The Intergalactic Health & Safety Inspectorate

The Intergalactic Health & Safety Inspectorate

The brilliant cartoonist Marc Roberts (whose work will be familiar to regular Dark Optimism readers) got in touch with the Transition Network last year offering to produce a strip exploring the Transition concept. The time has come for the results to be unleashed on an unsuspecting public! In Marc's own words, "they will be loosely exploring some of the Holmgren and Chamberlin scenarios through my usual combination of toilet humour and sarcasm". He does himself a disservice - for me, it's a real honour to see my work used by someone whose talents I have long admired and enjoyed. Two cartoons will be released each week. This post will be updated with the new cartoons as they are released, and they will also go out on Rob Hopkins' Transition Culture site and on a Transition Network blog. The first four (+ a special message from the Inspectorate) are below. Hope you enjoy them!

Mon 7 Feb

Marc Roberts 01-GortKlaatu
(click to expand each strip)
Marc Roberts 02-ForArmed
Letter to Earthlings from the Intergalactic Heath & Safety Inspectorate To whom it may concern, Your planet has been selected for an extended audit by the Intergalactic Health & Safety Inspectorate, a worker-owned cooperative originating from a distant galaxy. My colleague Gort and I have much work ahead and we will need to communicate our progress to you. Our studies of your culture indicate that your pictures paint a thousand words, so we will be using cartoons to convey our message. We've therefore randomly selected an earthling to chronicle our adventures and given him special cartooning powers. He is working from a safe house deep in the discombobulation matrix and when our work here is done, we'll endeavour to return him to Manchester with most of his main parts intact. So from now on, our adventures - starting below - will come to you in this medium. And don't be alarmed if you see us on your doorstep, we may be making housecalls in your area shortly... Yours intergalactically, Klaatu - Primitive Species Specialist, Dept of Planetary Remediation - Intergalactic Health & Safety Inspectorate, Upsilon Andromedae Sector

Fri 11 Feb

Marc Roberts 03-Door2door

Marc Roberts 04-Provider

Mon 14 Feb

Marc Roberts 05-PeakAll

Marc Roberts 06-Orders

Fri 18 Feb

Marc Roberts 07-Timemachine

Marc Roberts 08-TooMuchTv

Mon 21 Feb

Marc Roberts 09-Probably

Marc Roberts 10-Malaria

Mon 28 Feb

Marc Roberts 12-NextDoor

Marc Roberts 11-Local

Mon 7 Mar

Marc Roberts 13-Ransom

Marc Roberts 13-FraughtandSnafu

Mon 14 Mar

Marc Roberts 14-Rats

Marc Roberts 15-Bushmeat

Mon 28 Mar

Marc Roberts 16-Jetpack

Marc Roberts 17-BadBack

Mon 4 Apr

Marc Roberts 18-Eyes

Marc Roberts 19-Shoes

Mon 11 Apr

Marc Roberts 20-Loyalty

Marc Roberts 21-Exhale

Mon 25 Apr

Marc Roberts 22-Tazer

Marc Roberts 23-FacePaint

Mon 9 May

Marc Roberts 24-Throw

Marc Roberts 25-Fish

Mon 30 May

Marc Roberts 26-Unwanted

Marc Roberts 27-Biomass

Marc Roberts 28-Spy

Marc Roberts 29-Drama

Marc Roberts 30-Disney

Marc Roberts 31-Health and Safety

This is as far as Marc Roberts has drawn this story for now! Drop him a positive comment here if you'd like to see more!

Edit - Sun 4 Dec:

Marc Roberts Bonus Pic - Occupy
All Party Parliamentary TEQs report launch

All Party Parliamentary TEQs report launch

What a week - Tuesday's launch of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Peak Oil's report into TEQs was a tremendous success, with excellent media coverage, including Time magazine, The Sunday Times, Bloomberg News, the BBC, the Financial Times and many others (linked article list). The only problem has been that the degree of interest has been such that I haven't found a moment to write anything here - although I have been Tweeting, I feel as though I'm the last to cover it! A fuller, more thoughtful piece may follow when time allows, but for now take a look at the videos from the event (Caroline Lucas MP, John Hemming MP, Jeremy Leggett and me), the various blogs that are discussing the implications, and of course the report itself.
On a personal note, it has been hard getting through all this without my co-author David Fleming, who passed away suddenly around six weeks ago (I also suffered another extremely close bereavement shortly after), but I am pleased and proud that it has gone so well. Many people have worked to make it possible and given their support, but I'd particularly like to thank Beth Stratford, an inspiring climate campaigner and the editor of the report, who over the past few weeks has given more time than she really had to help make the launch a success. Thanks Beth.
Values and Propaganda

