This was in response to Chris challenging me about my slight involvement in Cornwall Against the Cuts Alliance (CACA). Worth starting with Chris's original in full as he makes some good points:
Hi Roger,
This is an oxymoronic missive but bear with me. I see that you are involved a little with the ant-cuts campaign. It is utterly none of my business, BUT, is energy expended on cuts not better spent on building resilience?
I tried talking to people at the first meeting in Truro about this, but they were hell bent on protest. My view, unpopular I have to say, is that it is too late for protesting about cuts. Peak Oil is 6 years behind us now and we are well and truly in the territory that was forecast by all sorts of people years ago, in terms of society, economy, civil unrest und so weiter. I have never known a predictive theory of anything that has so accurately been borne out of by unfolding events.
At the meeting I went to there was a lot of energy, but in my view totally misdirected. We know where we are headed, we know change is inevitable. We can bring down this government, but replace them with what? Who will have the guts to default, and re-order our system? My suspicion is that whoever we have is going to making some pretty ghastly cuts in public spending, and I am sure we all know which bits we think should be cut and which left alone. But the point is really that there is no real way out – there is going to be far less money in the kitty than we have been used to. And sadly, Keynes looks to be the duffer and Malthus the economic master mind now. (NEF notwithstanding).
We should be seeking to change those things we can, and not worrying about those we cannot. Our path requires government becoming irrelevant (and boy that is happening fast, all over the world) and we need to be ready to look after ourselves.
Nicole Foss did a really good piece on contraction psychology and how to avoid it. CACA fits neatly into the ‘what to avoid bracket’.
Don’t get me wrong Roger, I really wish we didn’t have to have this austerity programme, it will probably kill my business. But wishing it away will not change anything.
Cheers for now, and we really should get together soon – much better to do this in conversation!
Hi Chris
Thanks for the reality check. You are almost entirely correct in everything you say and I do agree.
The clue to the problem with CACA and similar movements is in the name - the ANTI cuts movement is a classic example of a mistake that much of the green movement is now acknowledging and starting to act in awareness of.
It is very easy to be against something - most things that people are against, including incinerators and spending cuts, are in fact solutions to problems in the real world (what to do with our waste and how to run a society with less money for example). If you want to oppose a particular solution then you have to either be able to offer an alternative solution to the problem, or demonstrate that there is not a problem, or that the problem is somehow a different problem.
My interest in the anti-cuts campaign has various motives, none of them directly aligned with the ostensible aims of the anti-cuts movement (which are largely unachievable anyway).
I missed the first couple of CACA meetings and have only been to one and was frankly appalled - it was a complete joke not only in your terms of the inappropriateness of the whole direction, but also in its own terms as a protest movement - I'll tell you about it over a beer for a laugh sometime.
So what is the point? Well partly its about making contact with a different set of people who have not yet taken on board the situation we are in as I see it, but who are concerned about some aspect of it and so have at least taken a first step on a path that I have been following. I think that one aspect of how "comfortable" the ratcheting down of industrial capitalist society will be is the extent to which people are not shocked by it.
Trade Unions getting their members out of their armchairs and onto the streets is a help - I went to London and was struck by seeing many people who had clearly never been to anything like it being obviously empowered by it and discovering the power of collectivism. One of the negative aspects of late industrial society has been the shift of balance between individualism and collectivism - in the future we are going to need a far more collective approach to solving social problems and 'protest' movements are great at bringing people together in a collective action.
There are other aspects of engaging with CACA, but just to reassure you you should know that I regard it as a very low priority activity that is certainly not taking any significant time from me.
Here is an exchange on a forum I occasionally engage with last week
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snow hope wrote:
I am becoming increasingly concerned that we are going to see the second great banking crash this year.
...
Peak Oil has passed and we have been on the plateau for about 6 years. I expect the decline to start to show very soon. Growth will be no more..... Our economic systems can't cope with contraction - they will fail.
Unrest is breaking out in many countries and I think we are seeing military 'plans' starting to emerge. Are UK troops about to go into Libya as forecast about a week ago?
Oil prices are going up and there seems little likelihood of this changing. We know what this will do - double dip recession here we come. Depression next.
I am increasingly concerned we are approaching a chaotic/collapse situation.
I really hope I am seeing this wrong...... can anybody show me the flaws in my thinking and reduce my level of worry?
RogerCO replied:
I see no flaws in your thinking SH but you can reduce your level of worry by doing stuff.
"Fleeing Vesuvius" from FEESTA has much good analysis, but more importantly some good ideas and advice. As always the two chapters by Orlov are particularly good, but there's a lot of other stuff in there.
In a nutshell time to stop worrying about the world and do something about your personal resilience. The world as we knew it has gone - time to let go.
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For me it is getting increasingly about personal resilience. I seriously worry about being only 4 miles from Plymouth and am planning on doing something about that.
As you say, it would be good to chew the fat about all this sometime.
Hi Roger,
Well, I too agree with all you say! I went to their first meeting to gauge the mood and see if there is any scope for harnessing the energy of students involved. I was shocked by the lack of students (I gather from family who are at Uni that most students are taking the line that the increasing fees are a necessary evil and that they will be thinking very hard before taking up courses. I was shocked by the whole tone of the event, and shocked by people who really should have known better getting stuck in.
I spoke to some young people at the Tremough talk by Mike Haywood – (not THAT many attended although the audience was a sell out with too many old codgers like me) and they were fascinated by the prospects, were aware of TT movement, and looking for ways to live more ecologically.
I was struck by the idea of contraction psychology described by Stoneleigh – on the one hand I agree with you about the empowerment from being part of a big crowd, on the other hand, are we being sucked along a path of negativity on account of public sector unions and others who have not yet analysed the situation and don’t understand what it really is. Nothing wrong with hanging a few plutocrats though!!
I would like to call a Groundswell meeting/piss up at the farm soon, we have the beer!
cheers
Chris