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Combating hopelessness

I can relate to this...

'One night over a bottle of Irish whiskey, Alexander Cockburn told me a story about Noam Chomsky’s teeth. One day the great brain went to the dentist for a check up after several years of neglect. During the examination, the tooth doctor noticed extreme wear on the enamel of Chomsky’s molars.

“Noam, do grind your teeth?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Well, the enamel is taking a real pounding. Perhaps you’re doing it at night. Can you ask your wife if she’s observed anything?”

'Chomsky goes home Lexington, near the MIT campus and tells his wife Carol about his encounter with the dentist. That night and the next, Carol stays up after Noam has fallen asleep, keeping a close watch for any nocturnal grinding but notices no unusual dental machinations.

'However, Carol did observe a furious gnashing each morning at the breakfast table as Noam read his way through the New York Times.'
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http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/09/26/the-chomsky-paradox/
 
Thank you everyone on this thread - I really appreciate this discussion. It's given me a lot to think about. There is a great appetite for change but no clear idea of how it can be done, and that is ok.

Its great to know I'm not alone in feeling this

Its good to be reminded that change is possible.

Its encouraging to hear what some of you are doing to keep going.

Please lets keep talking about this.
 
Yuwipi Woman said:
<snip> I do have this feeling that something is major is going to break soon. You can't have this level of poverty and dissatisfaction that isn't being addressed without an reaction a some point. A friend of mine made the point this week that Social Security isn't security for the poor and old, it's security for the rich so the poor won't kill them all in their beds.
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Yes there seems to be an increase in the number of burglar alarms, secure blocks and gated estates over here, so perhaps thats how the rich feel here too. Perhaps this is why they seem to be 'cleansing' London of its poorer occupants.
 
brixtonscot said:
friendofdorothy....no I haven't tried a consciousness raising group yet , but I have been in touch with Plan C and they have a CR going , though are not accepting new members to it at the moment in order to build personal trust amongst those participating. So it was suggested it could be possible to set up another CR group for those interested.....so if there is interest on here , we could maybe get another one going
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I'd be up for this - do you think we could do it as a private message group here on urb, would that work? I'm not really sure what is involved - I'm wracking my brains of what we did in feminist CR groups - but that was a life time ago. Presumably we would need some guidelines, but I don't know what.

Is anyone else here interested?
 
friendofdorothy said:
I'd be up for this - do you think we could do it as a private message group here on urb, would that work? I'm not really sure what is involved - I'm wracking my brains of what we did in feminist CR groups - but that was a life time ago. Presumably we would need some guidelines, but I don't know what.

Is anyone else here interested?
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What's a consciousness raising group? What does it do / what's it for?
 
BigTom said:
I think things were worse in the victorian period, the emergence of early unions like IWW is a bloody struggle and there'd never been anything like a social security system before. It was new and it was won with a combined strategy of unionisation and electoral stuff. I'm sure that's a massive simplification, and certainly ignores the structural changes of the development of capitalism post-slavery and the more immediate effects of WW1 & 2. But as a person, there was a definite strategy / strategies that could be followed.

I think my biggest now problem is strategy. What's the strategy? I can't work one out, and I feel like the groups I've been involved with on anti-austerity stuff were all tactics and no strategy (especially the student group). The two big strategies I can see have failed (electoral strategy like TUSC or Left Unity; and community organising like IWCA). I can't be getting involved with entryism into the green party as a different electoral strategy, and I didn't go for an electoral strategy in 2009/10 when I got active again because I don't see it working, I think the last election showed I was right, that Labour won't move back to a social democratic position and Green party didn't take this space until right near the election, to me means that there's something underneath/behind electoral politics which needs to change for electoral battleground to move.

So that means some kind of community organising but as a person I'm not great at this and definitely not good at starting things, I can work in groups organising stuff but the people/network building side of it I'm shite at cos no people skills. IWCA stuff didn't really seem to work out and I dunno what I'd do anyway. My feeling is that Thatcher set out to destroy as much communal / communitarian / socialised stuff as possible, to get people acting/working and therefore thinking individually, and that we need to push back against that with things (any things, not capital P Political stuff necessarily) that need group/socialised decisions/action, just so that we can get more of the idea that socialised stuff works for us and that we want that from the state, then we can look at electoral stuff as we might be able to achieve it. All the things Thatcher has changed (housing, transport, unions, privatised industries, sure there's other things) are stuff that we as individuals can't change, those things will come back to us through electoral politics, apart from unions, but the TUC unions are going nowhere and whilst I'd still like to see syndicalist type unions like IWW and SolFed, and the popup union at Sussex Uni iirc coming to the fore, I don't know how this happens as workplace issues are so individualised now for the most part.

