Unfriending the Anthropocene

Originally published in SHIFT Magazine Issue #7 "Techno-Fix"

in the fallout of the information age, society is shifting towards an increasingly integrated, yet tenuous relationship with technology and the internet.

new media has given us a freer press, but more powerful tools for state surveillance and corporate consolidation. the 24/7 connectedness of social networking has enabled us to transcend borders and map global revolutions, but to the point we’re at risk of losing touch with our local communities. knowledge and validation has become the primary currency in which we trade, equipped with cognitive add-ons to sublimate the reality that we are lonelier, starved for meaning, and more narcissistic than ever. we have become highly innovative and advanced with our techno-visionary ideals of progress, but at what cost to our needs for meaningful relationship, holistic wellbeing and the planet?

Picture: the location of every IP address on the internet.

Hands shaking at my keyboard with tears streaming down my face on a brutal, unforgiving December night, suddenly reality hits that a seven year friendship can end with a single mouse click. Nine months later, the new friends I planned to move in with unexpectedly announce the relocation of their business venture interstate, where we hurriedly sent our best wishes and goodbyes over Facebook.

We were told it was supposed to be empowering to broaden our ever-thinning networks, and in some ways it was — for indie crowdfunders, promising social enterprises, minority groups and geographically isolated activists to efficiently organise through global solidarity. The internet became a safe place where troubled misfits and underground creatives could finally upload and express their ‘true selves’, as long as they were always one step ahead of the FOMO curve, hyper-vigilant not to compare their behind the scenes to everybody else’s highlight reel. It was empowering if your self-branded following was globally competitive and lucratively sponsored, if you had little trouble cultivating close relationships in the real world, and only turned to social media as a supplement rather than a substitute.

As a member of the digital native generation, I’ve closely experienced both the benefits and challenges of being raised by the internet. Gen Y is likely to be more educated and freethinking as a result of self-directed learning and independent media, but also susceptible to unverified, questionably sourced beliefs, passive distractions and poorly designed inspirational platitude memes. Viral content often falls short in spreading the brightest ideas of the hive mind, since the internet remains a mirror of society, no better than our self-medicating addiction to trash TV, favouring the vacuously popular over anything remotely philosophically challenging. Our online identities have curated an information revolution, yet turned us into products, where our personal tastes, stories, likes and dislikes are exploited in the form of company shares and advertising assets.

The PBS report, Generation Like, exposes the growing collusion between online ‘identity capital’ and corporate endorsement. Major brands are bypassing the need to advertise directly to consumers by manipulating fans to freely and tirelessly do it for them instead — from self-promoting YouTube hauls to instagram flay-lays, sponsored product reviews and coveted fashion blogs. Everything is documented, re-appropriated, insta-tagged, reblogged, livestreamed or data-retained, rather than mindfully experienced. Alone together, online socialites continue to pour their hearts out on blogs for likes, and hopefully a book deal, while superficial connection dominates the subtext, feeding narcissistic trolls through a pervasive scarcity of empathy and eye contact.

Antisocial Media

In the domain of personal relationships, our technocratic anthropocene has been branded “the Age of Loneliness” by Guardian writer, George Monbiot. Smacked with stigma and superimposed unattractiveness, today’s generation are test subjects in a Facebook-manipulated chicken-or-egg experiment: does social media make us lonely or do lonely people gravitate towards social media? The answer probably lies somewhere in the middle. Cuddle cafés in Tokyo and New York snuggeries have scored a profitable market among lost and lonely upper-middle class professionals, whose busy lives and buzzing blackberries have left them chronically deprived of human touch and affection. Pretending to be busy on your phone in scary social situations is a legitimate thing, labelled an “avoidance behaviour” in anxiety therapy circles, while hell is any place without wifi or ATMs. Between disposable Tinder swipes and snapchat D&Ms, the religion of our time is self-made individualism, where the pursuit of love and intimacy is a mere form of status anxiety, a pathological fear of not having it all.

