Jim Brumm: Long-Term Thinking for a Short-Sighted World

Suddenly alternative possibilities reveal themselves. Sam Cooper Sam Cooper 91 The Revolution Issue 91_cooper2_teaser.jpg Splash Image: 

Photo by Janine Gordon

In Europe, national governments in the pocket of the IMF are imposing stringent austerity measures meant to deliver us from the present financial crisis. Put crudely, these measures save the banks and make the people pay. This reconsolidation of neoliberal capitalism is being met with differing levels of resistance, but for the most part we are caught between anger and action. Neoliberalism, we say with a sigh and a heavy heart, is here to stay. But why are we so unable to think beyond capitalism? The problem, I want to suggest, is one of possibility – and we must recognize another crisis: of the possible.

For too long we have been told what is and what isn’t possible. Late last year, the British cultural critic Mark Fisher published a book titled Capitalist Realism, that discusses neoliberalism’s propaganda project: its insistence that “there is no alternative.” This message has been hammered into our collective consciousness so consistently for so long that we have come to assume that neoliberal capitalism is our only option, that it constitutes our reality and we find it difficult to imagine anything else. Fisher reminds us of the quip made by both Fredric Jameson and Slavoj Žižek that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism.

Everyone seems agreed that revolution is impossible. So what should be our response if not a descent into nihilism? Right now we certainly should argue as loudly as possible that austerity measures that involve the transfer of responsibility from the rich to the poor should be curtailed. But at the same time we need to explore other possibilities for the long term.

Fisher writes:

“The very oppressive pervasiveness of capitalist realism means that even glimmers of alternative political and economic possibilities can have a disproportionately great effect. The tiniest event can tear a hole in the gray curtain of reaction which has marked the horizons of possibility under capitalist realism. From a situation in which nothing can happen, suddenly anything is possible again.”

We need, first of all, a revolution of the possible. We must confront, challenge and condemn the logic of neoliberal capitalism and do all we can to create a space where alternatives are made possible. While we must hold onto ideals of equality and fairness, we don’t want to work toward a glorified image of a utopian future society; that is itself to impose limits, to establish another regime of impossibility when we must open ourselves to all possibilities. By acknowledging how deeply we are immersed in capitalism, how capitalist logic has come to curtail our ability to imagine anything beyond itself, we might open up spaces in which alternative possibilities reveal themselves. We must extend the cracks in capitalism’s self-image to allow some as yet unimaginable possibility to reveal itself.

Sam Cooper is working toward a PhD at the University of Sussex. His research focuses on the adoption of Situationist theory in Britain.

Suddenly alternative possibilities reveal themselves. Sam Cooper Sam Cooper 91 The Revolution Issue 91_cooper2_teaser.jpg Splash Image: 

Photo by Janine Gordon

In Europe, national governments in the pocket of the IMF are imposing stringent austerity measures meant to deliver us from the present financial crisis. Put crudely, these measures save the banks and make the people pay. This reconsolidation of neoliberal capitalism is being met with differing levels of resistance, but for the most part we are caught between anger and action. Neoliberalism, we say with a sigh and a heavy heart, is here to stay. But why are we so unable to think beyond capitalism? The problem, I want to suggest, is one of possibility – and we must recognize another crisis: of the possible.

For too long we have been told what is and what isn’t possible. Late last year, the British cultural critic Mark Fisher published a book titled Capitalist Realism, that discusses neoliberalism’s propaganda project: its insistence that “there is no alternative.” This message has been hammered into our collective consciousness so consistently for so long that we have come to assume that neoliberal capitalism is our only option, that it constitutes our reality and we find it difficult to imagine anything else. Fisher reminds us of the quip made by both Fredric Jameson and Slavoj Žižek that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism.

Everyone seems agreed that revolution is impossible. So what should be our response if not a descent into nihilism? Right now we certainly should argue as loudly as possible that austerity measures that involve the transfer of responsibility from the rich to the poor should be curtailed. But at the same time we need to explore other possibilities for the long term.

Fisher writes:

“The very oppressive pervasiveness of capitalist realism means that even glimmers of alternative political and economic possibilities can have a disproportionately great effect. The tiniest event can tear a hole in the gray curtain of reaction which has marked the horizons of possibility under capitalist realism. From a situation in which nothing can happen, suddenly anything is possible again.”

We need, first of all, a revolution of the possible. We must confront, challenge and condemn the logic of neoliberal capitalism and do all we can to create a space where alternatives are made possible. While we must hold onto ideals of equality and fairness, we don’t want to work toward a glorified image of a utopian future society; that is itself to impose limits, to establish another regime of impossibility when we must open ourselves to all possibilities. By acknowledging how deeply we are immersed in capitalism, how capitalist logic has come to curtail our ability to imagine anything beyond itself, we might open up spaces in which alternative possibilities reveal themselves. We must extend the cracks in capitalism’s self-image to allow some as yet unimaginable possibility to reveal itself.

Sam Cooper is working toward a PhD at the University of Sussex. His research focuses on the adoption of Situationist theory in Britain.

Suddenly alternative possibilities reveal themselves. Sam Cooper Sam Cooper 91 The Revolution Issue 91_cooper2_teaser.jpg Splash Image: 

Photo by Janine Gordon

In Europe, national governments in the pocket of the IMF are imposing stringent austerity measures meant to deliver us from the present financial crisis. Put crudely, these measures save the banks and make the people pay. This reconsolidation of neoliberal capitalism is being met with differing levels of resistance, but for the most part we are caught between anger and action. Neoliberalism, we say with a sigh and a heavy heart, is here to stay. But why are we so unable to think beyond capitalism? The problem, I want to suggest, is one of possibility – and we must recognize another crisis: of the possible.

