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  1. Are we fascist and refusing to face-it? Banned from Dunedin Airport for two years for standing still with a sign in polite language. And Dunedin has some top educational establis ents there. Are we like Germany in the 1930s – with a highly educated elite and lots of working class people scraping along. Ooh that’s a scary thought.
    Anyway this is the story which provokes thought if there is anything in your top storey.
    https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL2507/S00049/dunedin-airport-art-protest.htm
    …As a long-time climate activist and artist I can’t help but notice the increasing disconnect between the reality of the terrifying and ongoing ecological catastrophe which is overwhelming the planet and the head down ‘business as usual’ approach which is being promoted by this government, as well as much of the mainstream media….
    Artists use their imagination and understanding which underlies their actions and creations.
    There may be a response that something is arty-farty. What do you think was a reasonable response to male to this ‘person as art form’ work?

  2. Why I hesitate to use the word resilience which has undergone a nuanced change in meaning – eg being advised to have three days of water and food stocked up as a minimum in case of emergencies. This was a sort of thinking around in the 1950-1960s.
    This post on the attitude towards personal self-reliance over the collective concern one would expect in an integrated modern community makes a point.
    https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL2507/S00044/resilience-or-revolution.htm
    …Isn’t encouraging “the psychological quality that allows people to be knocked down by the adversities of life and come back at least as strong as before” incontrovertible?
    Yes, though isn’t a matter of “the adversities of life,” but the intensifying agonies and angst of a globalized culture, which is completely overwhelming people. Resilience, like resistance, is pointless in the face of the polycrisis..

    …But if even a few human beings awaken the intelligence of insight, humanity could prevail in the future…
    The fashionable idea of resilience is inextricably linked with two other false ideas – choice and agency. Consider this sentence for example, in an article in which the writer argues against the inevitability of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), “which would amount to creating a new species.” (That too is a dubious claim, since however far AI advances, keeping it in its place is necessary now, equivalent to keeping thought in its place,
    an insight virtually no one else [is] proposing.)…

    [Interested in the apparent rationality of the discourse – it’s good to read onwards.]

  3. It’s a bit rude of me not to include the name of the author of this thinkpiece about resilience – it’s Martin LeFevre who lives in the USA.
    Martin LeFevre is a contemplative and philosopher.
    His sui generis “Meditations” explore spiritual, philosophical and political questions relating to the polycrisis facing humanity.

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