Maybe AI can save us (by accident)

Posted on by Paul Burgess

Given the rapid growth of generative AI and society’s addiction to manipulative, corporately controlled online platforms, you might think this is the end of skilled creativity. If anyone can make a film or a song or a novel in seconds, what’s left for skilled artists and craftspeople? 

Well, quite a lot, I think. 

Yes, we need to fight tooth and nail against the wholesale theft of our work by tech corporations, the loss of livelihoods, and the flooding of culture with soulless, vacuous simulacrums of creativity. Let alone the ecological damage and data harvesting. But I keep thinking about how MP3s and file sharing were going to kill live music, which has, in fact, flourished. At the time, it felt that, after the initial excitement waned, the ubiquity of downloads ended up increasing the value of in-person experience. 

AI is now a spectacle in both the everyday and Debordian senses of the word. But as it is revealed as a kind centripetal force, pushing culture into smooth unoriginality, it will, I believe, remind us of our profound need for human community and connection, and for originality, creativity and craft. It will increase the cultural value of things evidently made by humans, using their skill and expressing something original, meaningful and authentic. It will help us appreciate the rough edges – the grit in the oyster – which allow art to take us to new and challenging places; places we didn’t expect to go.

That is good in itself and gives me hope for the creative sector, both professional and participatory, whether it’s live performance, art manifestly made by human hands, author readings and book signings, craft workshops, communal music-making and dancing… All the myriad points of creative connection that help hold society together.

But I have another hope, too; that if more and more people step away from the circus of corporate spectacle, see the atomised, narcissistic and easily exploitable society it fosters, and seek meaning and fulfilment through human creativity – especially co-creativity – we may also find we’re nurturing the conditions needed for meaningful, radical political change.

Does environmentalism transcend left and right?

Posted on by Paul Burgess
A view of hills shrouded by cloud, with a patch of early-morning sunlight, and a goat in the foreground

Back in the 90s when, as a teenager, I was first getting into green politics, it was often said that green would transcend the ‘grey’ politics of left and right. You don’t hear that much any more. Maybe we should. Is right-wing environmentalism part of the answer to the multiple ecological crises the world faces? Can we meaningfully create a consensus outside our socio-economic political differences and find ways to work together?

I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently because of a discussion on the topic I was part of. I will boil the conversation down to its two main arguments. The proposition, as it were, is that we exist in a bubble of other like-minded, progressive, evidence-led people while, in the wider world, people are falling for dishonest and divisive far-right rhetoric. It is as if we live in separate universes with entirely different understandings of reality. The counterargument is to acknowledge that people on the right also care about the environment – some of them, at least – and start to build a consensus that transcends the old left-right binary. You can have right-wing and left-wing environmental politics. Rightwing environmentalism might look like Tories caring about the countryside, for example, or eco-fascism, or a belief that capitalism will come up with a green technofix.

Continue reading Does environmentalism transcend left and right?

Generative AI and Nature Disconnection – some thoughts

Posted on by Paul Burgess

I’m thinking a bit more about AI… and I’m no Luddite, by the way. I’ve been an early adaptor since Roydon County Primary School got its first computer sometime in the 80s. Also, to be clear, I’m aware that AI, as a tool in the right hands, has the potential for good. In medical diagnosis, for example.

But…

Generative AI is different from what’s gone before. There’s the extractivist theft from people who make a living from their creativity. And the enormous amount of carbon it emits. And, of course, the way it can be used to create fake news, manipulate voters, creep under the radar of broadcast regulators and fundamentally re-write our relationship with the truth. Not to mention how it exponentially increases the advantages of those privileged with access to tech. And the fact that it makes us more productive (in capitalist terms) at a time when we really need to learn how to celebrate and sustain what we already have. Oh, and the fact that, at some point, it’ll pass the Turing test, and we’ll have a massive ethical and legal dilemma on our hands. 

That, however, is not all.