For too long we have been told what is and what isn’t possible. Late last year, the British cultural critic Mark Fisher published a book titled Capitalist Realism, that discusses neoliberalism’s propaganda project: its insistence that “there is no alternative.” This message has been hammered into our collective consciousness so consistently for so long that we have come to assume that neoliberal capitalism is our only option, that it constitutes our reality and we find it difficult to imagine anything else. Fisher reminds us of the quip made by both Fredric Jameson and Slavoj Žižek that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism.

Everyone seems agreed that revolution is impossible. So what should be our response if not a descent into nihilism? Right now we certainly should argue as loudly as possible that austerity measures that involve the transfer of responsibility from the rich to the poor should be curtailed. But at the same time we need to explore other possibilities for the long term.

Fisher writes:

“The very oppressive pervasiveness of capitalist realism means that even glimmers of alternative political and economic possibilities can have a disproportionately great effect. The tiniest event can tear a hole in the gray curtain of reaction which has marked the horizons of possibility under capitalist realism. From a situation in which nothing can happen, suddenly anything is possible again.”

We need, first of all, a revolution of the possible. We must confront, challenge and condemn the logic of neoliberal capitalism and do all we can to create a space where alternatives are made possible. While we must hold onto ideals of equality and fairness, we don’t want to work toward a glorified image of a utopian future society; that is itself to impose limits, to establish another regime of impossibility when we must open ourselves to all possibilities. By acknowledging how deeply we are immersed in capitalism, how capitalist logic has come to curtail our ability to imagine anything beyond itself, we might open up spaces in which alternative possibilities reveal themselves. We must extend the cracks in capitalism’s self-image to allow some as yet unimaginable possibility to reveal itself.

Sam Cooper is working toward a PhD at the University of Sussex. His research focuses on the adoption of Situationist theory in Britain.

The explosive potential of awakened youth. Skylar Fein Skylar Fein 91 The Revolution Issue 91_youthrevolt_teaser.jpg Splash Image: 

Photo by Dylan Martinez / Reuters

This article appears in the upcoming Adbusters #91: The Revolution Issue which is hitting newsstands on August 3. You can order it online or if you subscribe today this will be the first issue of your subscription.

When I was 19 and full of socialist fervor, I went to the Soviet Union to see the workers’ paradise. I spent most of the year on bread lines. And flour lines. And butter lines. My disillusionment was total. The Russian army was withdrawing from a ruinous war in Afghanistan. The economy was nearing collapse. The core beliefs that had served as a foundation for the society were daily being exposed as transparent lies. Drug addiction was rampant, something I couldn’t miss, living as I did across from the city drunk tank; screams filled the Krasnodar night. Bad as it was, no one dared recognize how bad it actually was: The country would shortly cease to exist. It was 1988.

Parallels to the US of 2010 are hard to miss. Our economic system has been revealed as a teetering house of cards. We are deepening our commitment to permanent war in the same region, one known as the graveyard of empires. The nation’s debt is now so large it can never be repaid, and a sovereign default, while not imminent, is nevertheless inevitable. The obviousness of this fact panics everyone, forcing the power holders to send spooky numerologists to utter magical numbers – to the delighted gasps of an audience that thrills at the setting aside of its own rational experience. More ominous, the beliefs that for 60 years have formed the ideological basis for the society are failing to cohere. The new reality – the reality of failure – cannot be integrated into the old symbolic order. Just as the nation’s new program reveals itself as an unmythical, unmagical struggle for brute survival, its past doctrine sharpens in the rear-view mirror: expropriation of natural resources. That has been our real program. It is a game we will never win again, and in fact must lose if we are to survive.

In a Ponzi scheme, early investors reap rewards while later investors are shafted. Western economies, fueled by debt and unlimited consumption of limited resources, are Ponzi economies and will sooner or later collapse under their own weight. The victims of this scheme are the young. That this is perfectly foreseeable has not made it preventable. The collapse of the system is far outpacing the thought or work of any of the interested parties. We acknowledge on the one hand the inevitability of the fall of the current economic model, and on the other hand the apparent impossibility of collective revolutionary action. As a result of this contradiction, the main characteristic at all levels of society is confusion and an acutely felt need for unconsciousness.

Some look to electoral politics for a way forward, but there too the leadership is failing. Lost in imagery and the critique of imagery, we have failed to notice that no party has acknowledged the real threats to our security – rising seas, permanent war, depleted resources and a bankrupt central government – let alone put forward any strategy for addressing them. Politics is pretend.

We live in a state of permanent falsification, our starkest fear that we will collectively awaken to reality as it is. To speak the truth is to sound insane. George Orwell once imagined a government that would (ludicrously) claim that ignorance is strength, yet my friends and family now say this to my face.

The truth is that our leaders’ every action worsens these conditions in a mendacious, murderous betrayal of the next generation. They have suggested no end game, leaving it up to the people, specifically to the young, who have one.

When the next generation is handed the keys to a broken, bankrupt nation sinking into a fishless sea, when they realize they’ve been ripped off, when they take to the streets – and they will – they will flood society with a mess of desires that cannot be realized by the current system, and they will call for a revolution in every aspect of human life.

Skylar Fein is an artist living in New Orleans. His show Youth Manifesto was recently held at The New Orleans Museum of Art. Go to skylarfein.tumblr.com to see more of his work.

The explosive potential of awakened youth. Skylar Fein Skylar Fein 91 The Revolution Issue 91_youthrevolt_teaser.jpg Splash Image: 

Photo by Dylan Martinez / Reuters

This article appears in the upcoming Adbusters #91: The Revolution Issue which is hitting newsstands on August 3. You can order it online or if you subscribe today this will be the first issue of your subscription.

