Chad/saint behaviour, mad respect

P.S. for ideas on Anthropocene-ready politics/narratives please see @tadziomueller.bsky.social, @rupertread.bsky.social, @rogerhallam.com, @justcollapse.bsky.social, @materialistjew.bsky.social, @jksteinberger.bsky.social, @meadwaj.bsky.social, @charliejgardner.bsky.social

Bit of a chestunut but that Gramsci line feels almost literal today: "The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born; now is the time of monsters".

Solidarity to all of us facing this storm; may our dread give us strength.

(11/11)

#stormEsso

Probably none of this is surprising; but it is different first-hand.

To feel it in your body, see it in your city, as our limp neoliberal/Holocene routine is eclipsed by the looming reality. To feel the yearning lack of a collective narrative/politics that meets the situation's needs (10/11)

There's wry wisdom in the meme "Climate change will manifest as a series of disasters viewed through phones with footage that gets closer and closer to where you live until you're the one filming it". Spectacle all the way down.

Maybe one day we'll finish filming and start doing something?
(9/11)

And by failing to join the macro dots, they fail to produce/invite much of a social reality. Per neoliberal SOP our collective experience is of passive, isolated spectators: i.e., barely collective at all. We're asked to be a patient audience and wait until this all blows over.

But it won't.
(8/11)

I've barely seen a whisper that today's *disruption* might have any relevance to Labour overriding legal protections to ram new airports through, or their spineless U-turn on the Climate Bill which is, insanely, happening TODAY(!!!)

(7/11)

www.theguardian.com/environment/...

All this rolling coverage of downed trees, blackouts and wind-speeds is like reporting on a war with no mention of the aggressor (not that that would ever happen...)

They're methodically depoliticising, decontextualising, essentially laundering what is in truth a glaringly political reality (6/11)

Per Charlie Young, globally many victims of 'natural disasters' understand them as 'acts of god'.

This system of meaning doubtless has its upsides, but one big con is that it excises the causes and indeed the culprits of these horrors. Our 'extreme weather' narrative is frankly no better. (5/11)

This is especially apparent in that central "once in a generation" line. At once a worthy warning and completely bonkers, verging on outright denial. Which generation would this be, the Flappers???

In their efforts to assure, our institutions demonstrate their refusal to face the reality (4/11)

But the response still feels profoundly insufficient: unable to reckon with what this storm represents, our media class is just recycling obselete Holocene tropes.

The script presents extreme weather as 'exceptional', in what feels almost like of an act of will to conjure the 'normal' (3/11)

It could be worse. Highlight was 4.5 million of us receiving aptly alarming 'code red' alerts by phone last night. Real Scottish Anthropocene milestone.

And this is backed up by all the sensible news soundbites you'd expect: 'threat to life', 'once-in-a-generation', 'do not go outside' etc. (2/11)