Spike Jonze’s 2014 film, Her, quintessentially depicts this phenomenon. Set in the not-too-distant future, Theodore (played by Ryan Gosling), a professional love-letter writer and heartbroken divorcee, develops a touching and uncanny relationship with an artificially intelligent operating system, Samantha (played by Scarlett Johanssen.) Exploring philosophical themes on the qualia and poiesis of A.I. consciousness, the film poignantly portrays the melancholy depths of longing entangled within modernity’s symbiotic relationship to anthropomorphised machines. As the virtually omniscient Samantha learns to feel complex emotions through their relationship, Theodore grapples with his ever-growing attachment to her ephemerally disembodied, transhuman nature, which defies mortality, and exists ‘beyond space and time.’ Technology is portrayed in a poetically benevolent light through Samantha’s digital creations, transcending physical limitation as though it were a breath of life in a washed out city. The characters in the film are afflicted with existential anxiety when the operating systems upgrade and disappear from the market, leaving them in an awed state of surrender to once again seek solace in each other’s company.

Collapse: There’s an App for that

In The People’s Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture In the Digital Age, journalist and documentary filmmaker, Astra Taylor argues that the internet has not created a freer world, untethered from the inequitable growth paradigm of our current system. While social media has been a democratising force behind pivotal social movements such as Occupy, the Arab Spring and Ferguson protests, it has also strengthened and consolidated the commercial interests of entrenched, increasingly powerful institutions. Technocratic capitalism has enabled Wall Street firms to trade derivatives at faster rates, governments to subvert civil liberties under mass surveillance, marketing and insurance companies to track risky clients, and globalised inequality to soar as corporations use predatory trade deals to protect investors and expand their global empires online.

The ubiquity of user-generated content, reflecting our intrinsic creative drive to share, connect and enrich the commons has yet to produce a level playing field for cultural democracy, protecting the rights and integrity of the independent arts, grassroots media, political dissidents and whistleblowers.

The future of growing tech consumption could be even bleaker for the environment; as planned obsolesce clutters up foreign landfills serviced by cheap labour, we unknowingly comply to ‘data mining’ natural habitats for rare earth metals in the hopes that it will someday lead to being retweeted by sock-puppet accounts of out-of-reach celebrities. All the cool kids camp out like good consumers for the latest gadgets, queues scribbling out in fluorescent malls and concrete car parks, yet climate activists and blockaders are maced and arrested for catching the sunrise, daring to imagine the need for sustainable, technological degrowth.

Silver Linings In the Cloud

Despite the binary, often polarising nature of such debates, dividing both sides into techno-optimists versus techno-skeptics, Taylor advocates a more nuanced understanding of looming technological challenges. The internet may be changing the structure of our brains and eroding face to face relationships, but it is also one of our most effective tools for reaching a global audience and catalysing collective change. David Cain, author of radical self-help blog, Raptitude, posits that networked communication is humanity’s grand attempt at globally replicating our ancestors’ tribal, egalitarian methods of direct democracy, such as congregating around the campfire.

“People start printing their thoughts, and in no time at all they start overthrowing kings and tyrants, and calling out institutions on their cruelty. All of these changes are the result of sharing ideas about better and worse ways to run a society. You and I are, at this moment, doing what ancestors couldn’t for thousands of years. We are sharing ideas, across class lines, across borders, even across language barriers. We are talking about who we are, what we value and where we want to go, and we could potentially include many millions of others in this conversation.”

As users and developers begin to navigate in the web in more socially conscious, sophisticated ways, people are waking up to an imperative futurist Buckmeister Fuller forecasted 30 years ago, “We never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, we need a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” 

Grassroots, open source decision making platforms, such as liquid democracy, and advertising-free social networking sites, such as Ello.com, among many others, are gradually emerging to fill the void. Leading the collaborative consumption movement are time-banking initiatives (such as LETS.org.au), free and flexible education programs (MOOCs, University of the People), trust-driven communities (Meetup, couch surfing, car sharing, etc.), and online gifting economies such as friendswiththings.com and impossible.com, which encourage users to give, receive and ask for their needs to be met unconditionally through pro-social currency. Such online initiatives share a common intention to connect, and leverage local communities through direct cooperation, rather than armchair clicktivism and consumerism.

Humans have been drawn to the web for the same reason we may try to distance ourselves from it — the need for connection, to create and collaborate, expand our understandings, and express to the world that we exist inherently drives us as social beings. Although a number of deep green tribes may choose to eschew the tainted offerings of industrial civilisation altogether, some of the people fighting hardest to save our planet are doing so because of the internet; we needn’t adopt a hardcore primitivist lifestyle in order to think critically about our relationship with technology. The social media revolution has yet to reach its highest potential or give us the balance we crave because it’s up to us to do the inner work — to address our vulnerable, unmet need for authentic connection, consume gadgets less wastefully, and make a conscious effort to use our collective intelligence for altruism and community over isolation and self-indulgence. 