When I was 19 and full of socialist fervor, I went to the Soviet Union to see the workers’ paradise. I spent most of the year on bread lines. And flour lines. And butter lines. My disillusionment was total. The Russian army was withdrawing from a ruinous war in Afghanistan. The economy was nearing collapse. The core beliefs that had served as a foundation for the society were daily being exposed as transparent lies. Drug addiction was rampant, something I couldn’t miss, living as I did across from the city drunk tank; screams filled the Krasnodar night. Bad as it was, no one dared recognize how bad it actually was: The country would shortly cease to exist. It was 1988.

Parallels to the US of 2010 are hard to miss. Our economic system has been revealed as a teetering house of cards. We are deepening our commitment to permanent war in the same region, one known as the graveyard of empires. The nation’s debt is now so large it can never be repaid, and a sovereign default, while not imminent, is nevertheless inevitable. The obviousness of this fact panics everyone, forcing the power holders to send spooky numerologists to utter magical numbers – to the delighted gasps of an audience that thrills at the setting aside of its own rational experience. More ominous, the beliefs that for 60 years have formed the ideological basis for the society are failing to cohere. The new reality – the reality of failure – cannot be integrated into the old symbolic order. Just as the nation’s new program reveals itself as an unmythical, unmagical struggle for brute survival, its past doctrine sharpens in the rear-view mirror: expropriation of natural resources. That has been our real program. It is a game we will never win again, and in fact must lose if we are to survive.

In a Ponzi scheme, early investors reap rewards while later investors are shafted. Western economies, fueled by debt and unlimited consumption of limited resources, are Ponzi economies and will sooner or later collapse under their own weight. The victims of this scheme are the young. That this is perfectly foreseeable has not made it preventable. The collapse of the system is far outpacing the thought or work of any of the interested parties. We acknowledge on the one hand the inevitability of the fall of the current economic model, and on the other hand the apparent impossibility of collective revolutionary action. As a result of this contradiction, the main characteristic at all levels of society is confusion and an acutely felt need for unconsciousness.

Some look to electoral politics for a way forward, but there too the leadership is failing. Lost in imagery and the critique of imagery, we have failed to notice that no party has acknowledged the real threats to our security – rising seas, permanent war, depleted resources and a bankrupt central government – let alone put forward any strategy for addressing them. Politics is pretend.

We live in a state of permanent falsification, our starkest fear that we will collectively awaken to reality as it is. To speak the truth is to sound insane. George Orwell once imagined a government that would (ludicrously) claim that ignorance is strength, yet my friends and family now say this to my face.

The truth is that our leaders’ every action worsens these conditions in a mendacious, murderous betrayal of the next generation. They have suggested no end game, leaving it up to the people, specifically to the young, who have one.

When the next generation is handed the keys to a broken, bankrupt nation sinking into a fishless sea, when they realize they’ve been ripped off, when they take to the streets – and they will – they will flood society with a mess of desires that cannot be realized by the current system, and they will call for a revolution in every aspect of human life.

Skylar Fein is an artist living in New Orleans. His show Youth Manifesto was recently held at The New Orleans Museum of Art. Go to skylarfein.tumblr.com to see more of his work.

The explosive potential of awakened youth. Skylar Fein Skylar Fein 91 The Revolution Issue 91_youthrevolt_teaser.jpg Splash Image: 

Photo by Dylan Martinez / Reuters

This article appears in the upcoming Adbusters #91: The Revolution Issue which is hitting newsstands on August 3. You can order it online or if you subscribe today this will be the first issue of your subscription.

When I was 19 and full of socialist fervor, I went to the Soviet Union to see the workers’ paradise. I spent most of the year on bread lines. And flour lines. And butter lines. My disillusionment was total. The Russian army was withdrawing from a ruinous war in Afghanistan. The economy was nearing collapse. The core beliefs that had served as a foundation for the society were daily being exposed as transparent lies. Drug addiction was rampant, something I couldn’t miss, living as I did across from the city drunk tank; screams filled the Krasnodar night. Bad as it was, no one dared recognize how bad it actually was: The country would shortly cease to exist. It was 1988.

Parallels to the US of 2010 are hard to miss. Our economic system has been revealed as a teetering house of cards. We are deepening our commitment to permanent war in the same region, one known as the graveyard of empires. The nation’s debt is now so large it can never be repaid, and a sovereign default, while not imminent, is nevertheless inevitable. The obviousness of this fact panics everyone, forcing the power holders to send spooky numerologists to utter magical numbers – to the delighted gasps of an audience that thrills at the setting aside of its own rational experience. More ominous, the beliefs that for 60 years have formed the ideological basis for the society are failing to cohere. The new reality – the reality of failure – cannot be integrated into the old symbolic order. Just as the nation’s new program reveals itself as an unmythical, unmagical struggle for brute survival, its past doctrine sharpens in the rear-view mirror: expropriation of natural resources. That has been our real program. It is a game we will never win again, and in fact must lose if we are to survive.

In a Ponzi scheme, early investors reap rewards while later investors are shafted. Western economies, fueled by debt and unlimited consumption of limited resources, are Ponzi economies and will sooner or later collapse under their own weight. The victims of this scheme are the young. That this is perfectly foreseeable has not made it preventable. The collapse of the system is far outpacing the thought or work of any of the interested parties. We acknowledge on the one hand the inevitability of the fall of the current economic model, and on the other hand the apparent impossibility of collective revolutionary action. As a result of this contradiction, the main characteristic at all levels of society is confusion and an acutely felt need for unconsciousness.

Some look to electoral politics for a way forward, but there too the leadership is failing. Lost in imagery and the critique of imagery, we have failed to notice that no party has acknowledged the real threats to our security – rising seas, permanent war, depleted resources and a bankrupt central government – let alone put forward any strategy for addressing them. Politics is pretend.

