ThoughtfulActivists

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The world's not right. Not that it ever was, but in certain ways this time is particularly dark.

Or maybe that's wrong and we should believe the hype. Some people say we're just ungrateful and too good at moaning - perhaps, but isn't some of that a reaching towards words for what's so distinctively out of order...?

Isn't ingratitude itself a symptom of a culture founded on expectation, pumped up by the manufacturing of discontent that is integral to the marketing process, destined for disappointment...?

The politics of change - activism as opposed to passivism? - has been divided between a left founded on the legacy of Marxism(s) and a more recent, fragmented but dynamic movement emerging from single issue campaigns. There's thinking to be done. For all the theoretical richness of Marx and those who followed him, he assumed that the shape of History was Progress - that the future would be unlike the past - and in this sense wasn't so different from the Whiggish liberals he argued against or the economic neoliberals who today promote unfettered economic growth and marketisation of all aspects of life as the salvation of humanity. Be wary of formulae for salvation. Resist utopias. Take nobody's word for it, especially not these words...

After which, how to start again? How to work together? How to acknowledge the underlying connections between our struggles without pretending we agree on everything or imagining we can't collaborate without agreeing on everything...?

We don't need to start with a blueprint for a New Jerusalem - that's not how cities get built, or not ones that are worth living in. A glimpse is enough, and each of us may notice different parts of the whole.

!!Some thoughtful activists

John Berger
Starhawk
Ivan Illich
Alastair Mcintosh

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