Tag: lifecult

The End of the “Peace Dividend” and the Return of History

#Identitypolitics, is what happens when liberalism turns inward and fragments – call it mad liberalism. #Culturewar is what happens when that same liberalism hardens and lashes out – bad liberalism. Both look like opposites, but they come from the same place.

The uncomfortable part is both were pushed onto the “left” as the way to fight #neoliberalism the very system that’s been tearing apart the social fabric for decades. Instead of building collective power, we pushed endless identity fragmentation, reactive outrage cycles and symbolic battles detached from material change the left is about.

Energy that could have gone into organising, building, and challenging power structures got redirected into managing discourse and fighting each other. That wasn’t an accident, it was the path of least resistance within a liberal framework that can’t actually confront the roots of the problem, because it’s part of the problem.

So while people were arguing over representation and language, the underlying mess – what we call the #deathcult – carried on concentrating wealth, hollowing out communities and locking in structural inequality. And now, that same system is producing a hard shift to the right, feed by anger without direction, backlash without solutions and reaction filling the vacuum left by the failure of the “left” to build alternatives.

So yes, the liberal centre made the mess, but the more important point is this we’re still stuck inside its framing, still reacting, still fighting on terrain that leads nowhere and still avoiding the work of building something that can actually replace what’s failing. Not to dismiss identity or culture – those matter – but to put them back in proportion, grounded in material reality and collective process. Because if we don’t do that, we stay locked in the loop of liberal fragmentation → right-wing reaction → deeper collapse, and this loop doesn’t end well.

The question isn’t only who to blame, it’s whether we can stop playing the same game long enough to build something else. Let’s look at this from a much wider view.

For a long time, the dominant mainstreaming story has been that today’s instability is blamed on the anger of the “left-behind” in the West, a neat, comfortable narrative. But this is shallow, as long before discontent surfaced in the US or UK, entire societies in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union went through something far more extreme.

The 1990s transition to #neoliberalism wasn’t just “reform” – it was a peace-time social collapse when life expectancy dropped, savings were wiped out and crime and addiction surged. This “history” matters now because it shows that what we’re living through isn’t new, it’s the long tail of our worshipping of the same #deathcult, that has been breaking societies for decades.

The illusion of stability from the early 1990s to around 2010, when the world looked unusually stable, even peaceful. Major wars between big powers disappeared, military spending dropped, trade and GDP surged – “Democracy” spread across the globe. This period was framed as success, some even called it the end of history. But this “peace” rested on smoke and mirrors.

#globalisation as control – economic interdependence was supposed to prevent war, the idea was simple if everyone is economically connected, conflict becomes irrational. What actually happened was production was off shored, labour was weakened in the West, global supply chains became fragile and unequal and wealth concentrated at the top. This wasn’t peace, it was #classwar.

The fig leaf of “democracy” was always market compliance, less about collective decision-making and more about maintaining economic growth. In practice governments served markets, institutions constrained popular power and politics became technocratic management. In #OMN terms, this is #mainstreaming – reducing real political choices into narrow, “acceptable” to the #nastyfew options.

The hidden cost was hollow societies, this system did produce growth. But hollowed everything out, communities weakened, industries disappeared, inequality exploded and politics lost meaning. People were told everything was fine, while their lived reality worsened.

So the anger we see today isn’t sudden, it’s delayed. The imperial layer is power without accountability at the global level, this system was held together by a dominant power structure. And here’s where the cracks deepen as rules applied selectively, international law was a tool, not a constraint, economic systems weaponised as needed. The result was a loss of legitimacy, as when rules are not applied equally, they lift the veil to stop functioning as rules at all.

We are now moving out of that world back to no longer having a single uncontested centre of power. Instead, we have competing blocs, regional tensions, fragile alliances and increasing militarisation. This is what’s called a multipolar world in #IR terms. Historically, these systems are unstable unless there are shared norms and limits, right now, those norms are weak or collapsing.

