"caring" is all too often an excuse for being controlling

"My son is in his late 30s and drifts aimlessly through life. How do I motivate him?"

To which I replied ... What does it matter if he is "drifting aimlessly". I suppose if he was some kind of career drone you'd be happy. There most probably is no point to existence other than to explore the experience. And there is an infinite number of ways for each of us to choose how we are going to do that. Get on with your own autonomous adult life choices and let him get on with his.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/sep/23/my-son-drifts-through-life

What is revolutionary activity?

3 brief general priorities of mine:

... I believe in trying ideas out, living ideas, putting them into practice, making commitments and experimenting, rather than just collecting ideas in books on shelves or just discussing them endlessly. Doing and Being. Do Be Do Be Do.

... I also believe in being consciously fallible, imperfect. Being too right-on can just end up making people feel defensive, guilty, apologetic, cornered etc without them actually evolving. I prefer to live life in the shades of grey.

... I strongly believe in making a conscious effort not to collude in any "them and us" divides. Judging people by their appearances or their background or their job, for instance, is the same irrational nonsense as racism and should be rigorously guarded against. I'm especially wary of activists who refer to others as "scum". This doesn't mean we have to be po-faced and humourless. It just means our humour has to be a little more creative and less knee-jerk.

superorganism

we are finally reaching the stage at which we must think of ourselves and the networks that connect us as an entity in its own right

http://rossdawsonblog.com/weblog/archives/2010/05/autopoiesis_and.html

Bus Stop 2005-2010

http://www.flickr.com/photos/russell-higgs/sets/72157624785469663/

PETITION: Petrol-free Parks For London

Target: Boris Johnson and the London Assembly

Can wheelbarrows, rakes, brushes and smaller, electric chainsaws make a comeback?

Can vehicles, if needed, be replaced with electric equivalents too?

Many of the capital's parks and green spaces no longer give respite from pollution.

Petrol-powered tools are used constantly, causing excessive noise, dust and fumes. Worst of all are leaf-blowers.

Year-round leaf-blowers, pole chainsaws and road vehicles have become commonplace. Air pollution, road risks, noise and dust are often worse than in the outside world.

http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/petrol-free-parks-for-london.html

screw the law, lets get naked

At one extreme, there is the proposal that Islamic full-face veils be prohibited. And at the other extreme, Steve Gough, "the Naked Rambler", is currently serving a 21 month sentence for "contempt of court"...

http://jackofkent.blogspot.com/2010/08/screw-law-lets-get-naked.html

A culture's power structure depends largely on how we look and how we are looked at.

Marilyn Monroe said

"I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best."

Henry Miller said

One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.

We are gods with anuses

Some thoughts on Art + Inspiration, Love, Apotheosis and Engineering Divinity from jason silva on Vimeo.

http://vimeo.com/14496644

PSYCHOGEOGRAPHY

"We define ourselves by our surroundings and our situations. If you are brought up in a neighborhood that resembles a rat trap, pretty soon you are going to come to the conclusion that you are probably a rat. If on the other hand you have got to the tool of psychogeography — or poetry, to give it a less trendy and more accessible name — then you can look at the ordinary world around you with the eye of a poet. Finding events which rhyme with other events, what little coincidences or connections can be drawn to these places and people. You can put them into an arrangement that says something new about them."

http://m.wired.com/underwire/2010/08/alan-moore/all/1

"If you have that kind of insight into the tawdry and debased streets in which most of us spend our lives, then instead of walking down a rat trap you are walking through cataclysmic history, from your personal memories to the local legends. Then the rat trap becomes a fable, a mythological landscape."

"just as living in rat trap will give you the impression you live in a rat trap, then l suspect that living in a mythological landscape might after a while give you the subliminal impression that you are at least a mythological figure. A heroic character in your own narrative."

"I think it would be better if we felt like that rather than victims of our environment. That would empower us, and put some genuine energy back into the streets in which we live."


Dérive ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%A9rive


Flânerie ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fl%C3%A2neur


Psychogeography ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychogeography

Left Right Left Right

"Conservatives, generally, are far more adept at politically reframing concepts by giving them snappy-but-misleading nicknames than liberals. 'Loony left'. 'Boom-and-bust'. 'Flip-flop'. 'Ground Zero mosque'. All simplifications or outright lies – but they worked. Like advertisers, the right seems breezily unconcerned about the truth of the slogan, provided it rings up a sale."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/aug/30/charlie-brooker-buzzwords-blowhards

"The left, meanwhile, tends to respond by flinging back tired old insults. Bastards! Fascists! Racists! This is wrong on several counts. For one thing, it's counter-productive. Nothing riles an anti-mosque demonstrator more than being called a bigot. It's a grotesque, misleading smear on a diverse group of individuals – a bit like claiming all Muslims are terrorists"

"But worse than being insulting, it's just plain unimaginative. At least the right bothers to invent a new buzzword each time it wants to fart some monstrous new lie into the ecosystem. And they're often infuriatingly well-crafted buzzwords"

"...today's audience is too distracted to digest big lies. Now the trick is to cram as much misleading information as possible into a succession of tiny verbal snacks, inaccurate but memorable."