We live in a state of permanent falsification, our starkest fear that we will collectively awaken to reality as it is. To speak the truth is to sound insane. George Orwell once imagined a government that would (ludicrously) claim that ignorance is strength, yet my friends and family now say this to my face.

The truth is that our leaders’ every action worsens these conditions in a mendacious, murderous betrayal of the next generation. They have suggested no end game, leaving it up to the people, specifically to the young, who have one.

When the next generation is handed the keys to a broken, bankrupt nation sinking into a fishless sea, when they realize they’ve been ripped off, when they take to the streets – and they will – they will flood society with a mess of desires that cannot be realized by the current system, and they will call for a revolution in every aspect of human life.

Skylar Fein is an artist living in New Orleans. His show Youth Manifesto was recently held at The New Orleans Museum of Art. Go to skylarfein.tumblr.com to see more of his work.

Redefining the word "terrorist." Adbusters Adbusters 90 Whole Brain Catalog 90_sewerrat_teaser.jpg Splash Image: 

Black Widow Dzhennet Adbullayeva poses with her militant husband Umalat Magomedov who was killed by federal forces in 2009. Since Chechen suicide attacks began in 2000, forty percent of the bombers have been women seeking revenge.

While terrorism perpetrated by groups or individuals is rightfully condemned, state terror is too often celebrated. Medals are awarded and parades held in honor of bloody campaigns that would be labeled criminal if they were carried out with small arms and suicide bombs instead of tanks and high altitude bombers.

Following the double suicide bombings on Moscow’s subway system in late March Prime Minister Vladimir Putin demanded that those responsible be scraped “from the bottom of the sewers.” His tough talk echoed statements he made in 1999 when he promised to “pursue the terrorists everywhere” and “rub them out in the outhouse.”

After following them into Chechnya with 90,000 Russian troops Putin emerged from obscurity and climbed to the upper echelons of Russian power by prosecuting one of the most vicious and brutal counterinsurgency campaigns in modern history.

Painting the centuries-old struggle for Chechen independence as an Islamic extremist movement, Putin ordered a scorched-earth campaign in the Caucasus. It featured the extensive burning of Chechen homes, mass extrajudicial executions, the systematic rape of Chechen women and indiscriminate bombing and shelling of civilian areas, including the near destruction of the capital, Grozny. The Russian invasion of Chechnya killed between 30,000 and 40,000 Chechen civilians out of a population of one million.

Professor Robert Pape of the University of Chicago has done extensive research on the motivations behind suicide bombing. As he found in Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka, Pape concluded that Chechen suicide terrorism is a last resort against brutal military occupation.

Of the 63 Chechens who killed themselves in suicide attacks since 2000, 40 percent were female. These so-called “Black Widows” sought to avenge a husband, child or close relative killed by occupying Russian soldiers. The murdered Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya once said that the Black Widows “are trying to force Russians to feel the same pain that they have felt.”

It’s becoming harder to tell the difference between those occupying the halls of power and those who live in the margins, shadows and sewers.

Redefining the word "terrorist." Adbusters Adbusters 90 Whole Brain Catalog 90_sewerrat_teaser.jpg Splash Image: 

Black Widow Dzhennet Adbullayeva poses with her militant husband Umalat Magomedov who was killed by federal forces in 2009. Since Chechen suicide attacks began in 2000, forty percent of the bombers have been women seeking revenge.

While terrorism perpetrated by groups or individuals is rightfully condemned, state terror is too often celebrated. Medals are awarded and parades held in honor of bloody campaigns that would be labeled criminal if they were carried out with small arms and suicide bombs instead of tanks and high altitude bombers.

Following the double suicide bombings on Moscow’s subway system in late March Prime Minister Vladimir Putin demanded that those responsible be scraped “from the bottom of the sewers.” His tough talk echoed statements he made in 1999 when he promised to “pursue the terrorists everywhere” and “rub them out in the outhouse.”

After following them into Chechnya with 90,000 Russian troops Putin emerged from obscurity and climbed to the upper echelons of Russian power by prosecuting one of the most vicious and brutal counterinsurgency campaigns in modern history.

Painting the centuries-old struggle for Chechen independence as an Islamic extremist movement, Putin ordered a scorched-earth campaign in the Caucasus. It featured the extensive burning of Chechen homes, mass extrajudicial executions, the systematic rape of Chechen women and indiscriminate bombing and shelling of civilian areas, including the near destruction of the capital, Grozny. The Russian invasion of Chechnya killed between 30,000 and 40,000 Chechen civilians out of a population of one million.

Professor Robert Pape of the University of Chicago has done extensive research on the motivations behind suicide bombing. As he found in Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka, Pape concluded that Chechen suicide terrorism is a last resort against brutal military occupation.

Of the 63 Chechens who killed themselves in suicide attacks since 2000, 40 percent were female. These so-called “Black Widows” sought to avenge a husband, child or close relative killed by occupying Russian soldiers. The murdered Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya once said that the Black Widows “are trying to force Russians to feel the same pain that they have felt.”

It’s becoming harder to tell the difference between those occupying the halls of power and those who live in the margins, shadows and sewers.

Redefining the word "terrorist." Adbusters Adbusters 90 Whole Brain Catalog 90_sewerrat_teaser.jpg Splash Image: 

Black Widow Dzhennet Adbullayeva poses with her militant husband Umalat Magomedov who was killed by federal forces in 2009. Since Chechen suicide attacks began in 2000, forty percent of the bombers have been women seeking revenge.

While terrorism perpetrated by groups or individuals is rightfully condemned, state terror is too often celebrated. Medals are awarded and parades held in honor of bloody campaigns that would be labeled criminal if they were carried out with small arms and suicide bombs instead of tanks and high altitude bombers.