This AI-generated dystopia sits within a much wider context of alienation and atomisation – from each other, from society and from nature – that has been gathering pace for centuries but has been accelerated by high-tech neoliberalism, from smartphones and Amazon to fake lawns, plastic-wrapped bananas and robot pets. 

Of course, some of these mod cons offer huge, even life-saving benefits to individuals with specific needs. But their cumulative effect on society leads to a kind of Nature disconnection. And that’s what I want to talk about because I think AI has the potential to accelerate this to a frightening degree.

Continue reading Generative AI and Nature Disconnection – some thoughts

Fly, you fools! (or How Popular Culture Can Help Tell the Climate Crisis Story)

Posted on by Paul Burgess

We win or lose through the stories we tell. They’re what changes the world. And the most important story we need to tell today is the one that gets the people of Planet Earth to take meaningful action on the ecological breakdown.

The stories we’re offering now, however, aren’t working.

It’s fine to tell those who respect science about how we’re on track for catastrophe, because they understand evidence. It’s fine to tell those already awake to social and environmental injustice how climate change is driven by our economic system and the power structures that maintain it, because that fits their existing worldview. But what’s the story for everyone else?

Humans are brilliant at denial. Being able to put aside thoughts of suffering and mortality, to compartmentalise and not feel everyone else’s suffering too deeply, helps keep us sane. It seems that’s how the majority of people respond when faced with the facts of impending apocalypse too, and it’s understandable. Climate change is deeply frightening and it’s coming at us like juggernaut with broken brakes.

Continue reading Fly, you fools! (or How Popular Culture Can Help Tell the Climate Crisis Story)

Jeziorna, Galicia

Posted on by Paul Burgess

There’s a village I look at occasionally on Google Maps. I’ve even had a ‘walk’ up and down its main street, where there’s hardly anyone around and the sun is always out. A few places to eat and drink, a handful of shops. Lots of space. Lots of greenery. And because the land is flat and most the houses are single story, lots of sky.

It’s just 30 mins drive from Ternopil on the road to Lviv. Not the most direct route from Kyiv to the Polish border, but not too far out the way either. Ternopil has been in the news a little; people have fled to it, through it and from it. A great many people must have passed through this little village too, on their way westwards.

It’s the village my great grandfather came from, before he and his parents also headed west. For quite a while they lived here in Bethnal Green, which means I now live within a kind of invisible map of where that side of my family lived, worked, went to school…

Continue reading Jeziorna, Galicia

Creativity and the Real Power of Saying ‘No’

Posted on by Paul Burgess

One of the most persuasive kinds of mendacity occurs when a misleading statement is, at face value, true. There’s a reason why it’s not just ‘the truth’ we ask for, but also ‘the whole truth and nothing but the truth’.

An article I saw a while back (but have now lost*) argued that a key indicator for creative success is the ability to say ‘no’ in order to refuse distractions and focus on work. The particular trigger for this was that a researcher had approached a bunch of creative people to find out what made them tick and had been struck by how many of them either didn’t get back to him or refused on the basis that they were too busy being creative. The implication is that by refusing to get involved with other stuff you maximise your creative time and keep your focus, ergo saying ‘no’ is good for creativity. Well, kinda. You have to have a lot else going on besides saying ‘no’; you need decent ideas, high standards, tenacity and the rest.

Continue reading Creativity and the Real Power of Saying ‘No’

A Letter From an Old Democracy to One Struggling to be Born

Posted on by Paul Burgess

Dear students,

I’m writing to you from 5,929 miles away in London, while you risk both your safety and your liberty in the struggle for democracy in Thailand. I worry about your wellbeing, of course, but mainly I’m proud of you for standing up for what you believe in.

I want to say a few words to those of you I’ve had the honour to teach, and to any others who are interested in the perspective of someone with many years’ experience of British politics. I want to say something about why I think democracy matters. It may not be for the reasons you think.