So we understand that the liberal #deathcult logic no longer works, globalisation is fragmenting, states are prioritising more self-sufficiency, supply chain control, strategic industries. The old idea of interdependence is now seen as a risk, not a safeguard.

Liberal ideas of democracy aren’t stabilising conflict, instead of reducing tension, elections amplify nationalism, reward confrontation leading to deepen division. The “#deathcult peace” is no longer holding, It’s a dangerous feedback loop, that without strong shared “rules”, the mess drifts toward proxy conflicts, regional wars, arms races and escalating mistrust. Even if full-scale war is avoided, instability becomes normal, and this instability feeds back into domestic politics – creating more fear, more reaction, more breakdown.

The deeper problem is #neoliberal exhaustion, we no longer treat the #deathcult as sacred and with #climatechaos and social break down our deaths are seeping closer. It’s now visible systemic exhaustion of the rule of the #nastyfew who built this era of #neoliberalism to prioritised finance over production, replaced politics with management, concentrated wealth and power and stripped away collective purpose.

This mess making didn’t resolve contradictions, it displaced them into culture wars, liberal identity conflicts and into abstraction. Now those social control is failing, we see the return of “history” where fundamental questions can’t be avoided anymore:

  • What is the purpose of the state?
  • Who benefits from the economy?
  • What do we protect and why?
  • How do we organise collectively?

This is uncomfortable, but necessary. As the previous era avoided these questions, this one forces them.

The #OMN perspective on this mess is compost, don’t collapse, that this moment is not just crisis – it’s raw material. The breakdown of the old system creates space, but we need to use the space, it’s why the #compost thinking matters – don’t deny the mess, don’t romanticise collapse, process it into something usable. Because if we don’t, the vacuum gets filled by reactionary politics, authoritarian control and deeper #mainstreaming mess.

The “end of history” wasn’t an achievement, it was a pause – built on unstable foundations. What we’re living through now is history restarting, messy, risky, uncertain. But also the first real chance in decades to build something that isn’t just a updated version of the same #deathcult logic. We might build a #lifecult if we can hold our nerve, and actually do the work.

So what comes next? We are moving from “stability” without meaning to instability with possibility. Yes, that shift is dangerous, but it also reopens agency, the question is no longer
“how do we maintain the system?” It becomes “what do we build instead?”

The #KISS choice is the #OMN path to grow new #openweb, grassroots, trust-based structures, or we default fall back into more centralised, extractive systems?

Actually solving things, and why this matters for #OMN

The #mainstreaming is talking about the #deathcult – So why are you still waiting?

It took four decades of sleepwalking through #neoliberalism, cultural decay, ecological collapse, and social atomisation, but at last, the #mainstreaming is starting to talk about the #deathcult we’ve been worshipping.

Case in point: Steve Coogan – yes, Alan Partridge – is now publicly accusing Keir Starmer and Labour of “paving the way for Reform UK,” the rising hard-right threat. Here’s the article. It’s not satire, it’s despair. Coogan’s right, and a few years ago, such a comment from a mainstream celebrity would’ve seemed extreme. Today? It’s just stating the obvious.

The “centre” has collapsed. The “left” has hollowed itself out in fear. And the space where #lifecult politics might live is now overrun with fear, cynicism, and opportunism. This is the #deathcult in action, the system that tells you there is no alternative while everything burns down around you. For 40 years we’ve been taught to accept decay as progress, control as freedom, and despair as maturity.

But here’s the thing, we told you so, for people like me, and many others working on open networks, digital commons, grassroots media, and post-capitalist systems, this isn’t news. We’ve been working and talking about this for decades.

In the world I am in, we’ve already working on alternatives: Decentralised governance via the #OGB. Federated publishing through the #OMN. Ethical tech rooted in the #4opens. And a cultural path that doesn’t rely on selling your soul to #dotcons or begging #NGOs for scraps.

