Morning Comrades!
Normally, whenever I write these emails on a Sunday for you to read and get into Monday I am relatively relaxed, occasionally inspired by whatever I managed to get up seemingly non-work related over the week and whilst I had a good time this weekend, a few events transpired that managed to pre-occupy me and leave me pissed off. Pissed off in the sense that I wanted to kick this week off with a few notes on what to do when that is the case, especially in regards to all of the insanity that is going on, a sort of, hey, take a deep breath, think on this, move forward.
Let’s start with the pleasantries first though, new week, new playlist!
I even made some nice new art for it this week, something I can’t promise I’ll do every week but I felt like it. In any case, another 3hrs of whatever the fuck was going on last week, and there was a lot - it was a moody awkward week to be truthful, so this playlist hinges on multiple attempts to cheer myself up, get angry, dance, fuck, drink, read and so on. It’s honest if anything, even if I deleted a lot of the angry death metal out of it for your pleasure. Enjoy.
Second Pleasantries, like a late second breakfast, I am just going to leave these two here for you to enjoy for now and I will tease the final products over this week.
Punching up. With everything that is going on right now, volcano’s, pandemics, the West’s avalanche into Fascism, some fucko’ tennis player dominating the air waves, dinner parties, sable rattling on the Russian / Ukrainian border, again - all of which I was trying to avoid to figure out and focus on my own small horizon and some stormy ass clouds ahead that need navigating, the urge to ignore them and write about the happenings in the world and what to make of them became tangible - yet, today, let’s focus on something else, a little mantra so to say that helps me, often and a lot, when outside forces, often ones you have little or no control over, cause stress.
Let’s face it, everything is fucking stressful these days and generally speaking, we tend to vent and lash out when stressed, similar to cornered animals, which, again, doesn’t need to happen. I am not a spiritual person, not in the slightest, have tried numerous full on mental and physical immersions into various mind bending cults to figure out the complexities of the world and myself and you know, some of those experiences were fun, useless essentially but I cannot write about them.
Philosophy, apart from being a major cause of increasing therapists invoices, does help me pause, breathe, put complexities and the onslaught of opinions into perspective - some call that ageing but despite the number on my birth certificate, you’re mostly dealing with an over-read 18 year old here. Anyhow, I believe I first heard this from the much missed Michael Brooks -
“Punch up, never Down.”
“Be ruthless with systems; be kind to people.”
Now, I know, life is far too nuanced and complex for any idea to be applicable to every situation, and that’s not what this is about. Rather, I use those to ideas as a guide system to fight any and all, negative, downward aimed reactions, both in life and especially online. I see a lot of bullshit online and in real life as well as a lot content that doesn’t apply to me, or does and makes me uncomfortable and so on. Now, these Social Media Companies, have trained us to REACT to everything, and most of the time it is negatively and downward orientated. This generates content, makes you stay on their site longer, they sell more ad space, they get richer, you get more pissed off, you lose, they win.
Fuck That.
Coming back to complexities, sometimes, people need to be punched down. Yes, done that, been there, have the criminal records, never that smart but sometimes, necessary. Most of the time though, by taking a second to breathe and then to repeat those lines, really puts a lot of time wasted into perspective. Who cares what anyone says online or at the pub, unless they’re harming someone and it’s your duty to step in - focus the energy you have being ruthless with whose above you, who manages the box within which you express yourself, the box itself and punch up. Take that anger, figure out who does what and who they are. Who cares if AnarchoCat669 on twitter has a different take on whatever than you do, all good, let AnarchoCat669 have that, and if its that important to you, say so, keep that shit calm and collected, aware that everyone is a journey and a half these days and multiple trajectories towards radicalization are normal.
This goes back to my essay on community building and coalitions: the way towards liberation from capitalism and the capitalists is long and will only be possible by building coalitions - “if the kids are united” and all that. This isn’t new. This is as much a memo to myself than hopefully to you, in a world aimed at keeping you overwhelmed, poor, stressed, angry, remember that those responsible have names and addresses and it’s most likely not Dave down the road, but the bastards making the laws, the bastards not paying taxes, the bastards sending themselves to space for a 10s wank and so on.
So, Colonialism - yes, that, the massive part of Europe’s history that is so conveniently left out of any and all history, economic, social classes and yet, the one aspect of our history upon which essentially everything rests, and we know extremely little off. Myself included - despite several degrees in History - anecdote time - I was asked to leave Kings College London ( a rather “privileged” University, let’s say ) and attend a more left-leaning school, Goldsmiths, which I did some 20 years ago because I challenged my UK History Prof as to why NO MENTION AT ALL of the affects of colonialism was part of the course. Things haven’t changed. At all.
Nevertheless, genuine academic work on the affects of colonialism and more importantly, what needs and should be done to remedy then ( ahem .. payback is a start ) is far and hard to find, especially when it comes to work from the colonized world and not the lofty bastions of white colonial academia. Fret not, we are getting there and I wanted to point you to a piece of work, that whilst is deeply academic is extremely good and worth your time.
Gurminder K. Bhambra is a British sociologist, theorist, and public intellectual specialising in postcolonial and global historical sociology. Her current work focuses on epistemological justice and reparations. This piece, entitled:
Colonial global economy: towards a theoretical reorientation of political economy
is available to read for free and just, yeah read it, if this is of interest to you. It nails the relationship of Colonialism and Capitalism on the the head, how deeply intertwined they are and how absolutely necessary it is to re-learn our history to fully grasp reality.
Standard accounts of the emergence of the modern global economic order posit its origins in the expansion of markets or in the changing nature of the social relations of capitalist production. Each fails to acknowledge the significance of colonial relations underpinning these processes, as formative of, and continuous with them. This is a consequence of the dominant understandings (across different theoretical perspectives) of capitalism as a distinct and self-contained economic formation of modernity, the origins of which are seen to be endogenous to Europe and north America. As such, there is a concomitant failure to acknowledge, or regard as significant, the global connections forged through colonialism that are the condition of capitalist-modernity. I argue for the need to recognize the significance of historical colonial relations to both the establishment and continued reproduction of global political economy.
Additionally, if you are new to the subject, here is a killer reading list from Verso that I cannot recommend enough.
Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook's COO, has never had to testify under oath about a major scandal but has 4 career-defining, very damaging matters hitting concurrently. *Allegations* involve #1 collusion (with Google), #2 insurrection, #3 cover-up of breach, #4 fraud.
That’s the headline. It’s wild and I have linked a longer thread over in Twitter that goes through all of this better than I could. It makes my head spin knowing full well just how fucking evil these people are but reading it, well, it doesn’t make it any better but it gives you better sense of clarity to it all. Again, all in line of, punching up and not down as well as knowing who your enemy is so you know where to punch.
In case you missed this on Friday, Episode 2 Hot Shots - use headphones, as I am still trying to figure out the recording volumes with this.
With that, I shall leave you for now and will remain yours, as always, without compromise,
V.