Following the double suicide bombings on Moscow’s subway system in late March Prime Minister Vladimir Putin demanded that those responsible be scraped “from the bottom of the sewers.” His tough talk echoed statements he made in 1999 when he promised to “pursue the terrorists everywhere” and “rub them out in the outhouse.”

After following them into Chechnya with 90,000 Russian troops Putin emerged from obscurity and climbed to the upper echelons of Russian power by prosecuting one of the most vicious and brutal counterinsurgency campaigns in modern history.

Painting the centuries-old struggle for Chechen independence as an Islamic extremist movement, Putin ordered a scorched-earth campaign in the Caucasus. It featured the extensive burning of Chechen homes, mass extrajudicial executions, the systematic rape of Chechen women and indiscriminate bombing and shelling of civilian areas, including the near destruction of the capital, Grozny. The Russian invasion of Chechnya killed between 30,000 and 40,000 Chechen civilians out of a population of one million.

Professor Robert Pape of the University of Chicago has done extensive research on the motivations behind suicide bombing. As he found in Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka, Pape concluded that Chechen suicide terrorism is a last resort against brutal military occupation.

Of the 63 Chechens who killed themselves in suicide attacks since 2000, 40 percent were female. These so-called “Black Widows” sought to avenge a husband, child or close relative killed by occupying Russian soldiers. The murdered Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya once said that the Black Widows “are trying to force Russians to feel the same pain that they have felt.”

It’s becoming harder to tell the difference between those occupying the halls of power and those who live in the margins, shadows and sewers.

Are we hard wired for empathy? Andrew Tuplin Andrew Tuplin 90 Whole Brain Catalog 90_mirror_neurons2_teaser.jpg Splash Image:  Photos by Roderik Henderson - Island: A Bare Skeleton of Being

Fourteen years ago neuroscientists introduced the world to a captivating new idea about the way our brains might work: they discovered the existence of specialized brain cells in the brains of macaque monkeys that are activated both when a monkey performs an intentional action (e.g. grabbing a banana) and when it sees another monkey performing that same action. They called these special brain cells mirror neurons since the monkeys mirrored in their own minds the actions of their neighbors. Scientists learned that at the brain level, monkey see was not so different from monkey do.

Even before researchers confirmed the existence of similar mirror neurons in human brains, which they did in 2007, the idea had worked its way into the zeitgeist and become a potent new way of seeing ourselves in relationship with each other. People have begun to wonder if mirror neurons could be responsible for language, culture, empathy and even morality. Where Darwinian survival of the fittest has heretofore imagined us as the strong pitted against the weak in a fatal struggle for food and sex, the mirror neuron suggests the importance of social strengths: that we are hardwired for empathy, that we are naturally interested not only in our own needs but also in the interests of others. As noted philosopher A.C. Grayling has said: “The essential point is that mirror neurons underwrite the ability to recognize what helps or distresses others, what they suffer and enjoy, what they need and what harms them.”

—Andrew Tuplin

Are we hard wired for empathy? Andrew Tuplin Andrew Tuplin 90 Whole Brain Catalog 90_mirror_neurons2_teaser.jpg Splash Image:  Photos by Roderik Henderson - Island: A Bare Skeleton of Being

Fourteen years ago neuroscientists introduced the world to a captivating new idea about the way our brains might work: they discovered the existence of specialized brain cells in the brains of macaque monkeys that are activated both when a monkey performs an intentional action (e.g. grabbing a banana) and when it sees another monkey performing that same action. They called these special brain cells mirror neurons since the monkeys mirrored in their own minds the actions of their neighbors. Scientists learned that at the brain level, monkey see was not so different from monkey do.

Even before researchers confirmed the existence of similar mirror neurons in human brains, which they did in 2007, the idea had worked its way into the zeitgeist and become a potent new way of seeing ourselves in relationship with each other. People have begun to wonder if mirror neurons could be responsible for language, culture, empathy and even morality. Where Darwinian survival of the fittest has heretofore imagined us as the strong pitted against the weak in a fatal struggle for food and sex, the mirror neuron suggests the importance of social strengths: that we are hardwired for empathy, that we are naturally interested not only in our own needs but also in the interests of others. As noted philosopher A.C. Grayling has said: “The essential point is that mirror neurons underwrite the ability to recognize what helps or distresses others, what they suffer and enjoy, what they need and what harms them.”

—Andrew Tuplin

Are we hard wired for empathy? Andrew Tuplin Andrew Tuplin 90 Whole Brain Catalog 90_mirror_neurons2_teaser.jpg Splash Image:  Photos by Roderik Henderson - Island: A Bare Skeleton of Being

Fourteen years ago neuroscientists introduced the world to a captivating new idea about the way our brains might work: they discovered the existence of specialized brain cells in the brains of macaque monkeys that are activated both when a monkey performs an intentional action (e.g. grabbing a banana) and when it sees another monkey performing that same action. They called these special brain cells mirror neurons since the monkeys mirrored in their own minds the actions of their neighbors. Scientists learned that at the brain level, monkey see was not so different from monkey do.

Even before researchers confirmed the existence of similar mirror neurons in human brains, which they did in 2007, the idea had worked its way into the zeitgeist and become a potent new way of seeing ourselves in relationship with each other. People have begun to wonder if mirror neurons could be responsible for language, culture, empathy and even morality. Where Darwinian survival of the fittest has heretofore imagined us as the strong pitted against the weak in a fatal struggle for food and sex, the mirror neuron suggests the importance of social strengths: that we are hardwired for empathy, that we are naturally interested not only in our own needs but also in the interests of others. As noted philosopher A.C. Grayling has said: “The essential point is that mirror neurons underwrite the ability to recognize what helps or distresses others, what they suffer and enjoy, what they need and what harms them.”

