Writing on the Wall

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Life beyond ground zero
2007-02-07 00:41:00
I recently got over an existential angst. The sense of nothingness that my ex-supervisor’s philosophical take was bringing on, under the surface of it all, had been getting me down. That sense of nothing being equal or real, or anything at all, of all things being nothing more than splintered instances, a kind of material emptiness underpinning the world and leaving us like leaves in the empty ocean. But it is an illusion. It struck me, maybe from a fragment of an article I read, resurfacing in my memories, that I was projecting my mind into an emptiness that I could have no relationship with: Yes there are “things” out there that know no meaning, even if they are formless and changing in doing so. But those “things” are not things and meaningless, because they can only be made so in relationship to a meaning-making mind. All the things my mind can touch, have such a relationship, by definition. So that meaninglessness is an illusion: It is a s...
More About: Life , Ground , Beyond , Zero , Round

Post modernism and the left
2007-01-22 12:38:00
There is a heated debate on postmodernism on the World Socialist website: An exchange with a reader on postmodernism Here was my comment: The debate on PM can actually be resolved somewhat by referring to early Marx, and by taking into account more contemporary interpretations of theories of practice. Marx’s work on alienation actually dealt with the philosphical issues debated here rather well, but in a nascent form. He pointed out the human need for a relationship with the material, as formed by our actions, a way of recognising ourselves in the world. He also pointed out how mechanisms of exchange tended to generalise the fruits of people’s labour, thus obscuring the possibility of people recognizing themselves in the world. If you carry the analogy from the material to the representational, then you can see that the project of Marxism is to humanise representation as well as production. From this standpoint it is clear that there is a need to pay attention to how p...
More About: Post , Left , Modern , Post Modernism

Saddam and Pinochet
2007-01-15 00:47:00
I went to see Tariq Ali speak at Hornsey Library yesterday, promoting his new book “Pirates of the Caribbean.” He spoke about the situation in the Middle East, and then warmed to his main topic, the changing political landscape in South America. He spoke about Chavez, Castro and Moralez. It was an interesting talk, where he mainly pointed out the history of Chavez, and his achievements in terms of poverty reduction, health and education. He also talked about what the US and the UK and Spain got up to, in terms of supporting a coup against him, and the campaign against Chavez in the Media. One of the most interesting things he said was that a reporter at Al-Jazeera had said to him that Chavez had carried out an hour long interview on their channel, with simultaneous translation into Arabic. The reporter said that AL-Jazeera had never got so many emails: and the bulk of them said one thing. Why is there no-one like Chavez in the Middle East? Why no leaders with a socia...
More About: Pinochet , Saddam

Can we agree about flights?
2007-01-12 03:17:00
It seems that Cheap Flight s are Proliferating around the world: Branson has plans to open up routes to Asia Whilst low fare airlines enjoy huge growth in across Asia In the UK Sian Berry Bemoans the way ministers are incoherant over flying Blair effectively says keep on flying to everyone Whilst Plane Stupid point out that all this is, well, ridiculous, and not really helping things very much. It seems that everyone is pointing at each other. Blair says that the Chinese will make up for any British cuts in emmissions in a couple of years, whilst India and China point out that their per-capita emmissions are much lower than for OECD countries, and that their people surely want a taste of the pie. There is a big debate about environmental justice underlying this (how much of the world’s resources does each person get to use?) So when are we going to see a global convention that limits aviation? Aviation is not a part of Kyoto. The EU emmissions trading scheme does not seem to l...
More About: About , Light , Lights

Allmansratt (Every Person’s Right) and the Global Commons
2007-01-05 06:10:00
I wrote something in response to a UK Green Poltician talking about Pirate Bay in Sweden: New Statesman - Sian’s been very naughty This is what I wrote: There is a very Green issue underlying this. Sweden has held out legally partly because of a different tradition in relation to commons and public goods in Swede.Sweden has a very specific Scandinavian idea of land ownership. “Ever ybody’s right” means that land that others own can be used by you for certain purposes, including walking over it, camping out and picking berries etc…This is partly because Sweden is a huge land area with a tiny population, and partly because they are a deeply socialist bunch. Anyway, hopefully Pirate Bay brings a sense of the commons to the zone of culture, and we can loosen the stranglehold of ownership a little. What emerges from this for me is that if you want to start a global commons movement, it is a good idea to begin with the politics of copyright, and then extend...
More About: Global , Common , Right , Person

Our Common Future, or Why we need a Global Public
2007-01-05 04:29:00
If we take the viewpoint of the earth as the common inheritance of all of humanity, how good a use are we making of it? And what can we do to improve on this? New Economics Foundation’s Happy Planet Index The Happy Planet Index from NEF seems to show we are not really using the earth very well. They make the point that if we measure from the ultimate resources at our disposal (the natural environment) to the ultimate goals of humanity (defined in terms of long and happy lives) we are squandering the earth with the wrong kinds of political-economic models: Development is mostly going in the wrong direction. Central American societies come out as the most efficient societies, in terms of happiness for natural resources, with the somewhat morose G8 resource guzzlers being nowhere near as effective. So if we have some sort of idea, from this index, of what a desirable social model for the long-term wellbeing of humanity might be, what can we do to bring that about? Well, the c...
More About: Future , Public , Global , Common , Need