I think there should be some kind of concluding paragraph here, but there isn't. I'm not involved in any organising anymore, just in small bits of practical help with benefits stuff and as a union rep, neither of which is going to stop or change anything. Until I can feel some kind of strategy I don't really know what to do. The only tactics I think were effective were the shop sit-ins from UKUncut (but only worked because of having such a soft message) and the online actions & shop sit-ins from Boycott Workfare. UKUncut only achieved the counter to the "no alternative" and "we're all in this together" messages, did nothing to stop tax avoidance really let alone austerity; BW have got lots of comapnies/charities to pull out of workfare but the schemes roll on and get expanded and added to, I feel like it could be won by taking out all the companies/charities who take part but it's hard to keep the momentum up.
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A lot needs to be done to counter to the "no alternative" and "we're all in this together" messages and the rest of the govt narrative. I'm not very familiar which union campaigns or organisations you mentioned - so will be going away to look them up.

I think a lot of what you say echos other posters here, and I don't think anyone here has any conclusions either. I suppose I'm hoping to find a new way to keep up my momentum - to find some more hopeful way of looking at the future now I'm neither youthful or energetic.
 
BigTom said:
What's a consciousness raising group? What does it do / what's it for?
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In '70s/'80s feminism the idea was that we all needed to alter the way we were thinking about the world and womens role in it, to educate ourselves and each other. The big idea was the personal was politcal. It was grass roots politics - feminism had no central office, no leaders, no party line, it was all from individual up and not the other way around. Millions of women all over the world small groups of women got together in each others living rooms. Before internet it was a good way to share books, pamplets, then organise demos and ralllies.

Big campaigns against war, male violence, sexual abuse and rape grew out of this. Alternative life styles were discussed and explored. Lots of issues about disability, race and class priviledge came up too.
 
friendofdorothy said:
A lot needs to be done to counter to the "no alternative" and "we're all in this together" messages and the rest of the govt narrative. I'm not very familiar which union campaigns or organisations you mentioned - so will be going away to look them up.

I think a lot of what you say echos other posters here, and I don't think anyone here has any conclusions either. I suppose I'm hoping to find a new way to keep up my momentum - to find some more hopeful way of looking at the future now I'm neither youthful or energetic.
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I think it was useful, the way UKUncut made tax avoidance a massive issue, so every time a tory ran out one of those lines there was a quick, easy counter. But it hasn't led to either something being done about tax avoidance, or created a space where anti-austerity messages took hold, let alone been part of a wider defeat of austerity / move back to the social democratic consensus we had in the post-war period. I think UKUncut did really well, and what was achieved shouldn't be dismissed, but it didn't lead to any material gains, and there wasn't a strong enough wider movement to take advantage of the ideational (?) gains they did make. The TUC didn't help, after March 26th did fuck all, and UKUncut was done in by all the arrests at Fortnum and Mason (though I think it had also run its course, the tax avoidance issue was a huge issue by that point, UKUncut weren't needed to make it one anymore). I still don't quite get how the demo on March 26th demobilised the union / labour left stuff, but it did.
 
BigTom said:
I think it was useful, the way UKUncut made tax avoidance a massive issue, so every time a tory ran out one of those lines there was a quick, easy counter. But it hasn't led to either something being done about tax avoidance, or created a space where anti-austerity messages took hold, let alone been part of a wider defeat of austerity / move back to the social democratic consensus we had in the post-war period. I think UKUncut did really well, and what was achieved shouldn't be dismissed, but it didn't lead to any material gains, and there wasn't a strong enough wider movement to take advantage of the ideational (?) gains they did make. The TUC didn't help, after March 26th did fuck all, and UKUncut was done in by all the arrests at Fortnum and Mason (though I think it had also run its course, the tax avoidance issue was a huge issue by that point, UKUncut weren't needed to make it one anymore). I still don't quite get how the demo on March 26th demobilised the union / labour left stuff, but it did.
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Maybe I'm being naïve here but is the recent budget announcement on non-doms a bit of a victory for anti-tax evasion campaigners?
 
oryx said:
Maybe I'm being naïve here but is the recent budget announcement on non-doms a bit of a victory for anti-tax evasion campaigners?
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Or maybe a last kick in the teeth for someone who they perceive as holding them back in their last term...
 
oryx said:
Maybe I'm being naïve here but is the recent budget announcement on non-doms a bit of a victory for anti-tax evasion campaigners?
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Avoidance not evasion.
The non dom stuff has been around for years, labour started charging to have this status years before the crash and it's not something ukuncut campaigned about directly. I don't know how much credit you can really give on this specific thing.
 
brixtonscot said:
Here is the link for Consciousness Raising from Plan C , for those interested here we *could* investigate doing it with Plan C , can we do group personal messages here on U75 ?
http://www.weareplanc.org/blog/c-is-for-consciousness-raising/
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You can now - you just "start a conversation" then "invite" (ie add in) anyone you'd like to be there.

