – get onto a small plot of land about 100 metres or more above sea level and start ‘growing your own’. Get the shelter heated with wood or other renewable resource and cook using the same. Practice your inner spiritual expansion regularly – and send positive microvita vibrations to others in need. Then link-up with those climbing the same mountain (or trying to) and start ‘the new resistance’ which will eventually help ensure that your species rich hay meadow and cow will not be bulldozed out of existence. Write about it – you are very good with words.
Then, one day, your ‘ark’ will be one of thousands – because many who have the same idea have actually decided to act on it! Survival and rebirth may just be the same thing, and there will be productive islands between the floods, oasese amongst the deserts and hope amongst the surrounding despair and desolation. And even if the scenario does not work out like this, you will have acted according to your intuition and responded to the life force – which is the starting point and sine qua non for anything of value.
You will also learn to respect the life of the peasant.
Thank you for the advice, Julian.
I have been doing just what you recommend, for twenty years. 25 acres, 800 ft. above sea level.
I’m not certain if I will live to see the day, but some of the eco-fascists think that the future will be fortification of such places, with armed guards, to fend off the roving bands of looters and pillagers, the starving and desperate… Can’t say I relish that prospect.
Additional thought – I find it fascinating that you arrived at the above comment, Julian, from reading the limited info I posted, you formulated a good constructive proposal, which is where I was at 20+ years ago, and have been developing ever since, I’ve posted today’s thoughts here ( tinamou ) because I believe there is a way forward that can make a difference, even if it only slows the crash, maybe it buys us all some time…
http://www.permacultureforum.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=808&p=3654#p3654
OK Wolfbird, that is indeed interesting..
What is of value here is ‘taking a long term view as a response to facing-up to a crisis of real immediacy’. We can realise a holistic response that sees this crisis as a stimulant to sow the seeds of something that goes on growing: before, during and after the ‘collapsing civilisation’ phase of the crisis.
This places the visionary element ‘in the soil’ – and that is probably where it was always supposed to be. Infact, much of what hastens ‘the collapse scenario’ is the result (over the last 2 to 3 centuries) of too great a distance being forged between a relatively steady state, incremental evolution of land based developments/communities and the rapid, abstracted and technologically driven evolution of urbanised developments/communities. The latter then rebounding on the former and establishing unrealistic demands upon soil, plant, animal and man. Especially in the last 100 years. To the extent that our resource base is now severely depleted, disrupted and devalued.
By insisting on a renaissance of the ’slow and steady’ long-term ecological approach we can indeed ‘gain time’ and ’slow the crash’. What’s more, we can harmonise our own rythm’s to what is circadian and seasonal, rather than what is linear and monotone.
It is my contention that ‘Art’(in the context that Dark Mountain largely places it) can only thrive once re-harnessed to that which is itself of simple, fundamental importance to our daily lives. Soil, water, food, shelter etc. The ’soil under the fingernails’ that Paul speaks of is indispensible to the coming phase of our evolution – the one that leads to the establishment and expansion of the ‘arks’ that I cite in the above comment.
The Artist of the 21st century is not the same bird as the Ivory Tower artist of the past. The 21st century artist is an ‘actor’ (man/woman of action) who simply cannot remain a largely passive observer of the fate of his/her planetary home and fellow humans. That which is written, painted, played or sculpted by those who remain aloof from the fate of this planet and all its beings – can no longer be called ‘art’ no matter how eloquent the words or brush strokes that emerge form their exigencies.
That is the great change which is upon us. The age of responsibility. More fire, less ego, less posturing – and the recognition that we are not seperate from the veins of life that pulse in our embattled Gaia, but irrevocably interconnected.
Very nicely put, Julian. I would add that there are, of course, other ways of looking at the same historical period, and explaining what has occurred, e.g. industrialism, capitalism, colonialism, imperialism, etc. The British cultural attitude which emphasized jingoistic militarism and racial prejudice, which stressed the resource base to the limits to support world wars, part of the traditional sport of military adventures into Europe and elsewhere going back a millennium and more… part of the story which I was taught as ‘truth’ as a child, indoctrinated into the belief that it was normal, necessary, natural, noble, to do battle, all the way from the Battle of Hasting, to Montgomery versus Rommel in N. Africa, this is what ‘we Brits’ are, and what we do…. we ‘conquer’, we ‘vanquish’… all that CRAP… and when the soldiers came back from WW2, they were so psyched up on the adventure and excitement of battle, they couldn’t relax and chill out, they started to attack their own landscape, destroying more ancient woodland in 20 years than had been lost in the previous thousand, ripping out hedgerows, blasting new roads everywhere, ploughing up the ancient meadows and archaeological relics, dosing everything with DDT…. oh dear, you got me going
Here’s some cool pictures. IMO, these images go a long way towards illustrating the real internal spiritual condition of the so-called humans who have been running this country for the last 100 years and more, and there are still plenty of them about…
http://www.travislouie.com/paintings/
The kind of people who think that what this guy is doing is really great and elect him Pig Farmer of the Year, what a hero !
http://www.viva.org.uk/campaigns/pigs/foston.htm
Love and rage !
The Mower
The mower stalled, twice; kneeling, I found
A hedgehog jammed up against the blades,
Killed. It had been in the long grass.
I had seen it before, and even fed it, once.
Now I had mauled its unobtrusive world
Unmendably. Burial was no help:
Next morning I got up and it did not.
The first day after a death, the new absence
Is always the same; we should be careful
Of each other, we should be kind
While there is still time
P. Larkin.
.
“These communities, if they retreat into a pure survivalist mode without linking themselves to the concentric circles of the wider community, the state and the planet, will become as morally and spiritually bankrupt as the corporate forces arrayed against us. All infrastructures we build, like the monasteries in the Middle Ages, should seek to keep alive the intellectual and artistic traditions that make a civil society, humanism and the common good possible. Access to parcels of agricultural land will be paramount. We will have to grasp, as the medieval monks did, that we cannot alter the larger culture around us, at least in the short term, but we may be able to retain the moral codes and culture for generations beyond ours. Resistance will be reduced to small, often imperceptible acts of defiance, as those who retained their integrity discovered in the long night of 20th-century fascism and communism.”
“We stand on the cusp of one of the bleakest periods in human history when the bright lights of a civilization blink out and we will descend for decades, if not centuries, into barbarity. The elites have successfully convinced us that we no longer have the capacity to understand the revealed truths presented before us or to fight back against the chaos caused by economic and environmental catastrophe.”
https://www.adbusters.org/magazine/88/chris-hedges.html
[...] in what ways are these crises rooted in our cultural assumptions, the stories we have told for generations and the ways in which we have seen the world? How do we disentangle ourselves from those assumptions? 22 June 2010 [...]
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