Hamish Campbell an #openweb organic intellectual and technologist
People think in groups, that’s normal. The mistake isn’t group thinking itself, it’s pretending we’re all isolated individuals while still acting through tribes, identities, and social blocs. A lot of today’s “common sense” comes from the #stupidindividualism group mindset. We are encouraged to see every problem through individual choices rather than collective realities. The real … Continue reading #Nicenasty the hidden power of soft obstruction
“Being in #Oxford today, I popped into the #OxfordUnion to use a room. Glancing through the term card, it’s absolutely vile – and has been consistently so for the two years I’ve been back in the city. It’s a useful, if deeply dispiriting, exercise in reading the people and place. This is where parts of … Continue reading Sophists – From Ancient Greece to the current #mainstreaming
#techchurn is the endless cycle of adopting new platforms, tools, and technologies – not because they solve any real problems, but because novelty is mistaken for progress. It burns community trust, institutional memory, and activist energy, while leaving the underlying #nastyfew power structures untouched.https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=techchurn The #OMN uses #stupidindividualism to describe the culturally manufactured habit of … Continue reading #OMN Grounding (the roots as a story)
YOU can’t do social change or challenge without annoying people If you think you can, you’re probably play-acting – and part of the problem – does that annoy you? If it does… maybe sit with that. 🙂 Food for thought, #4opens is a shovel for composting. The value of the #Fediverse comes from its cultural … Continue reading The value of the #Fediverse comes from its cultural roots in the #openweb
Part of the shitty mess we’re in comes from the failure of #DIY culture and the rise of #stupidindividualism as the common sense path. #stupidindividualism is completely unscalable in social terms. It fragments, isolates, and exhausts. That isn’t accidental, it’s a classic divide-and-control strategy of the #deathcult. And we need to consciously step away, and … Continue reading The rise of #stupidindividualism as a common sense path
In my life, what is real is people being beaten and shot, blood on the walls, evidence fabricated, mass arrests, torture in prisons, borders closing, and fear becoming an everyday condition. Fear isn’t imagined. Fear is rational. What is real is watching a police officer chat casually one moment, then flip instantly into an instrument … Continue reading What is not real is pretending that violence is secondary to discomfort over language
We still haven’t solved this. Looking back at a conversation from six years ago, what stands out isn’t disagreement – it’s how hard it is to even name the problem we keep circling. Over the last 20 years, again and again, the discussion slips into the same dead end: personal value versus social value, framed … Continue reading Social value, personal value, and the chicken-and-egg problem
From my point of view, it needs to start from the raw truth: There is currently no functioning grassroots media. Not in any coherent sense. Before we talk about video, storytelling and digital tools, we have to answer the most basic question, one that most people have forgotten to ask: What is grassroots media? It’s … Continue reading Rebuilding Grassroots Media – Back to the Soil
The story of the 1990s in #Russia is not just a local tragedy. It is the cornerstone of the modern #deathcult order. December 25th, 1991. The Soviet flag lowered for the last time. The West declared victory. The Cold War was over. “Democracy” had won. But for millions of Russians, that night was not liberation. … Continue reading A small history – Russia
The right-wing feeds on division.The left-wing grows from trust. This simple #KISS truth is buried under decades of shit. Stalinism’s dead weight.Postmodernism’s cynical fog.Neoliberalism’s greed-choked rot.All piled onto our social soil. Now we stand in the stink:social, technological, political, philosophical mess. We don’t deny it.We compost it.We turn the pile, let it breathe,make decay into … Continue reading Pick up a shovel, the work is ours
Too often, the ugliness we face in grassroots spaces wears a smile. It’s smiling-faced vileness: pleasant, agreeable individuals who wield control by blocking dissent, sanitizing movements under the guise of compromise, and maintaining the fake illusion of consensus. This is especially true in spaces overly tolerant of #NGO-style protocols – those bureaucratic, #fashionista postmodern traps … Continue reading Smiling-faced vileness: How enforced politeness becomes a weapon in grassroots paths
If we want to build meaningful alternatives, we must deal with difficult issues head-on. Sweeping things under the carpet – especially in radical spaces – always comes at a cost. One of the more complex, and often misused, areas is around identity politics, particularly the playing of the race/gender card in ways that obscure rather … Continue reading Power Politics and the Race/Gender Card – A Contemporary Reflection