"...what bothers me is that the language of limits edits questions of pleasure and enjoyment out of the ecological picture. Marx's criticism of capitalism wasn't so much that it's overrun with evil pleasures--the standard environmentalist view, as a glance at an almost progressive magazine such as Adbusters will confirm--but that it is nowhere near enjoyable enough. I'm not talking about the "right" of Big Oil to "enjoy" its massive profits at the expense of "the soil and the worker" (Marx's phrase). I'm talking about how the language of curbs turns ecology into personal and interpersonal puritanism."

Timothy Morton, The Ecological Thought (pg. 37)


[no ball games - animation]

"Evolution jumbles bodies like a dream jumbles words and images."
Timothy Morton, The Ecological Thought (pg. 65)


Jean Dubuffet, 'The Tree of Fluids' 1950

Leaking into me

City gets too dry...

I'll often listen to the sounds of particular environments rather than music when i'm working or reading or travelling or ____. Sea, garden, noisy clouds... I'll collect my favourites in the youtube playlist below. Have a listen, hypnotise yourself...

Environmental Soundscapes - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA-0FMPKUC91B7QyMzQIGARXbwtKi1Qs6

[see also Sue Thomas - Technobiophilia]


[a picture of hell i think? - Resurrection of souls. Livre de la Vigne nostre Seigneur. The 15 Signs of the Last Judgement. MS. Douce 134 fol. 050v c.1450-70]

"...which leads you to think about the nature of the society we live in and what you're going to do about that because in the long run that's the only way of fundamentally making any difference to these problems."

David Smail

------------
Some links to the brilliant website Smail kept -

Anatomy of power -  http://www.davidsmail.info/anpower.htm
Organizations -  http://www.davidsmail.info/polipage.htm

r.i.p Mark Fisher

Why mental health is a political issue

'The NHS, like the education system and other public services, has been forced to try to deal with the social and psychic damage caused by the deliberate destruction of solidarity and security. Where once workers would have turned to trade unions when they were put under increasing stress, now they are encouraged to go to their GP or, if they are lucky enough to be able to be get one on the NHS, a therapist.

It would be facile to argue that every single case of depression can be attributed to economic or political causes; but it is equally facile to maintain – as the dominant approaches to depression do – that the roots of all depression must always lie either in individual brain chemistry or in early childhood experiences. Most psychiatrists assume that mental illnesses such as depression are caused by chemical imbalances in the brain, which can be treated by drugs. But most psychotherapy doesn't address the social causation of mental illness either.

The radical therapist David Smail argues that Margaret Thatcher's view that there's no such thing as society, only individuals and their families, finds "an unacknowledged echo in almost all approaches to therapy". Therapies such as cognitive behaviour therapy combine a focus on early life with the self-help doctrine that individuals can become masters of their own destiny. The idea is "with the expert help of your therapist or counsellor, you can change the world you are in the last analysis responsible for, so that it no longer cause you distress" – Smail calls this view "magical voluntarism".

Depression is the shadow side of entrepreneurial culture, what happens when magical voluntarism confronts limited opportunities. As psychologist Oliver James put it in his book The Selfish Capitalist, "in the entrepreneurial fantasy society," we are taught "that only the affluent are winners and that access to the top is open to anyone willing to work hard enough, regardless of their familial, ethnic or social background – if you do not succeed, there is only one person to blame." It's high time that the blame was placed elsewhere. We need to reverse the privatisation of stress and recognise that mental health is a political issue.'

- Mark Fisher (for The Guardian)

-------- more

The Privitisation of Stress
Good for nothing  

http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org

Dutch trains become 100% wind-powered - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jan/10/dutch-trains-100-percent-wind-powered-ns 

'This is possible. We did it': the week Portugal ran on renewables -

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/dec/26/this-is-possible-we-did-it-the-week-portugal-ran-on-renewables

Universal basic income trials being considered in Scotland - https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jan/01/universal-basic-income-trials-being-considered-in-scotland?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Basic Income Earth Network - http://basicincome.org

“What seems important to emphasize is that this process of escape is actually a kind of radical engagement, as the artist Paul Chan has pointed out. To disappear into something, to become obsessed with something, to unfold an endless curiosity, to let go of our selves and allow this to happen is a necessary step toward understanding, toward the kind of learning that changes you, the way events change you, alter you (falling in love), or even the way powerful ideas can punch dents in the back of our naturally unhistorical brains.”

http://bombmagazine.org/article/2905/mamma-andersson

https://twitter.com/naomiaklein

https://theleapblog.org

http://sustainable-economy.org

This City Just Banned Virtually All New Dirty-Energy Infrastructure - [https://www.thenation.com/article/this-city-just-banned-virtually-all-new-dirty-energy-infrastructure/] 

The Funambulist / Archipelago 

"Nothing of what we design is politically innocent. Architecture, furniture, clothing, art, books, but also laws and policies constitute artifacts that are important to critically question at a political level. That is what proposes the Archipelago platform: conceived as a different medium than the traditional means of knowledge transmission like the university, it proposes four podcasts every week of conversations with various thinkers of the world about this question."