Long Distance Dreamers

Part One: A twenty-something, late bloomer's reflections on maturity milestones + life stages

"we must have adventures in order to know where we truly belong."

 

Travelling is one of those things society says you’re expected to do when young or in your twenties, ideally, before you settle down. I’ve always found it strange how we’re expected to do all or most of our travelling during our poorest years, while trying to balance work and study, renting or living at home. Keep in mind that I’m talking about big trips here, which may involve solo travel or an element of risk/emotional investment. Short, low budget trips or those paid by others are deliciously easy. I can understand why you would want to save up for a big trip as soon as possible — life is too short not to experience more of what the world has to offer, but the rush and pressure to “do/have it all” in our twenties is frankly ridiculous. 

According to astrology, our cosmic itineraries can occur either through the third house of self-expression, short trips and local communities, or the ninth house of higher education, philosophical expansion and long distance travel. Since I have Saturn and Neptune in the ninth house, and Mercury in the third house, travel for me needs to be healing, meaningful and a source of creative inspiration. It doesn't have to expensive or elaborate, I believe the simple act of trying new things in your own city can be culturally rewarding. I would prefer to travel with a purpose, or once I've found my 'purpose' — ideally as an extended period of soul searching, to blog about my discoveries, or photograph beautiful landscapes. I currently travel to the US approximately every two years to visit relatives, which falls under the purposeful umbrella. I want to travel properly when I find compatible companions and feel financially stable, when I have an amazing life for me waiting back home, so I know I'm not needing to escape from my problems. 

I possess a competing desire to establish roots while I'm young — a sanctuary to call home, yet gradually uprooting my attachment to any particular time and place. Only my intuition can know when the right time will be. I wouldn't pass up the opportunity to travel in my early 20s with the right people, but if I have to go alone, it will possibly be in my late 20s, 30s or even 40s..? That’s the beauty of not having goals that revolve around marriage and kids, I don’t feel the need to cram all my fun and options into a single decade. My dreams will change for the better. I will aspire to visit places which need me just as much as I need them. I will be more than just a tourist, mapping new internal universes. I will be expanding my comprehension of home. 

To be updated later.. intentional reflections on:

• Finding purpose and giving back
• Dating, relationships and 'settling down'

Cultural Evolution In A World of Moral Tribes

Originally published in SHIFT Magazine Issue #6 "Earth Community"

Many sustainability writers and activists believe that we need a mythopoetic vision – a new story to replace the old – in order to heal and transcend the ruins of industrial civilization. This emerging story relies on an idealistic vision of the convergence of universal human values – the expectation that it is our job as activists to change people at their core to adopt peaceful, eco-conscious and ‘awakened’ values.

While this may seem like a humane, noble pursuit, geopolitical unrest and division continues to exist in a world of moral tribes, underpinned by divergent, seemingly irreconcilable worldviews and ideologies. According to cultural historian Richard Tarnas, author of Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New World View, the evolution of Western culture and intellectual history has taken place within a paradoxical context of competing narratives: the myth of progress and enlightened modernity versus the myth of civilization’s fall from unity into separation. These archetypal paradigms are represented in the tension between today’s social movements and major subcultures, and according to sociological research conducted over the last decade they comprise three main groups: Cultural Creatives, Moderns and Traditionalists. (Anderson, S. R. and Ray, P. H., 2001)

Cultural Creatives

SHIFT readers are most likely to recognize themselves in the description of Cultural Creatives, who, clocking in at approximately 50 million of us, tend to be empathic and prosocial, valuing humanitarian and environmental causes over techno-fixes and traditional conservative dogmas. With its roots in the anti-war, civil rights and women’s movements of the 1960s and 70s, this emerging tribe of intuitive healers, subversive artists, teachers, systems thinkers, Gaian mystics, culture-jammers, peaceful activists and revolutionaries are the pioneers of a new chapter in global consciousness.

Due to their deep understanding of global interdependence, Cultural Creatives today are at the forefront of the deep ecology movement, the natural, wholefood, organic movement, the attachment parenting movement, the holistic wellness and authentic vulnerability movement, and so on. Eco-conscious and sensitive to injustice, they are concerned with living principled, sustainable lives, rich with purpose and meaning. While new age spirituality advocates transforming the self as a sufficient means for healing the world, and conventional politics champions collective change at the expense of the individual, Cultural Creatives are both self-aware and politically engaged. They are motivated to integrate the need for community resilience with personal growth and self-actualization, promoting both meaningful social change and inner transformation.

