Thursday, May 25th 2023

I woke up with an “excessive-certainty” hangover – it comes from hanging out with people who seem absolutely sure of their rightness and are very reluctant to consider theories other than their own. The usual disclaimers about “people” apply – namely “no, not all people, obvs” and “yeah I’m a people too”. It can sometimes … Continue reading Thursday, May 25th 2023 →

I woke up with an “excessive-certainty” hangover – it comes from hanging out with people who seem absolutely sure of their rightness and are very reluctant to consider theories other than their own. The usual disclaimers about “people” apply – namely “no, not all people, obvs” and “yeah I’m a people too”. It can sometimes be difficult to spot, especially if you broadly agree on things, but there’s a vibe that I definitely notice the lack of, the morning after.

I get talking to people often about the parallels between recovery from addiction and the “state the world’s in right now”. It’s an interesting way to look at things – it’s hard to argue against the idea that we’re addicted to growth for example. But talking about it with people who’ve little direct experience of recovery is different from talking to those who’ve sat in the ruins of their life and had to have a good look at themselves. And yeah, I think there’s something more to write about the more complex dynamics of addictive behaviour in relation to how we think about climate crisis *and* think about our ways of helping each other deal with it. It’s a bit fuzzy at the moment, but I hope to get it more in focus.

There’s another something that’s taking shape in my mind around creative collaboration (and the late, lamented “Centre for…”), scenius, regrowing a living culture, empty shops, local democracy and resilience, finding different ways of looking after each other, y’know, the usual. And yeah, it’s as well-thought through as that.

I thought we had a power cut the other day. I thought that it was just coincidental that everything went off just as I was turning the oven on for dinner. So I waited and looked outside to see what was going on in the rest of the street (nothing) and looked on Twitter (nothing) and so looked on the UK Power (or whatever) website which said nothing had been reported in my postcode so please tell us what’s happened. And that got me muttering under my breath about useless infrastructure and privatised utilities and bastard Tories and all that. But hey, look at the first paragraph of this post – “excessive certainty” I was sure, because I’d seen other people elsewhere, earlier talking about having their power off, that this was just another slippery slide towards anarchy and chaos. My certainty extended even as far as me looking at the fuse board and being sure that nothing had tripped when the nice man from the infrastructure bastards called me back. But no, taking it slowly and going and turning everything off, resetting the trip switches and then turning things back on one by one meant that I now know that it was the oven and it was no coincidence – I was wrong.