We weren’t trying to be ahead of the curve. We were trying to get people to notice the damn cliff. Now that we’re tumbling over it, suddenly everyone’s surprised. Now the #mainstreaming, which ridiculed or ignored these grassroots, native paths, is whispering our language, but still to often refuses to take the paths we are on.

On this continuing common sense #blocking, let’s be blunt – now is the time to stop being prats about this necessary change. No more waiting for the next electoral saviour. No more hiding behind polite inaction. No more pretending that rebranded centrism is going to save us from fascism, it won’t.

If you're reading this, you probably already know the centre won't hold. So what's stopping you?

We don’t need more think pieces, what we need is more people to get their hands dirty, pick up the tools we’ve been building, and start doing the real work. This means, in my area of tech activism:

  • Federating your networks.
  • Hosting your own content.
  • Engaging in horizontal governance.
  • Publishing with principles.
  • Building trust and commons, not brands and silos.

The good news? The framework paths exist, the seed communities exist, the infrastructure, with the #Fediverse is small but growing solid. What’s been lacking is you, your time, your courage, your refusal to keep being a prat, to become brave enough to take this different path.

This Isn’t about nostalgia – It’s about now. We’re not dreaming of the past, we’re recovering futures that were lost when the #dotcons, the NGOs, and the #neoliberals buried the #opwnweb’s radical possibilities under a mountain of grift and branding. This isn’t utopianism. it’s simple pragmatism, resilience. It’s how we survive the rise of the new right without defaulting into the arms of the old centre – the ones who made this mess in the first place.

And for the record, if you need reminding: In this tech path, we don’t need another “platform.” We don’t need another fake “community” run by venture capital. We don’t need more loud voices doing nothing. What we need is to take paths back to rooted, open, and federated ways of working.

This is what the #OMN and #4opens have always been about. You can ignore it for another year or two, but you won’t outrun what’s coming, better to start planting now – it’s not too late to grow something real.

The time is now, if you’re waiting for permission, this is it. The people who once called us cranks are now writing op-eds about the collapse we have seen coming for years. The centre is falling, the right is mobilising, the old paths are dead ends.

The future will be built by those who show up now.

We need you, not in six months, not after the next election, now. Stop being a prat, pick up the tools to help build the next world – before the current one burns it all down.

First step: Stop being a prat

The story: power, truth, and walking the fun path

Our powerlessness feeds our desire to hate. This is not a personal failing – it’s a social design flaw. A social problem built on alienation and distraction that funnels frustration into polarisation. That’s why the controversy-driven algorithms of the #dotcons (corporate social media platforms) are not just annoying, but actively harmful. They feed on our despair, and we, often unknowingly, feed on the drama they serve back to us.

It’s a closed loop of spectacle and spite, profitable to the #nastyfew but corrosive to us, the meany. An extractive business model built on social breakdown. And yet, many of us know this, so why do we stay? Likely It’s because stepping away from this mess is hard, it takes more than wishful thinking, it takes movement, not only that, but it takes organising. It takes the kind of networked activism and lived alternatives the Open Media Network (#OMN) has been building and trying to seed for the last ten years

Let us not overlook vital things, because of the bulk of trifles confronting us.

Truth isn’t declared, it’s built. #Postmodernism taught us that truth is slippery. That’s fine, but in the hands of #mainstreaming culture, that slipperiness has become a tool of endless distraction and decay. People say things like they are true because they feel true. They build tech platforms because they believe in them. They sell movements as brands because it looks like change. But let’s be honest: wishing something into truth does not make it true.

What makes things true is collective struggle, shared purpose, and concrete acts of solidarity. A load of social work, grounded activism, and careful trust-building make something true. This is the hard path, but it’s also the only one worth walking, and when we do it together with joy it’s the happy path.

Pettiness separates; breadth unites. Let us be broad and big.