Values and Propaganda

I have just spent an intrigued couple of hours musing over the outstanding new Common Cause report, which explores the battle over cultural values that underlies communications and marketing, while keeping one eye always on our environmental challenges. The report has both stimulated a fair bit of controversy (as I will explore below the cut) and, excitingly, provided an answer to a question that has been bothering me for many years now, since reading Edward Bernays' influential 1928 book Propaganda.
The cover of Bernays' 1928 book (full text available online here or here)
First, then, a little history. Bernays was the nephew of Sigmund Freud, and the pioneer founder of the industry now termed "Public Relations" (the "Propaganda" name being discarded due to associations with the German war effort). Building on his uncle's ideas about subconscious urges and desires that drive our decisions, Bernays argued that: "The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society… We are governed, our minds are moulded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society...In almost every act of our daily lives...we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons...who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses." To my mind this is pretty distasteful stuff, but it has undoubtedly proved a significant force in shaping the consumerist society around us. We may disapprove of the marketers, PR men and spin doctors invading our minds at every opportunity, but we cannot deny the power of the techniques Bernays developed. Ad on my train into London All of which brings us back to that uncomfortable question: given the urgency of the peril facing our biosphere, and the potency of this approach, is there a way to justify such manipulation for the sake of preserving a future for all (as indeed many are trying to do)? On those terms, I have always leant towards the answer "no". But Common Cause offers a potential way to harness this potency without being manipulative: transparency. By all means understand and utilise all the power inherent in your messaging, but be explicit about the values you are trying to promote, and explain why. Like most important insights, this solution is simple yet powerful, for by this one act you not only bring integrity to your efforts to spread the values you believe in, but also simultaneously open up an important debate over the desirability of those values AND shine a light on the dubious morality of all those doing similar work from the cover of darkness. For me, it is a great relief to see a niggling question laid to rest in such an elegant way, and I am grateful for it.
Common Cause report
Yet in reading around the report, I discovered that others, such as Solitaire Townsend of Futerra, disagree, and forcefully so. She writes: "The notion of changing the audience rather than the message is at the heart of (this) concept. It argues that we shouldn’t accept the basic psychology of our audience – but seek to change it. This means re-programming people’s values away from consumption, status and selfish desires and towards collective awareness and a closer relationship with our place in the natural world. Actually this drives us (at Futerra) bonkers, especially because implicit is the message ‘if only everyone else thought and acted like us everything would be okay’. That makes our skin crawl a bit, and we know the majority public audience hates environmental worthies suggesting there’s not only something wrong with their footprint: there’s something wrong with their personality." I have often felt myself recoil from Futerra's approach to "promoting sustainable development", and this helped me to put my finger on why. As report author Tom Crompton pointed out in his response, all messaging changes the audience. While I agree with Solitaire that this fact is in some ways distasteful, for me the appropriate response to this distaste is not to pretend that one's own messaging is somehow exempt from having such influence, but rather to explore the reality behind this dangerous power, and to seek a way to use it in an honest and beneficial way. Common Cause's radical transparency provides exactly that and, promisingly, the report is supported by five influential NGOs (including, incidentally, some that I have personally decided to stop supporting). Scepticism of scepticism But I think there is a wider issue rearing its head here too; a logical flaw that underpins much modern discussion, especially when it comes to our environmental challenges. When Solitaire goes on to argue that "we don't have time for a cultural shift" and so that we must engage with people where they're at, her argument is that approach A can't possibly work, so we must try approach B. We see the same form of argument all over the place. Renewables can't scale up quickly enough to replace fossil fuels so we must have nuclear power. The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats aren't running the country well, so we must vote Labour. And on and on. But the premisses and the conclusion do not join up. Even if we accept that A doesn't work, it doesn't necessarily mean that B will. Indeed, B could be far far worse, this argument just doesn't tell us. This much is evident at a glance, yet still this form of argument is everywhere, and generally treated with respect. The alternative is to face the possibility that maybe none of the options presented are satisfactory. Maybe we truly don't have time for a cultural revolution AND 'ethical consumerism' truly can't save the world. Maybe neither renewables NOR nuclear can sustain a consumerist society over the coming decades. And so on... It is when we explore this space - when we consider the evidence on all the propositions, rather than assuming that the last remaining option simply MUST work - that we start to consider reality, and thus open the door to true creativity. Better off without us Perhaps none of the mainstream parties are satisfactory, so I should support a smaller one, or not vote at all, or start my own, or work to change the political system, or... Perhaps none of today's technologies can power a consumerist lifestyle for all the world's people, so we need to accept vast inequalities, or reduce our energy demand, or redefine our idea of a desirable lifestyle, or... Let's not assume that the truth must always be found laid out among the presented options. As I mentioned in response to comments on an earlier post, I believe that refusing to flee to quick, unexamined answers is one of our key strategies at this point in human history, as the limits of our current paradigms loom ever larger. We must explore new stories. As Rilke so beautifully put it: “Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live your questions now, and perhaps even without knowing it, you will live along some distant day into your answers.” Seljellandfoss Waterfall in Iceland
Coalition of the Willing