Continue reading A Letter From an Old Democracy to One Struggling to be Born

How Not to Save the World

Posted on by Paul Burgess

There’s a vanguardist streak in the environmental movement which I think does more harm than good. It can lead to an alienating kind of arrogance that we can’t afford. We desperately need more people on our side if we are to build up the critical mass of public opinion necessary for the scale of change we need. Not that we don’t need people to take the lead. But taking a lead is not an end in itself. It’s pointless if you don’t take people with you. The vanguard is not the movement; the vanguard is a possible catalyst for the movement.

There are many lessons to learn from the twin fiascos of Trump and Brexit: one is that people act on their feelings, not on rational analysis. Another thing to consider is that most of the damage inflicted on the environment is carried out by wealthy people and corporations. It’s important for the rest of us to be good, green consumers, but that’s nothing compared to the scale of change we need, which is radical and systemic. Basically, we need government action and, while protest and publicity stunts are fine for bringing issues to attention, large-scale change is only going to happen if enough people care. Most politicians will only do what gets votes. Put all these things together and, as I’ve been saying for a long time, the way to save the environment is for people to want it to be saved. They need to feel it’s their struggle, to choose to make the necessary sacrifices now so that future generations may live bearable lives. Continue reading How Not to Save the World

On the Loss of Citizenship

Posted on by Paul Burgess

This is probably my last night here as a citizen. My family’s been coming here since my aunt worked in Italy in the 70s. It’s a modest, friendly ex-mining village in a beautiful corner of the Alps: lovely for walking in the summer and cross-country skiing in the winter. It has a downhill slope too, which is OK but not great. And good mountain-biking, if you like that kind of thing. It’s unpretentious. It’s not expensive, as these things go. Some crazy Brits and others come to risk their lives climbing frozen waterfalls but most the people who come here are Italian. It’s very white and I’d guess a fair few residents voted for the fascists of La Lega. There’s some poverty. People are generally kind, and go out their way to be helpful. There are things that drive me crazy and many things I love, the same as in the UK.

We have long-standing friends here. We always stay in the same apartment. My aunt knows most the village. I haven’t been coming here as long as her but when I go to the shops I meet people I know. My aunt comes here twice a year, and after she retired she spent 11 months here. She sometimes gives free English lessons. And when she’s been ill, or had a problem with the car, or had any other kind of trouble, there’s never been any shortage of help. We’re not locals, but we feel at home here. And of course we share citizenship. You see more regional than national flags here, and you also see plenty of EU ones. Continue reading On the Loss of Citizenship

What is Green Criticism?

Posted on by Paul Burgess

The last time I was purposefully academic was probably when I sat my finals. Even then, we’d only been educated in the historical contexts of the writers we studied; there was little contemporary theory. Since then, I’ve taught at half a dozen universities at least, but always as a practitioner. Academically cutting edge I am not! But I do want to understand how the work I and my colleagues do in the arts fits with the urgent need, in the face of imminent climate breakdown, to view society as part of an ecological system. The question ‘what is green criticism?’ therefore seems to me to a pressing one. Green thought has provided us with a sophisticated analysis of society and its relationship to planet. How can we apply it to artistic practice?

Around the time I did my English degree, there were some books emerging that used ecology as way to approach literature: Jonathan Bate’s Romantic Ecology springs to mind, and Kim Taplin’s Tongues in Trees; I probably should re-read them. The aim of these books was to understand how writers related to nature: how ‘green’ they were. But that approach is about ecology; it’s not employing ecology as a critical tool. I wrote an extended essay in my third year about depictions of landscape in literature and painting at the time of the first generation Romantics. I was interested in the sublime and the beautiful, not out of any kind of swooning romanticism but because they suggest two ways of modelling our desire for the external. I’d noticed how some writers saw nature as a force that transformed the tiny figures traversing its landscapes, while some saw it as something that framed or provided a kind of extension to/illustration of heroic anthropocentrism. I was somewhat out on a limb, frankly. It probably wasn’t my best work. And it was also mainly ‘about’ the natural world. Yet it made me realise that there are analyses of nature which can – and probably should – be be applied to any kind of discourse.

So what might real green criticism be? Is anyone writing about how ecology could be a useful way to look at culture?  Continue reading What is Green Criticism?