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Zombie, dinosaurs and crocodiles
It’s that time of year when everyone seems to review the past year and plan for the next one. Seems an appropriate time for me to blow the dust off a draft post I started near the beginning of 2013 but never quite completed. Why appropriate? Because it’s about looking back and looking forward. Zombies, […]
Conformity and consensus
Just worked through Dave Pollard’s Links for the Month. TheraminTrees YouTube video (a touch under 10 minutes long) summarising studies on group conformity stood out from some other amazing resources. Probably because I’ve been pondering this stuff of late, including in my recent post on certainty: If you don’t have time to watch, here’s a […]
The Four Roomed House
There are many ways to prepare people at an event for what may happen. The notion I find myself using most often is the four roomed house: This version is 4rooms.gif from loosetooth.com. Those of you with particularly good eyesight may be able to see that it acknowledges a man called Claes Janssen and his […]
Where’s the tipping point? Where’s the breaking point?
Here’s a taste of the latest NCIA newsletter: “A friend once said to me that my problem was that my ‘circle of concern’ was wider than my ‘circle of influence’. Maybe this explains why I spend so much time being cross? But consider the following. Over the last week I have heard that: Bob Diamond […]
social media mix
See http://wefeelfine.org/ clustering, grouping, separating, patterning, colourful, applicable?
What's your agenda?
Later this month the Rhizome co-operative will gather for a 2 day meeting. 6 out of the 7 current Rhizome folk will be there plus 3 others who may well sign up by the end of the 2 days. We’re scattered across the UK. Of the 9 folk attending 2 are from Manchester, 2 from […]
mediating and meaning
Mediated a dispute between members of a core group in a direct action group. The agreement was to keep the content and fact of the mediation confidential, so I can only talk about the process without any reference to the members of the group or the group. One member of the group, that had agreed […]
Civil disobedience, hard work and time
http://kindertrespass.com/index.asp?ID=37
We tend to forget how long it takes for the dreamed of, planned for, struggled for change to actually take place. It is very easy for activists to feel disheartened and defeated after the early exhilarating stages of a campaign, or the excitement of an act of civil disobedience. It’s a long slog and much of it is just sheer bloody minded persistence. The anniversary this week of the mass trespass on Kinder Scout in 1932 reminds us how very long it can take. I don’t just mean the 68 years from 1932 till the Countryside and Rights of Way Act was passed in 2000, but all the centuries of struggle by working people, the poor and the dispossessed for equal rights to the land, appropriated by the wealthy and powerful for leisure and profit. From the Peasants’ Revolt in the 14th century, which conjures the names of Wat Tyler and John Ball, through to Wynstanley and the True Levellers in the 17th, radical writers such as Blake and Thomas Paine in the 18th, and the work of Victorian liberals and radicals who founded the Open Spaces Society
Giving Up on Environmentalism
The destructive power of hope? The futility of environmentalism? Sustainability as preserving the world we know, a “project designed to keep this culture — this lifestyle — afloat”? Dave Pollard’s latest post Giving Up on Environmentalism over at how to save the world, in which he extensively quotes Paul Kingsnorth is a challenging read, but well, […]