The neoliberal world-view is designed to replace trust with greed as the social motivator. Of course, all successful societies are based/built on trust, so neoliberalism is building a #deathcult. The current #climatechaos and social decay are simple to understand outcomes. If you’re wondering why this is useful, it’s an important part of a conversation and…
Caring in a culture that disregards human well-being requires resistance to dominant values
I have come to think that care for people requires a high degree of resistance to the culture around us, simply because that culture is dedicated to values that have no concern for people. A tension in society: the disconnect between cultural values and genuine care for people. Actually caring for people requires a strong…
Utopia
in the current mess of #mainstreaming, #Utopia is a dirty word. #Dystopia is not. The story that imagines a future of continual decline feels more reasonable, even inevitable. It’s easy and kinda enjoyable to picture #postapocalyptic paths, given the current state of the world. With the growth of our #deathcult worshipping, the end of history…
The Meyerstein Lecture in Archaeology 2024: The social worlds of Bronze Age animals
Although cattle and sheep were central to the everyday lives and wellbeing of Bronze Age communities in northwest Europe, they are strangely lacking from our narratives of the period. After the Neolithic, it seems, archaeologists rarely consider domestic animals to be interesting. However, Bronze Age people clearly thought otherwise, as the careful deposition of complete…
Marx on Nature Conference
10:30 am-11:30 am: Alex Colas (Birkbeck): Marx, Capitalism and Maritime Temporalities 11:30 am-12:30 pm: Gareth Dale (Brunel): Marx, Growth Ideology, and Degrowth 12:30-14:00: lunch break 14:00-15:00: Nick Stevenson (Nottingham): Democratic Socialism, Degrowth and the Commons: Raymond Williams, Marxism, and the Anthropocene 15:00-16:00: Martin Crook (UWE Bristol): Marx and the Ecocide – Genocide Nexus 16:00-16:30: coffee…
The tech world is in a state of chaos and dysfunction
The tech world is in a state of chaos and dysfunction, to compost this mess it’s crucial that we reckon with the consequences of our past decisions to understand how we arrived at this point. Over the past four decades, there has been an intertwining of #postmodernist social thinking and #neoliberal economic ideology. This marriage…
We must reckon with the consequences of our past decisions
The intertwining of #postmodernist social thinking and #neoliberal economic ideology over the past four decades has laid the groundwork for the turbulent state of contemporary politics and the social chaos evident in our digital ecosystems (#dotcons) This marriage of ideologies led to a fracturing of societal values and a narrowing of ideological divides, resulting in…
Women & Online Television in Senegal – Screening of Mistress of a Married Man + Q&A with director Kalista Sy
St John’s Cinema Club and the TORCH African Languages, Literatures and Cultures Network are excited to welcome Senegalese online television series screenwriter, director and producer Kalista Sy. The event will start with a brief introduction by Dr Estrella Sendra (Department of Culture, Media and Creative Industries at King’s College London), followed by the screening of…
The Open Governance Body: Revolutionizing Governance with Grassroots Tech
In our ever-evolving digital world, governance is often left behind, struggling to catch up with the pace of technology and social change. Among the myriad of attempts to tackle this problem, there’s one that stands out for its innovative and participatory approach: the Open Governance Body (#OGB). This grassroots, federated project is more than just…
Now, where is my shovel?
A lot of current #mainstreaming arguments that are treated as left and right are actually not. They are arguments between modernism and postmodernism. This is a mess that the postmodernists have pushed over the last 40 years. We need tools for composting this mess, shovels come to mind. But it’s hard to grasp a shovel…
Best to start from #KISS the left is based on trust and open culture.
Best to start from #KISS the left is based on trust and open culture. Moving away from this the left has destroyed itself over the last 40 years. * The #fashernista embracing of postmodernism * The soft left embrace of the “common sense” of neoliberalism Combined, these have undermined the foundations the left is built…
#dontbeaprat is a positive statement of what’s next?
In activism (and interestingly less so in #mainstreaming life now) #stupidindividualism is a constant poison. With #blinded, people treat critical social thinking as ONLY personal criticism. This has the effect of #blocking that spreads mess over the very needed social change and challenge. Am increasingly using the #dontbeaprat hashtag to communicate on this problem. I…