—Andrew Tuplin

Has our ability to think reached the point of diminishing – or even negative – returns? Dmitry Orlov Dmitry Orlov 90 Whole Brain Catalog 90_systems_teaser.jpg Splash Image:  Daniel Canogar - Enredos 3, 2008

Our species’ hypertrophied linguistic abilities have allowed us to create entire systems composed of elements that we either cannot directly observe or cannot observe at all: mathematics, physics, ideologies, theologies, economies, democracies, technocracies and the like, which manipulate abstractions – symbols and relationships between symbols – rather than the concrete, messy, non-atomistic entities that have specific spatial and temporal extents and that constitute reality for all species. There is a continuum between products of pure thought, like chess or mathematics, sciences which produce theories that can be tested by repeatable direct experiment, like physics and chemistry, and the rest – political science, economics, sociology and the like – which are a hodgepodge of iffy assumptions and similarly iffy statistical techniques. Perfectly formal systems of thought, like logic and mathematics, seem the most rigorous, and have served as the guiding light for all other forms of thinking. But there’s a problem.

The problem is that formal systems don’t work. They have internal consistency, to be sure, and they can do all sorts of amusing tricks, but they don’t map onto reality in a way that isn’t essentially an act of violence. When mapped onto real life, formal systems of thought self-destruct, destroy nature, or, most commonly, both. Wherever we look we see systems that we have contrived run against limits of their own making: Burning fossil fuels causes global warming; plastics decay and produce endocrine disruptors; industrial agriculture depletes aquifers and destroys topsoil; and so on. We are already sitting on a mountain of guaranteed negative outcomes – political, environmental, ecological, economic – and every day those of us who still have a job go to work to pile that mountain a little bit higher.

Although this phenomenon can be observed by anyone who cares to see it, those who have observed it have always laid blame for it on the limitations and the flaws of the systems, never on the limitations and the flaws of the human ability to think and to reason. For some un-reason, we feel that our ability to reason is limitless and infinitely perfectible. Nobody has voiced the idea that the exercise of our ability to think can reach the point of diminishing, then negative, returns. It is yet to be persuasively argued that the human propensity for abstract reasoning is a defect of breeding that leads to collective insanity. Perhaps the argument would have to be made recursively: The faculty in question is so flawed that it is incapable of seeing its own flaws.

Dmitry Orlov – cluborlov.blogspot.com

Has our ability to think reached the point of diminishing – or even negative – returns? Dmitry Orlov Dmitry Orlov 90 Whole Brain Catalog 90_systems_teaser.jpg Splash Image:  Daniel Canogar - Enredos 3, 2008

Our species’ hypertrophied linguistic abilities have allowed us to create entire systems composed of elements that we either cannot directly observe or cannot observe at all: mathematics, physics, ideologies, theologies, economies, democracies, technocracies and the like, which manipulate abstractions – symbols and relationships between symbols – rather than the concrete, messy, non-atomistic entities that have specific spatial and temporal extents and that constitute reality for all species. There is a continuum between products of pure thought, like chess or mathematics, sciences which produce theories that can be tested by repeatable direct experiment, like physics and chemistry, and the rest – political science, economics, sociology and the like – which are a hodgepodge of iffy assumptions and similarly iffy statistical techniques. Perfectly formal systems of thought, like logic and mathematics, seem the most rigorous, and have served as the guiding light for all other forms of thinking. But there’s a problem.

The problem is that formal systems don’t work. They have internal consistency, to be sure, and they can do all sorts of amusing tricks, but they don’t map onto reality in a way that isn’t essentially an act of violence. When mapped onto real life, formal systems of thought self-destruct, destroy nature, or, most commonly, both. Wherever we look we see systems that we have contrived run against limits of their own making: Burning fossil fuels causes global warming; plastics decay and produce endocrine disruptors; industrial agriculture depletes aquifers and destroys topsoil; and so on. We are already sitting on a mountain of guaranteed negative outcomes – political, environmental, ecological, economic – and every day those of us who still have a job go to work to pile that mountain a little bit higher.

Although this phenomenon can be observed by anyone who cares to see it, those who have observed it have always laid blame for it on the limitations and the flaws of the systems, never on the limitations and the flaws of the human ability to think and to reason. For some un-reason, we feel that our ability to reason is limitless and infinitely perfectible. Nobody has voiced the idea that the exercise of our ability to think can reach the point of diminishing, then negative, returns. It is yet to be persuasively argued that the human propensity for abstract reasoning is a defect of breeding that leads to collective insanity. Perhaps the argument would have to be made recursively: The faculty in question is so flawed that it is incapable of seeing its own flaws.

Dmitry Orlov – cluborlov.blogspot.com

Has our ability to think reached the point of diminishing – or even negative – returns? Dmitry Orlov Dmitry Orlov 90 Whole Brain Catalog 90_systems_teaser.jpg Splash Image:  Daniel Canogar - Enredos 3, 2008

Our species’ hypertrophied linguistic abilities have allowed us to create entire systems composed of elements that we either cannot directly observe or cannot observe at all: mathematics, physics, ideologies, theologies, economies, democracies, technocracies and the like, which manipulate abstractions – symbols and relationships between symbols – rather than the concrete, messy, non-atomistic entities that have specific spatial and temporal extents and that constitute reality for all species. There is a continuum between products of pure thought, like chess or mathematics, sciences which produce theories that can be tested by repeatable direct experiment, like physics and chemistry, and the rest – political science, economics, sociology and the like – which are a hodgepodge of iffy assumptions and similarly iffy statistical techniques. Perfectly formal systems of thought, like logic and mathematics, seem the most rigorous, and have served as the guiding light for all other forms of thinking. But there’s a problem.