The #geekproblem is too often a part of this mess. Writing code is seen as a kind of truth declaration. “Look, it runs! So it must be real!” But a thing that compiles is not the same as a thing that lives. Tech without community is a corpse. For anything to matter, you need people. And to keep people, you need some rough-and-ready PR, actual engagement. You need trust, time, and probably a bit of music and food too. We can’t engineer our way out of this crisis, we have to organise our way out.

The #Lifecult vs. the #Deathcult. What we’re up against isn’t just bad ideas, it’s a worship of stability, spectacle, and control, the illusion of movement through aesthetic alone, no real challenge to the dominant system. It feels warm, it promises safety, but it leaves no room for difference, contradiction, or rebellion, this is inside our “cults”.

It requires less mental effort to condemn than to think

This is why we don’t need worship, we need practical action. Change and challenge are not side effects of our projects – they are the sharp point. We don’t do this work to be liked, we do it because there is no other way to make things true. And if we do this together, it becomes fun and meaningful – we create social “truth”.

Working with the #Eurocrats (and other impossible people). Let’s talk about the institutions, the #EU, local governments, #NGOs, big tech “allies.” They are hopelessly incompetent when it comes to grassroots tech and progressive social change. But here’s the thing, they will not go away on their own. If we don’t push, the right-wing will step in and push harder. That mess is already happening.

Revolution is but thought carried into action.

So we take the harder path, we show up, try to guide. We keep the door open even when it slams in our face. And yes, it’s exhausting. We’ve tried to work with #mainstreaming people, many are unbelievably vile, and worst of all, they have no idea they’re behaving badly. They don’t see their role in the decay, they don’t see the crisis, because the spectacle of control makes everything look fine.

Yes, the current #mainstreaming is a mess, a deep, systemic, soul-grinding mess. But we see it, and we are not powerless, refusing the mess is about rebuilding the commons. We don’t need to put up with it, that’s what #OMN is for. That’s what projects like #indymediaback, #OGB (Open Governance Body), and the broader #openweb movement are trying to hold space for.

We don’t need more hype, we do need, slow, messy, grounded work:

  • Listen more than we preach.
  • Read each other’s code, politics, and history before rewriting.
  • Talk about our failures honestly.
  • Grow media and networks that are native to community, not layered on top like #dotcons digital colonialism.
  • Build up our own cultures of care and collaboration in the #openweb to replace the dying ones.

This is fun, when it’s not a strategy of purity or perfection, it’s a strategy of survival, and even joy. This is not a closed story, it’s a beginning. If you’re reading this and feeling the weight of it, good. That’s where we start from. But let’s not stop there, come build, talk, and argue. Come plant seeds, come help make the mess into compost. Ideas? Responses?

All the quotes are from Emma Goldman

The #mainstreaming mess

The #mainstreaming project is visibly failing. Worse, it is set to catastrophically fail over the next 30 years as #climatechaos escalates. The signs are everywhere: environmental collapse, political instability, and the hollow nature of mainstream culture. Yet, large parts of liberal society continue to bow to the #deathcult, a path of power, greed, and control over life, community, and sustainability. The end result we can now clearly see is the rule of big, dumb, ugly men with guns, a world driven by violence and fear rather than cooperation and creativity.

But we do still have a choice, on the internet we can build and support alternative projects and paths. Instead of kneeling before the #deathcult, we could embrace a #lifecult dedicated to nurturing the #grassroots, growing resilient communities, and reclaiming our collective autonomy. This path is not easy, nor is it comfortable, but it is one of the humane outcomes we can hope for. Am not up for cults my self, but if this is what people won’t let’s make it life rather than death.

The challenge of change, is that this does not emerge from #mainstreaming circles without friction. When alternative movements gain traction, they are both rejected outright and then co-opted and diluted until they become meaningless. The #OMN hashtag story highlights this process, and pushes back the rejection, to balance the struggle, and the slow but real impact on agendas we need.