Cultural Creatives can be understood as comprising a core group of dedicated, leading activists – 66% of whom are women – and less involved groups of interested supporters, also known as greens and transitionalists. Greens are generally concerned about climate change, social justice, integrative health and ecology. They may be proactive on the logistical front lines of activism, but tend to place less importance on inner psychological, spiritual or existential experience. Like transitionalists, who are still in the process of developing awareness, some may feel torn between their convictions and competing demands. Ray and Anderson’s research suggests a higher correlation between inward soul searching and mindful change-making, as core Cultural Creatives are more likely to contemplate the deeper motivations behind their values.

Moderns & Traditionalists

Moderns and Traditionalists, in contrast, represent the antithesis of Cultural Creative values. Moderns stand for the neo-Enlightenment story of ‘homo economicus’, scientific reductionism, material growth and civilized progress.

Comprising half the US population, Moderns are the largest demographic, engineering the dominant social, political and economic pillars of our current system. Emblematic of the status quo, they are the architects of empires and mercenaries of corporate welfare, upholding established institutions such as big business, banking, politics, the military, mainstream media and the criminal justice system. Moderns tend to be driven by lessons pertaining to the accumulation of power, success, wealth and status – valuing rational self-interest, conformity to established norms and extrinsic motivation above inner-directed ethics and ideals.

Traditionalists are cultural conservatives who represent the far, religious right of politics. This group serves the interests of evangelical fundamentalists, puritan ascetics and lawful militants who tend to be rule-bound, god-fearing, and reactionary to progressive movements. Some Traditionalists may share a common thread with Cultural Creatives through their distrust of corporatocracy, techno-fixes and big government, but for different reasons, such as the belief that secularism is destroying old fashioned “family values.”

Reaching out

Ray and Anderson’s research suggests that Cultural Creative core group efforts might be better spent reaching out primarily to greens and transitionalists who, to some extent, already ‘get it’, as opposed to the 39.7% of Moderns and 15.4% of Traditionalists within the general population.

The most striking thing about Cultural Creatives is their coherence as a subculture, according to Ray and Anderson. However, their diffuse mainstream representation and political influence is clouded by the perception that they are alone in their awareness: “No one is more surprised to hear about the arrival of the Cultural Creatives than themselves. Most of them think that their worldview, values and lifestyle is shared by only a few of their friends; they have little notion that there are 50 million of them.” Qualities which often define Cultural Creatives, such as empathy, gentle tolerance, deep relational commitments, strong attachment to values and personal integrity may inadvertently prevent them from organizing politically – directing their efforts alternatively within private practice, philanthropic NGOs, and counter-cultural movements, where bureaucratic rigidities are less prevalent.

Primals & Transpersonalists 

In addition to the three main subcultures, esoteric schools of thought describe two additional groups, which Ray and Anderson have not covered in their research. According to this view, no worldview is necessarily “better” or “worse” – they merely represent different lessons, and thus varying levels of growth, insight and awareness. I call these groups the ‘Primals’ and ‘Transpersonalists’.

Primals encompass members of the indigenous population who are still living in traditional kinship clans or tribes. Their lessons concentrate on primitive survival and living symbiotically with the land. The Primal worldview is soulful and animistic, endowed with an anima mundi of intrinsic meaning and deep communion with nature.

Transpersonalism represents the perspective which theoretically comes after the time of the Cultural Creatives: an ‘old soul’ world which is primarily oriented towards “being” rather than “doing” or campaigning – a time where teaching, harvesting, philosophical questing, compassionate non-attachment, and the transmission of wisdom take higher prominence. While modernity and traditional religion perceive a fundamental separation between self and other, where nature is systematically conquered and objectified for human benefit, primal and transpersonal consciousness views the self as inseparable from the greater whole and mystical wonders of the universe – orienting towards mindful simplicity and radical acceptance.

Paradigm shift

In The Passion of the Western Mind, Richard Tarnas asserts that all paradigm shifts are conceptually archetypal, as well as socio-historical in nature. Every dominant worldview must undergo its own mythic journey or evolutionary path, passing through developmental sequences of gestation, growth, crisis and revolution: “When a paradigm has fulfilled its purpose, when it has been developed and exploited to its full extent, then it loses its numinosity, it ceases to be libidinally charged, it becomes felt as oppressive, limiting, opaque–something to be overcome–while the new paradigm that is emerging is felt as a liberating birth into a new, luminosly intelligible universe.”

