// The Leaderless Revolution // 09.11.17
Wherever possible, travel, interact, make love, argue, live with people elsewhere. Engage; co-mingle. Resist the efforts of governments and others to paint the other in stark colours, whether black or white. Cease using the outdated nomenclature of a world that is already receding into history; stop naming; stop dividing.
This crowded planet
More people now dwell in cities than the countryside. The urban majority now barely encounter what their forebears took for granted: trees, fresh air, birdsong, silence. Lives are lived out in a frantic, noisy hecticness; fulfilment is distant, with peace and escape dreamt of, sometimes purchased, but all too rarely experienced.
The modern condition of prosperity, a sort of peace, a sort of freedom, is simply not enough. The yearning for more, for distraction, never quite goes away however much is purchased, however many holidays are taken.
Agency over events - the feeling of control - is a gross absence in the contemporary condition.
Norms are more important than rules: it is the actions of other people that have the most influence on what we do.
Today, we are too accustomed to distrusting one another, to perceiving 'the other' at home or abroad as hostile and malign, and we're angry because the girls and the luxury we see on MTV are unavailable to us.
If the teacher is present, what is going on in the playground must be, in some way, acceptable
People drive faster in vehicles that feel safer, cycle more dangerously when they wear helmets and take less care bathing infants when using child seats designed to reduce the risk of drowning. We tend to lower our guard when told that the coast is clear.
The press, in its complacency as the 'fourth estate' in the body politic, does little to enquire into and explain complexities.
“Process” is a word that implies movement, even progress, but conceals a reality that there is none.
Even the sceptical notice greater volatility in the weather - everything’s hotter and colder, and wetter and windier than it used to be. This is consistent with science’s predictions.
For most of us, politics is a spectator sport
Sending a text message or signing an internet petition is likely to achieve nothing, given that so little went into it. The measure of any political action is not how many hits you get on the campaign website, how many followers you have on Twitter, or supporters on your Facebook page. The measure is effects in the real world on the thing you are trying to change: are there fewer nuclear weapons, has the dictator been overthrown, is one child saved from starvation?
Professor Lawrence Lessig has argued that the mutual dependency of lobbyists and legislators is now so profound, and corrupt, that legislation is enacted with the sole purpose of extracting rents from corporate interests.
Gustav Landauer, a 19th-century theorist, once said, "The state is not something which can be destroyed by a revolution, but is a condition, a certain relationship between human beings, a mode of human behaviour; we destroy it by contracting other relationships, by behaving differently".
It was, of course, a complex story that we managed to divide into two distinct and opposing narratives
Only later will historians, masters of the reductive art of the narrative, be able to put shape to what seems today formless and even then they will be capturing but a tiny part of what comprises existence now.
It is all wrong to have millionaires before you have ceased to have slums.
A small girl is drowning in a lake in front of you and you are the only person who can rescue her. You are however wearing expensive $400 shoes which will be ruined if you dive in to rescue the girl. In reality the crisis of the drowning child is presented to us constantly. Every minute, eighteen children die of hunger and preventable disease: 27,000 every day. Moreover, it costs far less than $400 to save them. Just as if the child were drowning directly in front of us, the moral imperative is clear and precise: we must act, even if there is a cost to ourselves, albeit a small one. If everyone in the rich world gave a mere one percent of their income, poverty and preventable disease in the world could be effectively eradicated.
Make up your own mind. Examine your own reactions. This is difficult in the banality yet ubiquity of contemporary culture, with its cacophony of voices and opinion. Space for contemplation is all too rare. But here’s one suggestion which is doubtless revealing of my own dyspeptic disposition: what makes you angry? What never fails to irritate you for its stupidity and injustice? That may be the thing you should take up arms against. It was for me, and anger puts fuel in the tank. - Carne Ross
Wherever possible, travel, interact, make love, argue, live with people elsewhere. Engage; co-mingle. Resist the efforts of governments and others to paint the other in stark colours, whether black or white. Cease using the outdated nomenclature of a world that is already receding into history; stop naming; stop dividing.
This crowded planet
More people now dwell in cities than the countryside. The urban majority now barely encounter what their forebears took for granted: trees, fresh air, birdsong, silence. Lives are lived out in a frantic, noisy hecticness; fulfilment is distant, with peace and escape dreamt of, sometimes purchased, but all too rarely experienced.
The modern condition of prosperity, a sort of peace, a sort of freedom, is simply not enough. The yearning for more, for distraction, never quite goes away however much is purchased, however many holidays are taken.
Agency over events - the feeling of control - is a gross absence in the contemporary condition.
Norms are more important than rules: it is the actions of other people that have the most influence on what we do.
Today, we are too accustomed to distrusting one another, to perceiving 'the other' at home or abroad as hostile and malign, and we're angry because the girls and the luxury we see on MTV are unavailable to us.
If the teacher is present, what is going on in the playground must be, in some way, acceptable
People drive faster in vehicles that feel safer, cycle more dangerously when they wear helmets and take less care bathing infants when using child seats designed to reduce the risk of drowning. We tend to lower our guard when told that the coast is clear.
The press, in its complacency as the 'fourth estate' in the body politic, does little to enquire into and explain complexities.
“Process” is a word that implies movement, even progress, but conceals a reality that there is none.
Even the sceptical notice greater volatility in the weather - everything’s hotter and colder, and wetter and windier than it used to be. This is consistent with science’s predictions.
For most of us, politics is a spectator sport
Sending a text message or signing an internet petition is likely to achieve nothing, given that so little went into it. The measure of any political action is not how many hits you get on the campaign website, how many followers you have on Twitter, or supporters on your Facebook page. The measure is effects in the real world on the thing you are trying to change: are there fewer nuclear weapons, has the dictator been overthrown, is one child saved from starvation?
Professor Lawrence Lessig has argued that the mutual dependency of lobbyists and legislators is now so profound, and corrupt, that legislation is enacted with the sole purpose of extracting rents from corporate interests.
Gustav Landauer, a 19th-century theorist, once said, "The state is not something which can be destroyed by a revolution, but is a condition, a certain relationship between human beings, a mode of human behaviour; we destroy it by contracting other relationships, by behaving differently".
It was, of course, a complex story that we managed to divide into two distinct and opposing narratives
Only later will historians, masters of the reductive art of the narrative, be able to put shape to what seems today formless and even then they will be capturing but a tiny part of what comprises existence now.
It is all wrong to have millionaires before you have ceased to have slums.
A small girl is drowning in a lake in front of you and you are the only person who can rescue her. You are however wearing expensive $400 shoes which will be ruined if you dive in to rescue the girl. In reality the crisis of the drowning child is presented to us constantly. Every minute, eighteen children die of hunger and preventable disease: 27,000 every day. Moreover, it costs far less than $400 to save them. Just as if the child were drowning directly in front of us, the moral imperative is clear and precise: we must act, even if there is a cost to ourselves, albeit a small one. If everyone in the rich world gave a mere one percent of their income, poverty and preventable disease in the world could be effectively eradicated.
Make up your own mind. Examine your own reactions. This is difficult in the banality yet ubiquity of contemporary culture, with its cacophony of voices and opinion. Space for contemplation is all too rare. But here’s one suggestion which is doubtless revealing of my own dyspeptic disposition: what makes you angry? What never fails to irritate you for its stupidity and injustice? That may be the thing you should take up arms against. It was for me, and anger puts fuel in the tank. - Carne Ross