The question is whether people can engage with this, in the needed #4opens processes. The #4opens is a completely obverse “social” restating of the #FOSS development process, with a crucial addition: #openprocess. Over the last decade, much of this transparency has been lost as activist communities and developers shifted towards encrypted chat for process, locking away vital discussions from needed public discourse.

The weaponization of process, in my experience, whenever we create rigid structures, people inevitably pick them up and start hitting each other with them. This pattern has repeated over decades, killing countless effective grassroots social challenge/change projects. Nearly all of them, in fact. The result? Communities that should be working together end up tearing each other apart over minor ideological differences, procedural disagreements, or personal conflicts. This cycle of infighting and stagnation serves the interests of those in power, it ensures that no real alternative ever gains momentum.

Food for thought is how do we break this cycle? One path is rebuilding the commons, which is currently possible in the digital spaces. Yes, more evaluation than revolution. It’s not about grand theoretical debates or ideological purity, it’s about doing the work by getting involved in your communities. By gather a group together to take practical steps towards #stepaway to move to the #openweb and start rebuilding commons outside the #dotcons.

From a growing network of people and groups doing this, we might get real social change, or we might not. But at least we’ll be doing something practical, rather than simply feeding the current corporate machine.

Seeding the #OMN is a solution to a universal problem, the shit nature of both mainstream/traditional media and the #dotcons that dominate the media landscape. Our lives, economies, and governments are now totally embedded in these corporate-controlled spaces, leaving us little room to manoeuvre. The #OMN offers an alternative, but the biggest barrier is not technology, it’s people’s capture and passivity. Right now, the ONLY thing holding us back is the mass acceptance of despair. The #mainstreaming system breeds apathy. It tells us there’s no alternative, that change is impossible, that resistance is futile. But we know that’s a lie.

The question is: will we act before it’s too late?

We need real shifts to things that matter in #openweb tech dev

The Open Governance Body (#OGB) is a radical approach to decentralized governance, designed from the experience of the failures of existing governance models by combining activist organizing techniques with decentralized federated technology like #ActivityPub. It provides a very flexible governance framework that can be used across different communities, from local markets to the #Fediverse itself, creating a scalable and human-centric decision-making path.

Examples: Local Market Self-Governance: Stakeholders, such as vendors, customers, and authorities, can collaboratively make decisions without reliance on centralized institutions. Fediverse and Online Communities: Federated instances can adopt the #OGB for cooperative decision-making, ensuring grassroots control over digital spaces.

Why this path works, activist organizing as a foundation, social movements have driven radical change for centuries using decentralized, trust-based governance. The #Fediverse itself is a proof of this concept, it has demonstrated that federated, open-source technologies can scale without corporate control. Human-centric governance is built by merging these time-tested approaches, the #OGB fosters sustainable, non-hierarchical governance models rooted in #4opens values. This combination ensures adaptability and resilience against co-option by #mainstreaming forces.

Then we have permissionless rollout, the #OGB is designed to spread organically, self-initiated setup: Any individual or group can start an instance, onboard participants, and begin governance discussions. This will push network effect growth, as more people engage, the system scales naturally, shaping governance from the ground up. This bottom-up path challenges traditional top-down governance structures and paves the way for a more equitable #openweb. This needs supporting with more political paths, funding and support.

Using #RSS and #ActivityPub as core technologies offers significant advantages in grassroots politics:

  • Decentralization: Resistant to censorship and corporate control.
  • Interoperability: Enables seamless communication across platforms.
  • Transparency: Enhances accountability and public engagement.
  • Ownership & Autonomy: Empowers people to control their own data.
  • Accessibility: Breaks down barriers for marginalized voices.