Within the Cultural Creative psyche there is a primal self which needs ritual and sustenance, a Traditional self which regulates boundaries and structure, a Modern self which craves independence and ambition, and a Transpersonal self which seeks unconditional love and wholeness. Cultural Creatives need to be aware of the tendency to become too attached and identified with their convictions for they are prone to becoming overcome with despair when their ideals fail to materialize, believing there is nothing to be gained or learnt from engaging different perspectives.

The Modern worldview is approaching its final limits to growth, catapulting itself into obstinate crisis. But before the seeds of revolution and cultural creative gestation can flourish, lessons of the dominant Modern paradigms need to be authentically integrated. Pushing the limits of affluence and self-interest currently serves a specific purpose for Moderns, in the same way cultivating relationships, inner awareness and social justice does for Cultural Creatives. Such labels and characteristics aren’t fixed; they represent an individual’s internal framework, their primary lessons, and evolving journey.

Jung posited that the unindividuated person believes everyone is, or ought to be, like himself, and that people don’t change until they’ve suffered enough. Likewise, some people need to devote their lives to climbing to the top – projecting their views of success and prosperity onto others – before they begin to question why it isn’t making them happy. Industrial civilization is fundamentally driven to preserve its ‘psychological basic ground’, which must experience the psychic death of its individual, social and collective mythos in order to be transformed.

At some point, activists will inevitably confront the sovereignty of conflicting worldviews and their respective self-serving mythologies, underlying the post-modern collapse of Grand Narratives. We needn’t adopt the nihilistic consequences of post-modernism, surrendering as passive voters and consumers, which Noam Chomsky states would be “pointless” for meeting tangible challenges. Rather, the Cultural Creatives’ influence upon the Information Age signifies a thematic shift towards grassroots participatism, eco-psychological re-integration, and the intentional co-creation of culture. The quest for universal truth is, paradoxically, an emergent, relativistic process, and the imminent epochal meta-narrative we re-imagine will need to encompass a humble, open-hearted acceptance of imperfect plurality.

Further reading: 

1. http://www.kindredcommunity.com/2013/09/same-planet-different-worlds-how-cultural-creatives-are-bringing-forward-the-practical-wisdom-of-conscious-living/

2. http://admin.alternet.org/story/10487/the_cultural_creative_paradox

3. Richard Tarnas, Cosmos and Psyche

4. Richard Tarnas, The Passion of the Western Mind

Schmoozing On My Soapbox

What are some of your most unpopular, potentially controversial views and opinions? I wrote up a list of mine as a therapeutic exercise to practice giving less fucks about encountering negative judgment. My views are all subject to questioning and re-evaluation as new information presents itself. Feel free to refute them for yourself if they unintentionally push your buttons, or contribute to the list with recommendations!

• Voluntary human extinction is preferable to progeny. Choosing to be childfree is an intrinsically noble, ethical and environmentally responsible decision. The population is estimated to reach 11 billion by 2050 - if people would rather not adopt, they need to be honest with their reasons (what about creating a ‘mini me, me, me'?), rather than try to justify why overpopulation isn’t an issue. (Lisa Hymas' article for The Guardian is a fantastic read on the subject.)
• It’s still unsustainable to depend on renewable energy to sustain our current rates of consumption/way of life without downshifting and pursuing a de-growth paradigm. High tech innovations still require the mining of rare earth metals and oil. I'm not suggesting we need to adopt an extreme primitivist lifestyle, just that low tech alternatives with a gentler environmental footprint are preferable. 
• Any economic system, which glorifies competition and commodifies our personhood *causes* (not merely correlates with) depression, anxiety, and a range of mental illnesses. Cooperative support networks and human wellbeing would be more in tact if our socioeconomic system worked more like a library. 
• Unschooling (and progressive models such as Montessori) are the only organised forms of education with any regard for the liberty, individual gifts and democratic representation of its students.
• Culturally sanctioned monogamy enables infidelity, jealousy, possessiveness and competitiveness, while ridiculously expecting that to somehow bring out the best in people. It perpetuates unrealistic myths of “the one" for the primary goal of homogenising the nuclear family. Nothing against folks with a personal preference for monogamy - I’m just strongly against the idea that it’s somehow wrong or immoral to have multiple loving relationships as a healthy alternative. 
• Hardline secular humanism creates as much of a moral and existential vacuum as religion when it alienates us from nature, spiritual meaning, and the transpersonal pursuit of wholeness. 
• Suicidal thoughts can be perfectly rational, and legally assisted euthanasia is justifiable for those who experience mental illness as though it were a terminal condition. By no means am I advocating suicide, or suggesting there is no hope for even the most serious cases. I'm just not dogmatic about the absolute sanctity of life.
• Caring about climate change and the environment is incomplete without adopting a plant-based diet/lifestyle, especially when factory farming is the single largest cause of unsustainable, ecocidal destruction upon our planet. Source: Cowspiracy. 
• People with strong opinions can be profoundly annoying, proud, self-righteous vibekillers (I don’t take myself seriously after all, SO THERE. Will add to this list when I think of more.. ;) 