The problem is that formal systems don’t work. They have internal consistency, to be sure, and they can do all sorts of amusing tricks, but they don’t map onto reality in a way that isn’t essentially an act of violence. When mapped onto real life, formal systems of thought self-destruct, destroy nature, or, most commonly, both. Wherever we look we see systems that we have contrived run against limits of their own making: Burning fossil fuels causes global warming; plastics decay and produce endocrine disruptors; industrial agriculture depletes aquifers and destroys topsoil; and so on. We are already sitting on a mountain of guaranteed negative outcomes – political, environmental, ecological, economic – and every day those of us who still have a job go to work to pile that mountain a little bit higher.

Although this phenomenon can be observed by anyone who cares to see it, those who have observed it have always laid blame for it on the limitations and the flaws of the systems, never on the limitations and the flaws of the human ability to think and to reason. For some un-reason, we feel that our ability to reason is limitless and infinitely perfectible. Nobody has voiced the idea that the exercise of our ability to think can reach the point of diminishing, then negative, returns. It is yet to be persuasively argued that the human propensity for abstract reasoning is a defect of breeding that leads to collective insanity. Perhaps the argument would have to be made recursively: The faculty in question is so flawed that it is incapable of seeing its own flaws.

Dmitry Orlov – cluborlov.blogspot.com

Anything can happen in the strange cities of the mind. Priscilla Long Priscilla Long 90 Whole Brain Catalog 90_conscious_teaser2.jpg Splash Image:  Photo by Noah Kalina

Our brain contains 100 billion neurons (nerve cells). Our gray matter. Each neuron has an axon – a little arm – that transmits information in the form of electrical impulses to the dendrites – receivers – of nearby neurons. Dendrites branch twig-like from each neuron. Between axon and dendrite, the synapse is the point of connection. Axons commune with dendrites across the synaptic gap.

When neurons “fire,” they emit a rat-a-tat-tat of electrical pulses that travel down the axon and arrive at its terminal endings, which secrete from tiny pockets a neurotransmitter (dopamine, say, or serotonin). The neurotransmitter ferries the message across the synaptic abyss and binds to the synapse, whereupon the synapse converts it back into an electrical pulse …

What blows my mind is this: A single neuron can make between 1,000 and 10,000 connections. At this moment our neurons are making, it could be, a million billion connections.

What this electrical/chemical transaction gives us is culture: nail polish, Poland, comic books. Otis Redding belting out “Try a Little Tenderness” at the 1967 Monterey International Pop Music Festival, along with its memory, its YouTube reenactment, its recordings and coverings and remixings, its moment in history.

The geography of the brain ought to be taught in school, like the countries of the world. The deeply folded cortex forms the outer layer. There are the twin hemispheres, right brain and left brain. (We may be of two minds.) There are the four lobes: frontal in front, occipital (visual cortex) in back, parietal (motor cortex) on top, and temporal behind the ears. There’s the limbic system (seat of emotion and memory) at the center. There’s the brain stem, whose structures keep us awake (required for consciousness) or put us to sleep (required for regeneration of neurotransmitters).

The brain also has glial cells, white matter. Glial cells surround and support neurons, carry nutrients to neurons and eat dead neurons. Some glial cells regulate transmission and pulverize post-transmission neurotransmitters. Others produce myelin, which surrounds and protects axons. Glial cells are no longer thought to be mere glue. When stimulated, they make, not electricity as neurons do, but waves of calcium atoms. They also produce neurotransmitters – glutamate (excitatory) and adenosine (inhibitory). We may not know what they are up to, but we know they’re up to something.

So there you have the brain: a three-pound bagful of neurons, electrical pulses, chemical messengers, glial cells. There, too, you have the biological basis of the mind. “Anything can happen,” says the poet C. D. Wright, “in the strange cities of the mind.” And whatever does happen – any thought, mood, song, perception, delusion – is provided to us by this throbbing sack of cells and cerebral substances.

But what, then, is consciousness?

Priscilla Long, “Our Mind-Boggling Brain,” from The American Scholar, Winter 2010

Anything can happen in the strange cities of the mind. Priscilla Long Priscilla Long 90 Whole Brain Catalog 90_conscious_teaser2.jpg Splash Image:  Photo by Noah Kalina

Our brain contains 100 billion neurons (nerve cells). Our gray matter. Each neuron has an axon – a little arm – that transmits information in the form of electrical impulses to the dendrites – receivers – of nearby neurons. Dendrites branch twig-like from each neuron. Between axon and dendrite, the synapse is the point of connection. Axons commune with dendrites across the synaptic gap.

When neurons “fire,” they emit a rat-a-tat-tat of electrical pulses that travel down the axon and arrive at its terminal endings, which secrete from tiny pockets a neurotransmitter (dopamine, say, or serotonin). The neurotransmitter ferries the message across the synaptic abyss and binds to the synapse, whereupon the synapse converts it back into an electrical pulse …

What blows my mind is this: A single neuron can make between 1,000 and 10,000 connections. At this moment our neurons are making, it could be, a million billion connections.

What this electrical/chemical transaction gives us is culture: nail polish, Poland, comic books. Otis Redding belting out “Try a Little Tenderness” at the 1967 Monterey International Pop Music Festival, along with its memory, its YouTube reenactment, its recordings and coverings and remixings, its moment in history.

The geography of the brain ought to be taught in school, like the countries of the world. The deeply folded cortex forms the outer layer. There are the twin hemispheres, right brain and left brain. (We may be of two minds.) There are the four lobes: frontal in front, occipital (visual cortex) in back, parietal (motor cortex) on top, and temporal behind the ears. There’s the limbic system (seat of emotion and memory) at the center. There’s the brain stem, whose structures keep us awake (required for consciousness) or put us to sleep (required for regeneration of neurotransmitters).

