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Protesters stage ‘die-in’ to challenge climate change sceptics

23-Oct-06

Protesters stage ‘die-in’ to challenge climate change sceptics

There where about twenty people, maybe a few more. After a few minutes, a couple of security gaurds came and asked us to move. Apparently, the bricked area around the outside of the central market is private property! Luckily the paved area alongside the Gardening Club is still publicly owned, and also happens to be directly outside the entrance to the International Policy Network’s offices.

Phil Thornhill dressed as the Grim Reaper, and a few people had paper grave stones with various causes of death written on them. We attached a couple of posters to the columns either side of the IPN’s doorway and then lay down on the pavement with Phil standing in the middle. There where several people handing out flyers, and a couple of banners. Lots of people where walking past “whats going on?”, “dunno, some kind of protest”. After a minute or two a couple of kids came and joined in; then left, “My dad only lets me protest for a minute at a time”, “right, thats it, I’ve done my bit”.

It was quite an odd feeling lying down on the pavement there, I had to close my eyes a bit because of the sun. I tried to just relax, and look dead. But I had to ocassionally lift my head up and look around a little; even so, you can’t see much from foot level in a busy place.

A chap dressed all in black came out of the Gardening Club and told us we had to move as we where blocking his fire exit. I thought about explaining to him that we weren’t actually dead and would move fairly sharpish if a fire alarm went off, rather than letting ourselves get trampled.

“If you don’t move, I’m going to call the police, you have sixty seconds then I’m going to call the police”
“ok, go on”
“how long are we going to be here? We’ll be gone by the time they arrive”
“who is up for staying till they drag us away”
“they won’t, we are allowed to be here”

Poor guy. In the event, after another couple of minutes it started to rain quite hard. So we all stood up and huddled in the IPN’s entrance way. I got bored and left.

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Variation Under Nature

22-Oct-06

A while ago I attended a lecture on nationalism as the dominant ideology. I’ve also been reading a book which makes a similar contention called Banal Nationalism by Michael Billig.

It is like a bubble which surrounds the set of ideas we know how to talk about. A set of base reference points which we assume to be true in our language and the way we use it. We construct a whole range of cliches and motifs based around this reference point. We do very strange things, like planting a flag on the moon.

One of the conceits that I find the most pervasive is the seperation of humanity from nature. We, and I say this as a person exposed to the pesudo christian culture of north west europe, seem to have invented the most elaborate stories to confirm in our minds our special place in the universe.

There seems to be an assumption that we have transcended the process that created us. That somehow there was a great leap where evolution no longer applied. The modern human is the master of nature, and the products of his behaviour are artificial. We even describe some elements as not naturally occuring!

I don’t know exactly what it is that we think seperates humans from the rest of the universe. Maybe it is because we are able to behave rationally. But lots of other things seem to do that, some plants produce seeds that only activate after a fire has occured; the planet earth stays in its orbit and doesn’t go careening off into the sun on a whim. Maybe it is because we are aware of ourselves, we think we transcend mere existence. We do produce art.

But if this is the case, when did it occur? And why is it different from the pattern of a Coral Snake, or the Rings of Saturn? Because we imbue our creations with meaning? With non-literal culturally contextual meaning? Our creations are somehow less a part of the universe than the materials we make them from, or the medium we express them in? Do we really think we can somehow create meaning with an abstract existence outside of present reality.

Are we really just inhabitants?

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Temporality

19-Oct-06

Its not clear to me, what being me actually is. I’m not sure its always been that way. I think that in the past I might have know, or had the illusion of knowing. There are certain asumptions, or my perception and interpretation of cultural norms that I have begun to doubt. It started in earnest when I found myself thinking about the meaning of the phrase “you are what you eat”.

I though, if I am what I eat, what is “what I eat”; or more specifically what was what I eat before it was me? And when did it stop being what I eat and start being me? And how long will it be me for?

There are several sources that constitute the mass of my body. What I eat, what I drink and what I breath being the three that spring most readily to mind. There is also the probability that some of my mass was previously part of the mass of my mother, and even the possibility that some of it was previously part of the mass of my father.

I knew something about where my food started out. There was a very small, very hot, slightly uneven explosion. As the explosion cooled, many classes of object formed. After a while, a force, or a curvature caused by slight variations in the distribution of some of these objects caused them to clump together. The clumps grew and became more dense untill the objects where forced so close together they began to stick to each other and produce new more complex composite objects. These more complex objects where more stable than their constituents; a great deal of heat and other forms of energy where emitted by these clumps. Enough heat to balance the collapse of these dense clumps.

In the early parts of the explosion, all of the mass and the energy that constitutes me now was in a very small area of space, at a very high temprature. After that, a substantial portion of me, especially many of the more complex arrangments of these primordial components, where formed in a massive nuclear furnace.

The largest of these composites where not formed in the first nuclear furnace they where part of, but where created in processes which occured after it had run out of simple elements to fuse and support its weight. And in subsequent clumps which formed out of the reminants of the first.

Some of those objects started to be me. Whilst I continue to exist, more objects will continually become me, and some of the objects that are me will stop being.

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Not Being Me

19-Oct-06

Sometimes, I’m filled with an overwhelming sense of not being me. I’m not sure when it first happened, although I’m confident that it wasn’t very long ago. I’ve been interested for a while in the nature of objects, particularly what it means to be a train.

I think it started when trains began to look absured to me, like the feeling you get when you say or type a word too many times. I sort of lost the ability to see trains. I started to think of them in a topological way, you get in the doors at one place, and you get out at another.

One day I found myself standing in the vestibule of a train, I normally stand, trying to balance without holding on to anything. I started to wonder if I was the train, or, if I wasn’t, what about me meant that I wasn’t? In some sense I was occupying the same space as the train; at least I was entierly contained within it. My motion was largely dictated by it, and I could in some sense feel what it was feeling as it ran over points, and swayed on its bogies. Concentrating on nothing but being the train.

But, it never really feels like I am the train. Its different to that, I think. It feels singular.

I’ve managed to find that feeling in other places too. I’ve started trying to be whole places now. Sometimes when I’m in a room, maybe a pub or maybe outside in a park. It starts as a background sensation, a sort of vauge loss of the sense of time. My mind starts to withdraw from the future and the past, it seems to just lose interest in why I am where I am, or what I’m going to do next. Now starts to come into focus, sounds and sensations start to flow instead of being processed and filtered. My breathing changes.

Sometimes this takes a few minutes, sometimes a few seconds. Recently, it has just hit me with little warning. I’ve just been a place. There is a faint euphoria, a profound lack of fear and doubt. Often I try to snatch at that moment, and come crashing down. I can’t do it at will, and I seem only to be able to do it in public spaces and outside.

I mention this today, because for a few seconds I became some steps in london bridge station. I felt that I was different as I stood onto each step, like me and the step, and that moment in time where fused and final. And that on the next step I was another entity, that whatever might have been on the previous step didn’t exist.

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