Elegance Is Refusal

truth labels of fashion revolution

Originally published in SHIFT Magazine Issue #5 "Planetary Boundaries"

the fine arts are commonly viewed as the lifeblood of passionate, creative activism; from powerful documentaries to emotive protest songs, subversive slam poetry and provocative street stencilling — artivist culture exemplifies a visionary playground of aching possibilities. yet fashion recoils in the shadow of bourgeois luxury, consumer indoctrination and mass-produced, marginalising ideals of beauty — undermining the true cost of garment production and its precarious dependence on the natural world.

unlike many deep green environmentalists however, i’m not so quick to dismiss fashion as completely superficial and irrelevant. fashion needs to evolve, ideally, to inspire new meanings for aesthetic expression, politicized bodies, and the diversity and enrichment of culture. in a system where commodified self-image is sold as identity, we owe it to ourselves and the planet to truthfully elucidate the stories of those who weave, stitch, embroider, design and shelter the sartorial fabric of history.

the life-cycle of clothes

Each year around eighty billion garments are produced worldwide, yet two million tonnes of clothing and textile waste ends up in landfill. The majority of clothing items we buy today are made from non-biodegradable, petrochemical-laden fabrics such as nylon, acrylic and polyester, as well as cotton — much of it genetically modified, subject to a quarter of global pesticide use, and produced using child labour. By 2007, meeting global consumer energy demands required 1074 billion kilowatt hours of electricity, for which we needed 132 million tonnes of coal, and between 6-9 trillion litres of water. Toxic dyes and waste from textile mills are responsible for 20 percent of worldwide water pollution, while exposure to harmful dioxins, synthetic azo dyes, fluorinated chemicals, heavy metals and formaldehyde poses a significant cancer risk for sweatshop labourers and consumers.

As our disposable, low quality donations crowd up thrift shops and end up being shipped to Africa ‘for aid’, charities are forced to operate like businesses, stifling the local garment trade of developing nations. Meanwhile credit card debt continues to soar, as haute couture’s traditional two season turnover (summer/spring, autumn/winter) whirlwinds into fifty two seasons (pre-fall, yacht season, pre-yacht, etc.).  A new outfit for every week means that millions of exploited garment workers worldwide – the majority of whom are women – are forced to work harder for less than a living wage while forbidden to unionize for safe working conditions. It means buying into an ever-growing disregard for animal welfare — live-plucking of geese for quilts, shearing merino “battery” sheep in unlivable conditions for wool production, live-skinning snakes, and threatening the extinction of crocodiles for luxury goods, while streamlining the leather trade through use of carcinogenic preservatives.

According to the Ethical Fashion Guide, 89 out of 128 major brands operating in Australia – including retail giants, Myer, David Jones, Kmart, Target and Zara – don’t guarantee workers a living wage; 51 have not boycotted Uzbekistani cotton; and 49 scored less than a C rating for labour rights management.2 Following the anniversary of the Rana Plaza factory disaster, which killed 1133 and injured 2500 workers, #FashionRevolution was born, urging consumers to pledge to boycott sweatshop slavery. The campaign so far has been a viral success, with events held annually in over 100 countries, led by the inaugural message, “Who made your clothes?” April 24th saw social media activists, Instagrammers and bloggers wearing their clothes inside out, snapping selfies and tagging major fast-fashion brands who needed to be held publicly accountable. “If a brand doesn’t have an ethical responsibility section on their site, that’s the simplest way to tell they aren’t very active in that space,” advises Melinda Tually, co-ordinator of the Australian chapter of Fashion Revolution. “Ensure they’re fair trade, Forest Stewardship Council certified, and signed up to the Bangladesh Fire Safety Accord.”