You can set it so that only the OP can add people, or (more risky) so that anyone already there can add anyone.

Anyone can choose to "leave the covnersation" ie not see it anymore at any time.

Bear in mind that PMs aren't moderated, so it might be a good idea to set up some ground rules.
 
I started and sustained a womens consciousness raising group in the early 80's. These days i like the idea of recovery orientated values to promote change and provide people with relationships that enable hope, personal and community empowerment, change & growth.

Building healthy communities starts at grass roots level; assess needs, plan, implement & evaluate. I've had some success in a small rural town here that is slowly dying due to federal and local government decisions & actions. I now work with a small army (well around 30 of us atm :D ) who i have managed to get funding/grants for to train in various aspects that can benefit the most vulnerable in this community. We all support each other and our numbers are steadily growing. I could step away from this 'project' now and it would run without my input, independent of the organisation that I work for. We are making an impact and are starting to be asked for input into local council meetings and decision making :cool:
 
When you have a community with no respect for its own members happy to tear strips off each other then what hope is there?
 
zxspectrum said:
When you have a community with no respect for its own members happy to tear strips off each other then what hope is there?
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Do you have respect for others? do you tear strips off people? No, of course you don't... and there's your hope. It may be small and fragile right now, and you may have to hold it for people until they can hold it themselves. But focus on the strengths not weaknesses in your community and it'll get stronger.
 
ice-is-forming said:
Do you have respect for others? do you tear strips off people? No, of course you don't... and there's your hope. It may be small and fragile right now, and you may have to hold it for people until they can hold it themselves. But focus on the strengths not weaknesses in your community and it'll get stronger.
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i was referring to this community.
 
Teaboy said:
You post crap like this then whinge and moan about lack of respect. Why on earth did you come back?
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You're proving my point. Calling what i say 'crap' is entirely disrespectful and entirely in keeping with the clique authoritarian "I am considerably more class warrior than you" that permeates this site. There are plenty (not all) users who act to others as if they have a stink of shit permanently staining their nostrils. They are judgemental and no less divisive than the tories. I find this ridiculous and counter productive
 
zxspectrum said:
You're proving my point. Calling what i say 'crap' is entirely disrespectful and entirely in keeping with the clique authoritarian "I am considerably more class warrior than you" that permeates this site. There are plenty (not all) users who act to others as if they have a stink of shit permanently staining their nostrils. They are judgemental and no less divisive than the tories. I find this ridiculous and counter productive
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Your post was massively disrespectful to everyone on this board, you lumped us all into one and dismissed us with a wave of your hand. Honestly you need to have a long hard look at yourself.
 
Teaboy said:
Your post was massively disrespectful to everyone on this board, you lumped us all into one and dismissed us with a wave of your hand. Honestly you need to have a long hard look at yourself.
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Except I didn't lump everyone together: if you did you would not have missed the part that said "there are plenty (NOT ALL) users..."

Again, that's disrespectful and entirely the sort of behaviour I'm talking about.
 
zxspectrum said:
Except I didn't lump everyone together: if you did you would not have missed the part that said "there are plenty (NOT ALL) users..."

Again, that's disrespectful and entirely the sort of behaviour I'm talking about.
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You bloody well did lump us all in together. It's just a one way thing with you, everyone should respect you regardless of how you behave. You need to grow up, it doesn't work that way here or anywhere. I still don't know why you came back to do the same old moan over and over again.
 
Teaboy said:
You bloody well did lump us all in together. It's just a one way thing with you, everyone should respect you regardless of how you behave. You need to grow up, it doesn't work that way here or anywhere. I still don't know why you came back to do the same old moan over and over again.
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What part of the sentence i quoted could possibly mean what you have read into it?

You are reading what you want in what I have said in order to exercise your own prejudice and you don't like the fact you've been called out on that.
 
Monkeygrinder's Organ said:
Seeing as you've been banned and no doubt will be again when the mods cotton on you're not really a 'member of the community' are you?
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Then your definition of a community is very different to mine.

But it's not really relevant is it. It doesn't change the fact that people on here, despite claiming to care about issues pertaining to welfare, justice and all the rest of it, don't care to extend those principles to everyone. When you're happy to sniff and sneer at people who are on the same page as you then you are no better than the people you criticise. It is divide and rule which you and i both know is the oldest trick in the book and it's really sad to see a community of the left (or whatever word you care to use) fall for it so willingly.

<snip real names and picking fights - surprised no-one reported this - mango5>

I'd rather be part of no community than share a platform with arseholes like that. They won't ever change and neither will the politics of this country.
 
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