Telling it like it is: more news from the dead centre

Modern civilisation may have no central command … but it acts as if it does. VIVID thinks it should come clean and set up a reality newswire, which tells us straight what’s being decided at its hypothetical, brain-free centre. This month we’d have:

The PSOG (Public Sedation Optimisation Group), a division of the the IPCE (Institute of Public Confusion Enhancement), which is indirectly funded by the government’s DJFIP (Department of the Justification for Foreign Invasion and Pillage) is celebrating its latest bench-marking results, which reveal that we are fast approaching our stage 1 goal of widespread, medium-level, public sedation. This was revealed by a recent exercise undertaken with the help of a most accommodating partner in the White House.

Power to the people (or: what’s it take to get active?)

Seems we need the very basis of our livelihoods to be threatened before we do something about the world outside. For most of us, our livelihood is represented by money, food in the shops, and transport to get us to the places that issue money or food. Which is why we only strike, protest or riot in numbers when one of those is under immediate threat (but not before).

But of course, the basis of our livelihoods is really the land (and air, and water) — and (for those who haven’t noticed), it is under immediate threat.

Animals and us: an off-planet view of a species in denial

So, you’re an alien approaching a new world. You want to gauge the friendliness (or otherwise) of the dominant species on that world. You take out your powerful telescope and zoom in on the planet to suss out, as a first indicator, how this dominant species treats the other life forms with which it shares its world.

By the way, it’s Earth you’re hovering above (you knew that already). How do you react, given the evidence in front of you? If you enjoy life, probably very hastily – backwards.

Civilisation: the oldest confidence trick in history?

Researchers at universities in Portugal and Belgium discovered earlier in the year that the way to less selfish societies is to give individuals the freedom to behave as they wish. Their research gives scientific weight to the idea that, left to their own devices, people tend naturally to cooperation.

Though perhaps not a huge surprise to most of us, it offers another important challenge to the traditional line that our default priority behaviour is to compete – a line that has determined the rules of our economic and social systems for centuries.

Civilisation hasn’t stopped trampling on tribes….

If you’re of the mind that our civilisation is more civilised than past civilisations, you’re probably right — especially if you consider the full definition of civilised (which includes the tendency to exterminate, exploit, oppress, imprison or immiserate everything that isn’t) proposed in the post after this. Not convinced?

By The Skin Of Our Teeth

Pretty soon now, we’ll be holding on by the skin of our teeth,

like Miss Lala at the Cirque Fernando: suspended above

a terrifying drop, as we reach for the impossible

(which has to be possible) under the warm sunset ceiling

of our current predicament. We could always shimmy down

that inviting lifeline to where we started from, but what good

would that do us? And it’s too late anyhow.

Thoughts from the heartlands (on wealth)

A young Weyeba boy on the island of Sumba in Indonesia watches the loggers cutting down the giant trees near his village and asks his grandfather: why are they destroying what is valuable?

“Because to them, the trees are worth more dead than alive. You may ask: how can this be? The answer is that they do not understand the true meaning of wealth.

News from the frontier (3)

“Business as usual must end, because business as usual is killing us,” the indigenous peoples of the world have stated, in a powerful and eloquent summing up of the five-day Indigenous Peoples’ Global Summit on Climate Change, held in Anchorage, Alaska at the end of April.

Climate change brings into sharp relief the confrontation between industrial civilisation and indigenous peoples. Caused by the actions of the rich, polluting nations its effects are felt most keenly by those who live closest to nature and whose livelihoods most directly depend on their immediate environment. (Just 500 miles from the summit, in the village of Newtok, intensifying river flow and melting permafrost have forced 320 residents to relocate to higher ground; meanwhile stories like “Water people of the Amazon face extinction” are increasingly and depressingly familiar.)

Telling it like it is: news from the dead centre (3)

The IPCE (Institute of Public Confusion Enhancement) is delighted to see its policies and recommendations feeding into the activities of research and funding agencies in the UK.

Now that growing numbers of people appear to be spotting that a finite planet cannot support ever-growing consumer demands, Government needs mechanisms to show that it is addressing this inconvenience while at the same time not challenging any of the growth assumptions crucial to the ongoing support of its financiers.

Catching up, switching on

Evo Morales has been at it again, saying bold and beautiful things that other world leaders will likely dismiss as radical or simply ignore, instead of recognising his brave attempts to get us to value Earth’s life support systems before it’s too late. On Earth Day, April 22nd, Morales addressed the United Nations calling for the countries of the world to accept a set of principles that would protect the planet’s resources and ‘right to life’.