The Sydney event, hosted by Meetup sustainability initiative, Think Act Change, featured a panel of speakers pioneering innovative solutions within the ethical fashion movement. Sydney-based designer, Fiona Roubin founded her own vintage upcycling label, Fairtale after witnessing mountains of clothes being wastefully discarded to dead stock while working at major fast fashion brand Valleygirl, “Every week we had to go through all the clothes we couldn’t sell and cut them up for trash dumping. It was heartbreaking thinking of the good those clothes could’ve gone to, and how easily they could’ve been donated or discounted.” Fiona now scours op shops for inspiration and creates beautiful, unique one-of-a-kind pieces, re-engineered from pre-loved fabrics. Protective outdoors apparel label, Patagonia documents every step of garment production online through the Footprint Chronicles, which aims to educate consumers on the complexity of the supply chain and pave the way for complete transparency in fashion. Philanthropic enterprises such as The Social Outfit (Sydney) and The Social Studio (Melbourne) have contributed to Fashion Revolution by providing vocational education and training in eco-fashion design and production for newly arrived migrants and refugees. 

Although essential, pioneering changes are evolving within fashion to adopt a more socially conscious vision, there remains an underlying tension as to whether “ethical consumption” is conducive to downshifting towards a truly sustainable economy. Businesses face a conflict of interest regarding profitable turnover and the need to invest in a waste-reducing model of cradle to cradle design. Fashion lovers in a post-growth paradigm could eventually try on samples by local designers and place orders on unmade garments; following the entirety of its construction, as opposed to the mass-produced, instant gratification model we have now. The most diligent approach is embracing slow fashion, says Lucie Siegle, author of To Die For: Is Fashion Wearing Out the World, “The Perfect Wardrobe cannot be solely about acquiring new clothes, even those with a tiny ecological footprint and hewn from a dynamic biodegradable fibre. What you don’t buy is as important as what you do.”  

In essence, Fashion Revolution is about having a relationship with our clothes—consciously honouring the skill, craftsmanship and sacrifice of those who have laboured tirelessly and lost their lives, so that we may afford warmth and luxury on our backs. It encompasses the need to mindfully reduce our ecological footprint — ditching glitzy malls for community artisan markets, hosting swap parties, upcycling old fabrics, taking greater care of garments by hand-washing them naturally and only curating pieces we really love. More fundamentally, we need to resist and reimagine existing constructs of beauty, which require us to buy into a throwaway culture of exploitation and excess. Although it will always be easier to seek security in controlling our possessions and self-image, as opposed to fragile relationships and ephemeral achievements, fashion can only become a positive force of change once its values are underpinned by human rights, environmental justice and principled commitment to our planetary boundaries.

Quiet Voices With Loud Ideas

I’m not the kind of person who easily succumbs to film and TV addiction, partially because the majority of on-screen characters I’ve seen tend not to be very relatable. Although Lena Dunham’s Girls received a ton of hype for its biting, absurd, no-holds-barred satire of young adulthood, none of the characters reminded me of anyone I knew. You can imagine my delight when Rachel Tucker’s indie web series, Introverts, made its rounds to the relief of personality-conscious darlings internet-wide. 

The series follows three quirky, introverted housemates, Amy, Waltra and Susan, as they navigate the awkward realm of dating, parties and overbearing extraverts who give TMI about their crazy sex lives. As an introvert, I've never had a problem with being respected from a distance or taken seriously, but it can be a struggle to deal with the perception that we're not all that fun to hang out with, especially when your twenties are all about growing through relationally defining rites of passages. Tucker believes that Hollywood paints shyness and introversion in a stereotypical, unhelpful and one-dimensional light, hoping the series will portray a more humorous side to introverts and the adorable idiosyncrasies they possess, even they're too nervous sometimes to order a pizza. 

Why you shouldn't paint all introverts with the same brush:

There are at least eight different broad categories of introversion (and extraversion) according to the Myers-Briggs type indicator, with a multitude of individual variation in between. Introversion exists on a spectrum, and it is likely that in an extraverted culture like ours, a few of your introverted friends may easily be mistaken for extraverts. Introverts aren't necessarily shy to be themselves, as long as they aren't pressured to act like extraverts or made to feel defective for their preferred style of socialising. 

Your E/I orientation doesn't determine how sociable, open or confident you are. It reflects the amount of energy you naturally invest in being either internally or externally centred, whether that concerns things, ideas or other people. To paraphrase Jung, introverts take the external world for granted in favour of their internal essence, while extraverts take the internal world for granted and readily adapt their priorities to external objectives. When extraverts relate to the outside world as their mental playground, they're engaging a macrocosm of an introvert's relationship to their own thoughts, dreams and feelings.  

