I was asked on Twitter to comment on this ‘alt-right’ piece on sedentism and nomadism by Charles Jansen. I can see why. It traverses some of the territory covered in my book North, from an almost polar opposite angle. I want to get some initial reactions down here, roughly addressing some of the issues it raises, to the extent that I can without doing further research.
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To a large extent, North is an attack on hierarchy. Or to be more precise, it’s an attack on the image of hierarchy. Its cosmological history uncovers the ways in which certain facets of the appearance of the world — especially the elevated centrality of the north pole star — are seized, amplified, embellished, and used to justify and naturalise social hierarchies.
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It’s been nearly a decade since I immersed myself in the popular and academic debates around prehistoric violence. It was a fascinating tangent to my research into prehistoric art and consciousness, and it resulted in the brief study War & the Noble Savage. I’ve caught wind of a few bits of related material since then, and generally the grounding provided by that research has enabled me to digest and react to them critically — and little has made me consider seriously rethinking my conclusions.
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From Aeon magazine, an interesting assessment of the 21st century’s new authoritarians.
The new authoritarian does not pretend to make you better, only to make you feel better about not wanting to change.
This goes straight to a catch-22 at the heart of psychotherapy. Almost by definition you’re there to change; yet most of the work involves self-acceptance, warts and all. Real acceptance will bring transformation, but if you accept in order to transform, it won’t be real.
There’s a subtle but immense difference between actually accepting yourself and just letting your demons run amok. The new authoritarians — if compared to therapists — seem to be abusive figures who encourage their patients’ neuroses, and channel them to bolster their own power agendas. No doubt Adam Curtis would make much of the parallels with the excesses of ’60s gurus.
‘On 20 July 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the surface of the moon. In the months leading up to their expedition, the Apollo 11 astronauts trained in a remote moon-like desert in the western United States. The area is home to several Native American communities, and there is a story — or legend — describing an encounter between the astronauts and one of the locals.
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I’ve been honoured to be commissioned to write the text for a new sculptural exhibition by Swedish artists David Ohlsson and Dit-Cilinn. The exhibition, Hibernaculum, is at the Cecilia Hillström Gallery in Stockholm, opening this Thursday 23 February and running until 1 April.
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There’s a new interview with me online over at The Thinker’s Garden blog. I discuss the experiences in Yorkshire that formed the roots of my research for my book North, animism, the Arctic, art, and the dreamflesh.com revamp.
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I recently moved after living for five or six years near Archway in north London. Archway was always a bit of an oxymoron in the London landscape: a nondescript landmark. An important travel intersection in the north, it seemed a bit shabby next to its neighbour Highgate, and the more chic overspill from Camden to the south. It was always marked in my mind by the large black unused office tower sat astride the tube station, like some alien monolith which has long since stopped radiating anything.
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I’ve always been a bit suspicious of the decrying of environmentalism as ‘puritanical’. My objection can be found in exaggerated form in a Hakim Bey one-liner: ‘The dullard finds even wine tasteless but the sorcerer can be intoxicated by the mere sight of water.’ My experience of the culture of environmentalism is of people (who may or may not be sorcerers) who are involved in awakening a deeper sensual engagement with the world — only one less beholden to a profit-driven stimulation overdrive approach. (Though yes, they would probably want the wine as well as the water.)
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Over a decade ago, the blog I’d been keeping blossomed into a print project, Dreamflesh Journal. In the editorial I wrote: ‘Dreamflesh was conceived in despair and hope. Its roots are nurtured by these entwined opposites that characterise our ‘interesting times’. Either may lead to action: grasping at straws or at carrots dangled on sticks. Either may lead to inaction: why act when ‘all is doomed’ or ‘everything will work out in the end’? When both play their part, when their hidden bond is quietly accepted, wholeness may flower.’ The balance between despair and hope has become a lot more volatile since then. Wholeness is in tatters. Where to now?
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