So. It’s 2024

Everyone needs to start somewhere, or sometime. On occasion, one might need to start several times before the thing becomes a habit.

Every time I’ve tried blogging, it’s fizzled out pretty quickly, often due to the pressure I put on myself to do it well. The weight of unrealistic expectations, or something like that.

Well. Fuck pressure. Fuck expectations.

I’m going to try just writing. Writing about whatever comes to mind, writing just for the simple reason that I want to get into the habit of writing. That means some of these posts are going to be god-awful, and I’ll have to train myself to live with that — and maybe, just maybe, as time goes on, some of them might be good. We’ll see.

There will be a mix. Sometimes politics, sometimes culture, sometimes philosophy, sometimes pedagogy. And sometimes just a random rant.

And there will be things to write about, as time goes on. I am, and have always been, one who pays attention to what is going on in the world.

I’m concerned about hypocrisy, such as the abject cowardice and hypocrisy shown by the Western world when our governments and thought leaders condemn Russia for their invasion of Ukraina but fail to do the same when Israel invades Gaza and slaughters Palestinian civilians by the thousands.

I am concerned by the rise of the militant and populistic far right in many countries, and often think about the roots of this rise, and how it’s connected to the technocratic centre which arose through the 80s and replaced the democratic control have over their lives with an increasingly regulated market economy where the rules are inflexible for individuals and are rigged to ensure global capital can operate freely. This comes to the fore in the phenomenon of “enshittification” as first identified by Cory Doctorow — a phenomenon I believe applies to many areas of the economy and not just online platforms. Here in Norway, a recent example is the privatization of the railroads, which leads to a worse experience for travellers, a massive increase in high-salaried directors of the many companies and subcompanies that now operate in a field where there previously was just one, state-owned company.

I’m concerned about the fragmentation of and in-fighting between the various groups that make up the left. I consider myself a socialist, albeit one with strong leanings towards the anarchist philosophies of Emma Goldman and Murray Bookchin. As such, I believe that social change and social justice must come as a result of collective organisation and action, and liberalistic philosophies that focus on the individual can become far too self-centred and thus antithetical to a struggle for emancipation and justice. Far too many fights in the so-called “culture wars” seem to be between those who favour collective solidarity and those who favour individual emancipation.

I’ll also be exploring pedagogical philosophies this year. I’m reading theories of creativity and seeing them in relation to the emergence of 4E cognition. I’ll be attempting to incorporate these into my research on fine arts pedagogy and seeing how all this relates to teaching and artistic research in a collective art form like film. It all begins with Dewey…

I think that’s enough for now. I’m sure other, random distractions will pop up (like sports, on occasion) and perhaps I’ll sometimes just jot down something about my dog.