The #Fediverse exemplifies this by offering a decentralized alternative to #dotcons. But the is still an often invisible ideological battle for the #openweb, the issues we aim to mediate is that programming is never neutral. Ideology inevitably shapes the systems we build. We see this in:

  • The Fediverse mirroring the #dotcons, many platforms unintentionally replicate centralized models rather than embracing true decentralization.
  • The risk of #mainstreaming takeover, without active resistance, corporate and NGO interests will attempt to co-opt the #openweb.
  • The #OMN as a counterforce, focused on linking alternative and grassroots media, the #OMN is part of a broader push to prevent the enclosure of the digital commons.

The #openweb needs to remain a space for radical inclusion and self-determination, free from corporate and direct state control. This challenging of the status quo needs real alternative paths, to get this we must critically examine the ideological underpinnings of our current world and ask:

The answers to these #blocking forces lie in building, not just critiquing, alternative paths and structures that embody the change we wish to see. The #OGB and wider #OMN projects, and the #4opens framework are part of this effort to reclaim community, autonomy from the ground up.

A world we see as normal

Can you smell it? Can you feel the unease, the hard shift to the right is feeding off? The dead ideology of Neo-liberalism is everywhere. It’s a rotten corpse in everything we look at, everything we touch. And yes while it might feel uncomfortable, we should actively feel distaste when we look at it and revulsion when we touch it, this is the reality of living under a #deathcult.

For the past 40 years, we’ve been immersed in a system that most people still worshipped as if there’s no alternative. But, where is the path out of this smell of this uneasy feeling? Where is the vision for something different, something rooted in solidarity and sustainability rather than profit and exploitation?

To find a different path, take a moment to look at this example of a #4opens project from a simpler time: Wikipedia revision history from 2011. Note the commitment to “strict scrutiny”, which required that any security measures serve a compelling community interest and be narrowly focused to achieve that and nothing else.

Compare that principle to the current state of tech, where the #encryptionsist agenda overshadows transparency and community accountability. The shift has been stark, away from openness, away from scrutiny, and towards the path where security becomes a shield for entrenched power and control.

This is what we need to confront, the #deathcult thrives on our passive acceptance of #neoliberal norms of #closed. Revulsion in this mess isn’t just justified; it’s necessary. The path we need to take is in rejecting this hard blocking to open spaces to build the #4opens alternatives we so desperately need.

OMN #indymediaback #openweb #makehistory #OGB

You need to think about this more? Let’s look at an example of this in our current lives, people have been living in the shadow of neoliberalism for so long that worshipping the #deathcult has become their nature. The values of exploitation, competition, and #stupidindividualism are baked into what’s considered “normal” behaviour. In contrast, embracing a #lifecult, based on collaboration, community, and sustainability – feels alien, even threatening, to many of these “normal” people.

This is one of the reasons the #Fediverse and alternative social media platforms have struggled to gain traction with the huge influx of #mainstreaming people fleeing the growth of tech fascism. The Fediverse embodies #lifecult principles: decentralisation, mutual aid, and the rejection of exploitative corporate models. While these are positive ideals, they feel too far removed from the familiar patterns of the #deathcult for most people to take the leap.

A cynical path we could take is to meet people halfway. Instead of demanding they abandon their comfort zone entirely, we could make the Fediverse appear less like a #lifecult at first glance by presenting it in ways that feel more approachable and less intimidating, more like the #deathcult they are used to. On this compromise path, yes, the Fediverse should stay true to its principles, but making it less of an overt #lifecult and more of a practical, attractive alternative, this could be the “common sense” step we need to bring people over. Once they’re in, the actually, very needed, hopefully still existing culture, the values of the Fediverse will begin to work their magic.

What do you think? Should we focus on shadowing the approach to reach more people, or would that risk diluting the values that make the #Fediverse what it is? How do we live this balance in our shared #openweb reboot.

What can we learn, what can we do?

People need to understand that the tension between different approaches to activism highlights the need for creative synthesis in our current broad social and ecological crises.

