Without the state

Heading for retirement

This blog is now retired. It will stay in being, but will have no further updates. Any future writing will be here (on art and art related matters) or here (everything else)

Changes ahead

This blog has been pretty moribund for a while, largely because my original intent for it is no longer relevant. I'm going to recast it over the next few weeks, once I work out how to remap the domain, as a simple personal blog. Whether that will mean I post more frequently, remains to be seen. This will only be the second such change since I started it in 2003, so not a bad achievement.

The decline of Facebook

Facebook usage declined in 2018 for the first time ever - at least in the US. It wasn't just a small decline either, but back to 2015 levels from 67 percent of Americans aged 12 and older to 62 percent of that same audience. This drop is seen in every age and gender demographic as well. It’s not as if only young people, or older Americans, or women are using Facebook less. Every studied group is using Facebook less. That's still a huge number of course, but it is significant. I'm not in the US but I'm a good example I think of why this decline is happening.

Their lack of real concern for privacy coupled with the refusal of Zuckerberg to answer questions in the UK about alleged interference in the UK referendum via Facebook (and possibly also in elections via Cambridge Analytica) came together to build a real suspicion of the whole platform. Of course I never trusted them fully in the first place, any more than I trusted any other giant corporation, but now that distrust is active, based on things I suspect they did, rather than passive and based on general suspicion about lack of action on their part.

The other factor in my case, that led me about a year ago to leave almost all the groups I'm in, was a substantial number of disturbing and distressing examples of racism and antisemitism dropped into ordinary discussion threads as if of no consequence. Add to that the increasing numbers of only just literate posts on almost any topic and the apparent inability of too many people to read more than a sentence without missing the point just led to a general stepping back.

I realised that my use of Facebook was also a factor in my failure to keep up this blog. It was easy to post a short paragraph or a link, but also too easy for vituperative arguments to erupt over nothing in particular or over some alleged slight in the choice of a word or phrase leading in the end to as much time being taken, but much less fruitfully, over that paragraph as would have been the case over a couple of thousand words in a blog post. I didn't reach as many people of course, but if a reader can't follow an argument over the equivalent of a page or two of text, they are quite frankly not my target audience anyway. We need to find a way to reach those people but I'm not the one to do it.

Length is not of course a guarantee of meaningful content as the vapid outpourings from the likes of Boris Johnson demonstrate. It's at times like this that I miss the likes of Christopher Hitchens

Beware the irrational, however seductive. Shun the Supernatural and all who invite you to subordinate or annihilate yourself. Distrust compassion; prefer dignity for yourself and others. Don't be afraid to be thought arrogant or selfish. Picture all experts as if they were mammals. Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake; the grave will supply plenty of time for silence. Suspect your own motives, and all excuses. Do not live for others any more than you would expect others to live for you.

or my old blog contact Norman Geras

We should be, without hesitation or embarrassment, utopians. At the end of the twentieth century it is the only acceptable political option, morally speaking. I shall not dwell on this. I will merely say that, irrespective of what may have seemed apt hitherto either inside or outside the Marxist tradition, nothing but a utopian goal will now suffice. The realities of our time are morally intolerable. Within the constricted scope of the present piece, I suppose I might try to evoke a little at least of what I am referring to here, with some statistics or an imagery of poverty, destitution and other contemporary calamities- But I do not intend to do even this much. The facts of widespread human privation and those of political oppression and atrocity are available to all who want them. They are unavoidable unless you wilfully shut them out. To those who would suggest that things might be yet worse, one answer is that of course they might be. But another answer is that for too many people they are already quite bad enough; and the sponsors of this type of suggestion are for their part almost always pretty comfortable.

I can't claim to match either of these greats, but for the future expect me to spend less time on Facebook and more time writing or blogging.

Hurling thunderbolts from the floor

Image by ibanda via Flickr

A beautifully lyrical article on the Tango from the NY Times.

The fundamental step is simply a walk, but a walk that links two people, apparently by destiny. The body’s weight is forward, over the front of the foot, and the dancers lean into each other.

...

Sometimes their bodies seem to touch all the way from brow to knee even as they march or glide along; sometimes there’s just enough space in their embrace for each to turn rapidly to either side,...

The embrace almost never breaks, and within it the gentle planting of a foot on the floor, toe first, can be like a caress. Or either dancer can simply, slowly sweep a pointed foot around on the floor to trace a semicircle.

via Fishnets and Fedoras

##NaNoWriMo##

 

What's new...

I've finally got myself organised enough to queue up posts with Typepad's scheduling feature, although for the moment I'm simply picking up pictures from my Flickr account. That at least will avoid the long gaps that have been appearing too often of late. I'm also using these flickr pictures to make yet another shift in the blog focus, to more explicitly include my own prints and other art work. I expect the more overtly political pieces will still appear, but with less pressure on me to 'perform'.

 

Image via Wikipedia

Probably foolishly, I'm also taking part in National Novel Writing Month again (NaNoWriMo to the cognoscenti!). That starts on November 1st, so anything I write will probably show up here, although I will probably put them on Pages, rather than as blog posts. I'm cheating slightly as I will be starting with edited versions of my alternate history 'A Frozen Spring' which is based around the idea of a German occupied Tyneside during the severe winter of 1947. This isn't based on the Nazis winning WW2 - in this universe Britain and Germany are nominally allies. You can read the background here. The chapters written so far are linked under More Information on the side bar. 

 

Changes afoot...

I'm currently trying to make this blog do two things. I want to carry on writing about the things that interest/annoy me and I also want to share/promote my prints and photography. At the moment I'm not convinced it works, although from my perspective my art is part and parcel of being me, just as much as the politics and polemic.

I would be interested in getting feedback from my reader on this. Do the politics put you off the art or vice versa?

[Temporarily, this post will be held at the top of the blog, so new items will appear below it]

Guest blogging at Time Goes By

Don't forget to call in at Time Goes By and read my guest post there.

Guest blogging at Time Goes By

I have a guest post coming up at Ronni Bennett's blog on aging, 'Time Goes By'. Its well worth a read at any time. but I hope you'll drop by and read my own post on Preparing for Death (it isn't as gloomy as it sounds!)

It is scheduled to come up on June 11th.

Doctor Who - again

The latest episode of Doctor Who (Saturday 21st June) demonstrated both the strengths and weaknesses of Russell T Davies as a writer of SF. I seem to recall reading an interview somewhere in which he acknowledged that original ideas were not his forte and it is true that he seem to cheerfully pillage ideas from everywhere. The range of references and plot ideas he drops into an average episode is huge. This works well with his great strength I think - he is simply brilliant at world building. The last episode - and the two part season finale to come - seem as if they will depend on a series of small visual and narrative clues built in to previous episodes going back in some cases over previous series and even to the old Who from years back. At the time some of this at the time seemed merely to be 'fleshing out' the story line, but in many cases they turn out to have a significance out of all proportion to their impact on the story line at the time. His juggling of these ideas as both writer and executive producer is a world apart (sorry!) from the dross of Heroes or Buffy. I suspect if Firefly had been able to keep going it might have achieved something similar. Other than that only Babylon 5 seems to have taken the world in which it was set seriously enough to make it coherent, and within the story line, believable. Let's hope Stephen Moffat proves as good.