Coalition of the Willing

This is a really fantastic piece of collaboration animation on the subject of responses to climate change, from the striking opening comment on Copenhagen on through. Though as the creators freely acknowledge, the ideas behind it need a little love. It strikes me that some great candidates for their proposed Green Knowledge Trust, Catalyst System and Open Innovation Centre are already coming together..
The art and music of our world’s predicament

The art and music of our world’s predicament

I got back from the Dark Mountain Project's Uncivilisation festival a few days ago, and while I could write about many of the aspects of that stimulating week, one thread it really tugged on for me was the role - the critical importance - of the arts in shifting the cultural stories that shape our future. So today I would like to highlight a few musical artists who have inspired my personal journey, and to invite you to suggest a few artists of any kind who have brought something to your engagement with the global problematique, in whatever way, and perhaps deserve a little more exposure. The 'headline act' at Uncivilisation was George Monbiot debating the usefulness of the Dark Mountain project with one of its founders. Sitting in the audience I was engaged by this - if rather frustrated by some of the arguments unvoiced or misrepresented - but then found myself profoundly refreshed to have my intellectual cogitations blown away by what followed. Immediately afterwards, Alastair McIntosh took the stage, and used the language of music to speak to the spiritual in us - to our connection with our homes, our land.
Maria Elvorith, ‘Red wine, Lipstick and the World in my hand’, 2009 Maria Elvorith, ‘Red wine, Lipstick and the World in my hand’, 2009
The shift in energy in the room (and in me) was palpable, as we moved from our separate intellectual camps to what felt a unified sense of wonder and shared values. Thinking back on this, I am put in mind of some insightful advice from the late Howard Zinn which I recently discovered and am endeavouring to embed into my outlook: "Don't look for a moment of total triumph. See it as an ongoing struggle, with victories and defeats, but in the long run the consciousness of people growing. So you need patience, persistence, and need to understand that even when you don't "win", there is fun and fulfilment in the fact that you have been involved, with other good people, in something worthwhile." The arts are so key to that fun and fulfilment, as well as to the growth in consciousness, that I feel the need to acknowledge some of my own inspirations... Saul Williams - Act III Scene 2 (Shakespeare)
Ani DiFranco - Self Evident
My new friend Alex Fradera has already suggested adding this link to three folk songs on the subject of the credit crisis (though clearly none as well-sung as this one). For me personally though, Nine Inch Nails' 2007 album, Year Zero, was the point where my musical interests collided head-on with my life. The mysterious initial trailer video (above) contained the critical clue to send online fans worldwide spiralling off into an 'Alternate Reality Game (ARG)' set in a dystopian near-future ravaged by climate destabilisation and social breakdown. Without ruining too much of the fun for newcomers who want to explore, the Viability Index site gives one flavour of the world that music fans were drawn into, some parts of which are genuinely moving and disturbing. And drawing us ever deeper was the fact that a few of the tracks off the forthcoming album lurked in its depths. I talked with people for whom the experience - and the music it uncovered - opened their eyes to the realities of our present, as well as to new ways of engaging with those realities. And for me it led to my work on the Superstruct ARG, which tried to expand on that success. But that's another story. For now, I'll leave you with some of the art that has affected me, and look forward to discovering more through you.
-- Nine Inch Nails - Zero-Sum--
Sir Edwin Landseer, ‘Man proposes, God disposes’ 1864. Sir Edwin Landseer, ‘Man proposes, God disposes’ 1864
 
Photograph by Iain D. Williams, Canada, Nov 2009 ---
Edit - March 2011: This is just too good not to add to this post: