As the temperature rises, how do we step down from hotheaded aggression?
I’ve been thinking about the time I spent in the mountains at the end of July, and the connected problems we are experiencing with rising temperatures. You may have seen the photograph that did the rounds a couple of weeks ago where a couple returned to the same spot in the Alps at the same time of year, fifteen years apart:
The story has two axes: the shocking retreat of the glacier in such a short period of time… and the vitriol aimed at the couple for posting the photo.
At the very same time, following the horrendous stabbing and killing of young girls at a dance class, tensions boiled over into riots on the streets of the UK, with shops looted, police attacked and people attempting to attack hotels housing migrants.
Pouring petrol onto this was Steven Yaxley-Lennon (aka Andrew McMaster, aka Paul Harris, aka Wayne King, aka Stephen Lennon, aka Tommy Robinson) who has himself become a migrant as he fled before having to appear in court in the UK to face charges of breaking a High Court order. Giving support to the petrol throwers with a bunch of dog-whistle ‘whataboutary’ is Nigel Farage, who is now a Member of Parliament, but seems to spend more time in the US rooting for Trump and recording videos on social media that he does actually helping constituents.
And pumping the petrol to accelerate the fires? The algorithms of Facebook and Twitter, which are programmed for antagonism. It’s literally a feature. So no surprise that mis/disinformation about the perpetrator of the knife attacks spread more quickly than the truth, nor that Elon Musk (who is smelling worse and worse every day), decided to intervene with a prediction that civil war was inevitable in the UK… Days before he held a very clunky, meandering and shot-full-of-lies ‘chat’ with Donald Trump – a man who hated on Twitter so badly he set up his own social network – and spent a good while telling untruths about migration and climate change.
In every sense – literal, metaphorical and all the other -als – we need to turn down the heat. But how?
Many years ago I did a bunch of courses in thermodynamics as part of a degree in engineering. Getting rid of heat is a major engineering problem. Two things come to mind: speed and dissipation.
Capitalism is ‘running hot’ – and this is partly a function of algorithmic and automation technologies. Van drivers gun their engines because they have to get those parcels delivered in x amount of time if they aren’t to be penalised, if they are to get a shift the next day. Delivery riders take illegal shortcuts – riding mopeds up onto pavements and across parks because the economics are cut so tight and the margins are so small that they are under enormous pressure to keep up.
This intensification that so many will experience in their work – and spilling out onto roads and parks and in supermarket aisles – is a function of acceleration, which is being driven by the desperate profit motive of technology companies who are needing to get returns back to investors.
So the first thing we need to do is to slow down. Read more slowly. Respond online more slowly. Take time to consider different sides, and what the truth of a matter might be. Very difficult to do in a tough economic climate, so this needs to be matched by a political will that promotes regulation, that supports people to be able to flourish and be better.
That slowness will have environmental benefits too. Fast fashion. Fast food. Fast travel. Time needs to be taken if heat is to be reduced.
But we also need heat to be dissipated. And that’s where I’m convinced that rebuilding mid-level community structures is vital. It’s in these wider, in-person networks that the high energy and angst can be moderated and cooled.
I’ve written about this extensively in the last chapter of the book. Hope you’ll enjoy reading. I’m speaking about it – and this issue of cooling down – at Greenbelt Festival at the end of next week. If you’re going to be there, see you there. I’ll have some copies with me.
In slowness,
K
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