Book Inner Page
My plan is to use this 'book inner page' for any more in-depth description's I have discussing my work. Actual pieces of work, and their downloads, will tend to be on the front page in the 'Works' section.
JUST STOP OIL?!?!
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Just a quick note on the group, and slogan, 'Just Stop Oil'. Although I totally agree with them about the urgency of the global warming crisis (and toxicity and extinction crisis, resource depletion problems etc.) beyond that, in terms of oversimplification and naivety, these people are in la la land. If tomorrow we all 'just stopped oil', the global economy, which is still close to 80% dependent on fossil fuels, would crash, and billions of people would starve to death. But long before that actually occurred, there would be a political backlash such as the world had never seen, and you would have climate change denying Hitlers and Stalins popping up as rulers of every country on earth. Now i don't think that that is what the 'just stop oil' people want. (Maybe the dirtiest, coal, could be brought to an end more quickly, but even that will be tricky.) So come on, guys and gals, recognise the complexity of the world, the need to understand real global economics, realpolitik, engineering, manufacture, distribution and so forth, and come up with a plan that would actually work! Until then, sadly, you are a part of the problem, and not part of the solution, as you would all fondly like to imagine! Also, if you trash our North Sea oil, all you are doing is handing money to people like Putin, who will sell people the oil anyway, and possibly that oil would come from dirtier oilfields, and so the resulting global warming could actually be WORSE! (Think of governments who provide clean needles and methadone for heroin addicts - this doesn't mean governments are in favour of, or blase about addiction!) So for several reasons, be careful of your parochial oversimplifications and nursery rhymes! Deluding yourself that you're doing good, and actually doing good, can be two very different things! Having said all that, I don't think that the publicity you generate is all bad (depending on how responsibly done). But when you get that publicity, for heavens sake, have a more intelligent and practically workable message and solution! Otherwise it's almost for nothing - and in fact could even be counter-productive, as you provoke opposition! And lastly - oh come on people - replace your silly unworkable slogan for one that's actually within the bounds of sanity! 'Just stop oil'!. Oh dear. Until we find a way (maybe involving much more fission nuclear for baseload power? Hydrogen etc.? Way more support for second and third world countries, energy-wise?) to replace our gargantuan and multi-faceted global energy needs - we CAN'T just stop oil! That's the whole flippin' problem you idiots!!! (Just for the really stupid - how do you think food, in adequate quantities, gets to our supermarket shelves? Actually think out the processes realistically.) (Also note that the Mainstream Media should be saying all the above, but it doesn't - it's almost completely useless.)​
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GROTESQUE OVERSIMPLIFICATION!
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To be fair to 'Just Stop Oil', they do have half an excuse for their simple-minded errors (which I've already partly alluded to). Lots of people care passionately about a variety of issues - race, gender, disability, community health, a strong and stable economy, healthy politics, class and poverty issues, education issues, global warming, toxicity etc. - and broadly speaking all these issues are absolutely valid, or even vital and very urgent. But for such protagonists, there's at least three accompanying issues - mental errors in fact - of gargantuan importance that they almost invariably ignore. The first is that they assume they know how to think, when actually they don't, because our education systems globally don't usually teach people how to think in the round. Secondly they usually want to assume that their issue is more or less isolated, when in fact it is not. It co-exists with all the other issues in a holistic world. And that second issue is really a subset of the third issue, which is that of GROTESQUE OVERSIMPLIFICATION! Because of so many things - conversational situations and etiquette, understandability pressures, speechwriting, slogans, political 'branding', posters/pamphlets, rallying cries, emotional involvement, egotism, editorial pressures of all kinds - there is a horrendous, perennial, insidious pull towards simplification of political issues, that is almost invariably, and extremely false! Almost all issues - and all those listed - are in fact, in part, complicated. Sometimes... very.. complicated. Which should come as no surprise, because generally speaking the world is complicated. So if you're one of the numpties described, please repeat the following mantra several trillion times...
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MY ISSUE IS NOT ISOLATED, AND IT'S NOT SIMPLE!
MY ISSUE IS NOT ISOLATED, AND IT'S NOT SIMPLE!
MY ISSUE IS NOT ISOLATED, AND IT'S NOT SIMPLE!
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...OK... keep it going... keep it going...
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