  1. Fluffy vs. #Spiky is about a Diversity of Tactics. The idea that both working within the system (#fluffy) and challenging it directly (#spiky) are necessary to creating a robust and adaptive movement. On this native path, building “common ground” is crucial, but the left’s fragmentation under decades of #neoliberalism and #postmodernism has left it standing waist deep in a metaphorical swamp. Moving anywhere requires reclaiming a grounded, shared space – intellectually, socially, and ecologically.
  2. Revisiting #Modernism, to return to modernist thinking – despite its flaws -can offer clarity and purpose, emphasizing structure, progress, and shared goals. Balancing this with the experimental potential of socialism and anarchism, especially on a distributed scale (enabled by #federation and #P2P technologies), creates room for growth outside the mainstream.
  3. Liberal Social Democracy, yes, is a step back because while the goal may lie in more radical transformations. Maybe a return to liberal social democracy could serve as a stepping stone away from the creeping threat of fascism. This pragmatic approach might help to stabilize the ground for further progress.
  4. Deathcult vs. #Lifecult is a Cultural Meta-Narrative. The #deathcult metaphor encapsulates a culture driven by greed, materialism, and ecological destruction. The #lifecult offers a messy but hopeful alternative, grounded in values like ecology, social justice, and collective care. The process of “composting” – transforming negative aspects into fertile ground – is a powerful metaphor for this shift.
  5. The Role of Undercurrents True hope lies in the grassroots undercurrents of social movements that always challenge #mainstreaming culture to provide alternative narratives. These undercurrents, messy as they may be, are where transformative potential resides. A focus on “life-affirming values” helps to communicate with those who may be entrenched in rationality or blinded by the logic of the #deathcult.

Suggestions, focus on finding shared values between different activist approaches to grow solidarity while respecting diversity of tactics. Encourage scalable experimentation with alternative economic and social models, with federation and P2P tech. Storytelling using metaphors like #deathcult and #lifecult to reframe conversations and make complex issues relatable and actionable. Education and agitation to challenge apathy and #stupidindividualism by helping people reconnect with collective action and shared purpose. Thinking in an ecology of movements, can be helpful. . On this, recognize the importance of both reformist (#fluffy) and radical (#spiky) approaches as complementary rather than contradictory.

And most importantly, please try not to be a #blocking prat, thanks.

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 first episode of the series Maîtresse d’un homme marié (Mistress of a Married Man) and a discussion with the filmmaker. Khadidiatou Sy, known as Kalista Sy, is a Senegalese screenwriter, director and producer, who became famous in Africa and beyond following the success of her first series, Maîtresse d’un homme marié (Mistress of a Married Man), known as MDHM. MDHM is the first Senegalese women-led television series where women are placed at the very centre of the narrative. The series, first released on 25 January 2019, and broadcasted online via YouTube, became viral, with over 5 million viewers per episode, and being compared to Sex and the City in international media. In 2019, following the international success of MDHM, Kalista Sy made it to the BBC’s list of the 100 most inspiring and influential women from around the world.

———————————–

The trubbles of middle class African life, dressed in postmodern feminism. A Women’s view of plastic black consumerism.

It’s the #deathcult playing out in the current mess, dressed in western ideas of social norms. It’s not that the life and experiences are not real, it is that the culture they push, and it’s assuming are the problem that I am talking about. The videos try and mediate a “better” path within this #mainstreaming “common sense”.

The is no #lifecult in this TV, the reflection of mess makes more mess. The ideology of the era, the filmmaker says I am the radical, the feminist, people look to me.

The filmmakers are funded by product placement, this is thought out the videos, part of the middle class assumptions and binding to the subject. “People buy their identity” the brands push this into the film’s. This is a #NGO path being pushed throughout Africa. This is the “sex in the city” world view translated to local “common sense” in this it is pushing liberal norms.

One question, “very middle class, is this represented as aspiration. She says this look and aspiration is “normal” there, bueity is their strength. Mental health and sexuality to grow the couching and Therapy industries.