The brain also has glial cells, white matter. Glial cells surround and support neurons, carry nutrients to neurons and eat dead neurons. Some glial cells regulate transmission and pulverize post-transmission neurotransmitters. Others produce myelin, which surrounds and protects axons. Glial cells are no longer thought to be mere glue. When stimulated, they make, not electricity as neurons do, but waves of calcium atoms. They also produce neurotransmitters – glutamate (excitatory) and adenosine (inhibitory). We may not know what they are up to, but we know they’re up to something.

So there you have the brain: a three-pound bagful of neurons, electrical pulses, chemical messengers, glial cells. There, too, you have the biological basis of the mind. “Anything can happen,” says the poet C. D. Wright, “in the strange cities of the mind.” And whatever does happen – any thought, mood, song, perception, delusion – is provided to us by this throbbing sack of cells and cerebral substances.

But what, then, is consciousness?

Priscilla Long, “Our Mind-Boggling Brain,” from The American Scholar, Winter 2010

Anything can happen in the strange cities of the mind. Priscilla Long Priscilla Long 90 Whole Brain Catalog 90_conscious_teaser2.jpg Splash Image:  Photo by Noah Kalina

Our brain contains 100 billion neurons (nerve cells). Our gray matter. Each neuron has an axon – a little arm – that transmits information in the form of electrical impulses to the dendrites – receivers – of nearby neurons. Dendrites branch twig-like from each neuron. Between axon and dendrite, the synapse is the point of connection. Axons commune with dendrites across the synaptic gap.

When neurons “fire,” they emit a rat-a-tat-tat of electrical pulses that travel down the axon and arrive at its terminal endings, which secrete from tiny pockets a neurotransmitter (dopamine, say, or serotonin). The neurotransmitter ferries the message across the synaptic abyss and binds to the synapse, whereupon the synapse converts it back into an electrical pulse …

What blows my mind is this: A single neuron can make between 1,000 and 10,000 connections. At this moment our neurons are making, it could be, a million billion connections.

What this electrical/chemical transaction gives us is culture: nail polish, Poland, comic books. Otis Redding belting out “Try a Little Tenderness” at the 1967 Monterey International Pop Music Festival, along with its memory, its YouTube reenactment, its recordings and coverings and remixings, its moment in history.

The geography of the brain ought to be taught in school, like the countries of the world. The deeply folded cortex forms the outer layer. There are the twin hemispheres, right brain and left brain. (We may be of two minds.) There are the four lobes: frontal in front, occipital (visual cortex) in back, parietal (motor cortex) on top, and temporal behind the ears. There’s the limbic system (seat of emotion and memory) at the center. There’s the brain stem, whose structures keep us awake (required for consciousness) or put us to sleep (required for regeneration of neurotransmitters).

The brain also has glial cells, white matter. Glial cells surround and support neurons, carry nutrients to neurons and eat dead neurons. Some glial cells regulate transmission and pulverize post-transmission neurotransmitters. Others produce myelin, which surrounds and protects axons. Glial cells are no longer thought to be mere glue. When stimulated, they make, not electricity as neurons do, but waves of calcium atoms. They also produce neurotransmitters – glutamate (excitatory) and adenosine (inhibitory). We may not know what they are up to, but we know they’re up to something.

So there you have the brain: a three-pound bagful of neurons, electrical pulses, chemical messengers, glial cells. There, too, you have the biological basis of the mind. “Anything can happen,” says the poet C. D. Wright, “in the strange cities of the mind.” And whatever does happen – any thought, mood, song, perception, delusion – is provided to us by this throbbing sack of cells and cerebral substances.

But what, then, is consciousness?

Priscilla Long, “Our Mind-Boggling Brain,” from The American Scholar, Winter 2010

Philip Morris is the number one corporate criminal in the world. Adbusters Adbusters 89 The Ecopsychology Issue 90_morris_teaser.jpg Splash Image: 

We’ve all seen the movies, the blood-soaked tales of monsters that simply will not die. Immortal and indestructible, they rise up to torture the embattled heroes again and again and again. Philip Morris has been that monster for over a century, peddling its poison on the open markets and sending hundreds of thousands to early graves. Like any good monster, it mutates – changing its product, packaging and message to attract a new generation of young smokers as the old ones die off. And just when you think you have it trapped – cornered by damning science and angry legislation – you open the door to find the monster has escaped. By lobbying the state of New York to revoke Philip Morris’s corporate charter, we can finally end the carnage. As any harrowed horror protagonist can tell you, the only way to be sure you’re rid of the monster is to cut off its head and watch it die.

Which corporate crooks do you think should be next on the chopping block?

  

Download this PDF poster for print or GIF for the web and let’s spread this around until those responsible are brought to justice.

Philip Morris is the number one corporate criminal in the world. Adbusters Adbusters 89 The Ecopsychology Issue 90_morris_teaser.jpg Splash Image: 

We’ve all seen the movies, the blood-soaked tales of monsters that simply will not die. Immortal and indestructible, they rise up to torture the embattled heroes again and again and again. Philip Morris has been that monster for over a century, peddling its poison on the open markets and sending hundreds of thousands to early graves. Like any good monster, it mutates – changing its product, packaging and message to attract a new generation of young smokers as the old ones die off. And just when you think you have it trapped – cornered by damning science and angry legislation – you open the door to find the monster has escaped. By lobbying the state of New York to revoke Philip Morris’s corporate charter, we can finally end the carnage. As any harrowed horror protagonist can tell you, the only way to be sure you’re rid of the monster is to cut off its head and watch it die.

Which corporate crooks do you think should be next on the chopping block?

  

Download this PDF poster for print or GIF for the web and let’s spread this around until those responsible are brought to justice.