Month: December 2011

Published Date 12/18/11 8:20 PM

Have been looking through an old hardive with the though of updating the Greenham film and came across lots of old photos from the activist world through the 1990’s – they would make a good bases for a series of articles. To set the seance here are is the camera man.

In the undercurrents office, Oxford in 2003

Oxford carnival 2003

Oxford, Europn Newsreal gathering 2003

Escanda 2003

My Room in Oxford

Edinbough 1999

Edinbough 1999

Brussals in 1999 I think

Published Date 12/16/11 6:00 PM

Mannequins dancing to barely visible strings (DRAFT)

This is an attempt to understand how blocking is used to stop/slow positive social change. By blocking I mean many things, refusing to address core issues, pushing everyday agenda’s to hide more systematic issues, and confusingly using big issues to distracts and fog everyday needed changes.

Outcome-driven horizontal projects are hard to sustain. I understand climatecamp process ossification better now – there is a strong blocking to process change – the continuing pushing of the needed change is blocked thus the change gets harder (more vertical) until it ossifies and becomes non-functionaly strong enough to break the block (thus breaking the horizontal process it is trying to achieve). End up with a broken structure that cannot move or change.

So the issue is “blocking” which largely is a psychological fear of losing non-existent certainty – ie. the false consciousness (cf Marx) of capitalism – Thus the moniker “stupid individualism”. The root out of this is to work a way round this “stupid individualism”.

Rainbow Gatherings manage this – by forcing scarcity, in visionontv we don’t have this option, in Rainbow you are moved into a world where all the normal options are simply are not there – thus change HAS TO HAPPEN – it’s an intentional community. “Stupid individualism” simply becomes too dysfunctional in this situation to stop change. This is at the heart of rainbow process. In our situation, on the internet, in media there is no scarcity, so “stupid individualism” reigns supreme and unstoppable. 

An issue is that many people will self-define what I am saying at this point – BUT will not engage with it – The writer is being a “stupid individual” and this would be the case if the writer was not actively engaged in a real social project.

“Trust networks” are the solution to “stupid individualism”. With this understanding I have a more sympathetic view of climatecamp process. The derided “process people” suffered from ossification as much as the wider camp. And I am arguing that this is a re-occurring issue, so the individual who were left pushing a empty agenda are less at fault than the systematic issues that they haven’t addressed. 

Its important NOT to take personal responsibility for this as the is a dead end block in using this as a solution to this problem. Maybe more useful to seeing us as mannequins dancing in a circle twitching to barely visible strings. And the circle we are in – is not the right one. We need a new circle with some different strings (some of them more visible) and to start a new dance.

The blocks: what participants feel are the tangling of strings, the process they are trying to unravel so as to make a new circle to dance in. We are all attached to strings, so get untangling. It’s the strings NOT the messenger that stops you. Help is needed trying to untangle and re-set some strings, perhaps the messenger is trying to help? try not to shoot

In this post I attempt to untangled a string (climatecamp process wasn’t as bad as i thought it was). Which string are you going to untangling? “Stupid individualism” is the trap we have to avoid, but we are getting more and more snared in it – on all sides.

The danger is that we are talking about parallel things and more tragically – thinking along parallel divergent lines – “stupid individualism” is strong and kicking and the more we kick the more entangle we become – leaving little hope of a new dance – by the way dance is a metaphor for process and strings are a metaphor for the very human senses of belonging that we need for society to hold together.

Does it end well I wonder – it never has in the past, but one can keep coming at a problem from different angles. Maybe this time it might. Thus am NOT taking any personal responsibility – just seeing us as mannequins dancing in a circle twitching to barely visible strings. And the circle we are in – is not the right one. We need a new circle with some different strings (some of them more visible) and start a new dance.