A question of the capitalism of the production, the root story is a reaction agenst male repression, seed money from the husband, then support from the women, it is run at a local level, now it is “sponsored” to tell the stores of the people who pay the bills, this is the sustaining push.

It ends in heroic liberalism, and individualism fighting the good fight, by pushing western #mainstreaming

#Oxford

Clues on how to compost #mainstremining #deathcult worshiping

 This is a #lifecult that has been overwhelmed with the mess we all push. The activists are shovelling and composting for the first time in 40 years faster than we all spread shit over the world. Help them please, don’t be a “common sense” #deathcult worshipper.

This is a #deathcult the only power the isolated individual can find is the power of death he grasps in his hand.

In the UK the trains we have are not for us, they are to exploit us. We don’t have “public services” for us, we have individual exploitation for us, with transport as a secondary role. This is the same for water, energy and the rest. This is what we suffer from 40 years of #deathcult “common sense”. It’s a mess we now have to compost, you need a shovel #OMN

We have had beggars on the last 3 trains, this is normal now in the UK

#deathcult and #lifecult are useful metaphors for human nature

#deathcult and #lifecult are metaphors of human nature, both are “cults” so very human. On this life and death is a better truth to speak, but not human to communicate, we compromise with the world as it is and join you to live in the world of cults.

For the logic choppers, the words are not for you, you are a knife, we are talking about metaphors and inspiration, the building of hope. The knife that you know divides, which is a small part of building hope, the hashtags use is touching on the wider cloth, the social “truths” in these metaphors.

#deathcult is the mainstreaming, “greed is good” it is a modern glimpse.

#lifecult is a counter current that makes up a part of mainstream, you can find this in “left” politics, ecological movements and some religious heretics and sects.

Death and Life are a balance in the wide view, we humans generally push a more narrow view, some for life, some for death.

We build our hope in the #undercurrents of our social movements, these feed into/or feed the mainstreaming cultures that reshape us.

At best, “life” is the spring/flow, though often our society builds sewers and the filth of “death” contaminates this spring this is the worlds we live in today.

The answer is simple, composting to purify the shit that fill the mainstream. Our job, “life”, is building this composting social system.

Ideas thanks? And please communicate this to the logisticians who are our need “blinded” alias in this building work.

Humanistic adventures in social technology

The is a “good” seed of a different view in the #OMN project

We live in a “post truth” world where our everyday life is shaped by “cults” on one side you have the air we breathe #deathcult of neo-liberalism on the other you have blocking the bridges and languishing in jails the #lifecult of #XR both in their ways are “cults”.

I am struggling to articulate what a non “cult” world would look like – the 19th century view, while useful and powerful (in a dangurus way) has holes in it. the 20th century way of ecological suicide no matter how meany washing mashions we have, the 21st cemetery way is the #deathcult

Today am enacting the 19th century view, while building the 20th century view to fight the 21st cemetery view.

The is a “good” seed of a different view in the #OMN project that needs water and compost and lots of shovelling to move the current tech shit piles to the compost to grow the seed we water with our daily work.

You have a watering can?

A humane project to push balance back into the current #deathcult flow

I think it is time to talk about giving up our desire for total control and moving to thinking about the world as flows rather than static. Our illusionary “static” individualism is a mental illness that makes us powerless to resist the displacement and death of billions of us over the next 100 years due to fascism/ #climatechaos forcefully rebalancing the human/natural world.

Static view is “individualism” its all about you as a selfish mythical island.

Flow view is “social” is all about you embedded in the flow of social/ecological realty.

You need “power” to urgently rebalance these views, social tech is a good step to this “power”. The #OMN project is a clever useful humane project to push balance back into the current #deathcult flow. For the religious crew this is a #lifecult for the humanistic its just the right thing to do.

Shovels and compost are a good metaphor.