Now who wants to help me write a web series about strange, tea-sipping librarians? :3

Why I'm Fired Up About The Hunger Games

Originally published in SHIFT Magazine issue #4 "Cultureshock."

I have an unsponsored kleenex confession to make: i cried during the hunger games. and no, it wasn’t because katniss put peeta in the friend zone; a squandered opportunity at cultural critique is far more tragic. my crying was strictly muted in choked up sniffles to comply with movie theatre etiquette while fidgeting wide-eyed children in the audience sat captive, transfixed in cinematic oblivion.

For those who have been media detoxing, vigilantly eschewing popular culture, The Hunger Games is set in the dystopian, post-collapse civilisation of Panem, a futuristic depiction of North America ruined by climate change, resource depletion, and despotic dictatorship. Following a failed uprising the population is violently pacified into poverty, slavery, and oppression by a fascist, Orwellian police state – appointed to serve a wealthy elite in the technologically advanced Capitol. Child tributes are chosen from each district to fight to the death in the annual Hunger Games as a defeating reminder of the Capitol’s power. The contestants are groomed in the art of spinning a persuasive celebrity PR campaign to gain votes, brainwashing viewers to idolise their entertainment value as freedom fighters in a televised war.

If that doesn’t sound eerily familiar enough, Suzanne Collins was inspired to write the popular young adult series following the 2003 Iraq invasion, where leaked footage of civilian deaths were reported as patriotically as the Super Bowl. While protagonist Katniss grappled with the psychological assault of grief and conscription following the death of her father in a tragic mining disaster, the US was “making the world safe for democracy” (credit to Bernays et al) and conducting peak oil “counter-terrorism” black operations for a Brave New World Order. 

The most ironic thing about the film’s critical reception was, of course, its commercialised fandom. Glossy magazine shoots of Jennifer Lawrence, talk show appearances, and high fashion modelling deals disturbingly parallel her character’s role as a figurehead of mass cultural distraction. The mocking jay brooch, which was given as a keepsake to Katniss as a symbol of the revolution, can be bought online for $9.95, along with video games, costumes, figurines, and speculation of a soon-to-be-opened Hunger Games theme park. (I wonder if families will be able to take their kids for a nice camping trip in the mock bloodbath arena?)

Hollywood is full of grandiose representations of heroic journeys, yet deeper thematic truths are rarely internalised beyond simplistic, war-mongering clichés of retributive morality. I have to concur with [best-selling young adult author] John Green that the Hunger Games falls short of extrapolating its full, untapped, allegorical potential. Collins, whose father suffered severe PTSD after serving in Vietnam, intended for the series to teach kids about the brutal realities of war. Yet our Military-Infotainment Industrial Complex has repressed that reality into a diluted, water-cooler narrative of star-crossed lovers and playground rivalry. While Lord of the Flies conceptualized violence as innate to human sociobiology, the most ruthless, bloodthirsty child soldiers in the Hunger Games were understood to be victims of their fascist programming. Pacifistic, reconciliatory ideals incorporating empathy and understanding towards ‘the enemy’ are unacceptable, if not dangerous, to an imperialist agenda. Hence the film’s critical message is lost within its own transnational public relations matrix.

The tragedy of the Hunger Games is not that it is emotionally violent, but that its context is perceived to be inconsequentially fictional. The legacy of Panem mirrors our own Sixth Great Extinction and systemic neurosis so precisely; we fail to recognise it is even happening.  

Afterthoughts

“ya know, i’d heard so much about the hunger games, but never watched until your article submission came. i then watched the first two back to back and really saw what you were getting at. it’s such a shame, because this series has awesome potential to teach a generation a much-needed lesson or few. frankly i thought it was genius packaged for hollywood, so not quite where i would have pitched it, but precisely where it needed to be pitched to reach a mass audience without actually losing the message/s. i do hope that even if many people don’t fully internalize the messages yet that they will when the shit hits the fan for them and they are forced to reflect. the ironies are just too bitter and i could just see you tearing your hair out in cassandra-like frustration over how few people will take it all as intended. perhaps the makers could have done better to shy away fron the merchandising and celebrity culture of it all, and the actors could have done their bit on that front too. but then there is the catch-22 of needing to promote… sigh…” 

— a fitting email response from shift editor, kari @the overthinker