The Network is The Strategy, Part One: Last Exit From La-La Land

We have been living in La-La Land for years. 

La-La Land is a world of our own construction, where we think things that are completely impossible might happen, rather than understanding how things really are.

A world where being ‘right’ about issues is all one needs to worry about, because ‘right’ is better than ‘wrong’, and will therefore eventually prevail.

La-La Land is a place where people don’t try too hard to change anything, because La-La Land has made life quite good actually for many people involved in the business of ‘change’. 

But La-La land, we have a problem, don’t we. 

Because we used to be able to hide things at the back of our minds: things that we knew didn’t work but were too difficult to deal with. Things like climate, or inequality. Here in Britain we also somehow managed to cope with fourteen years of the worst government we’ve ever seen – an unholy amalgam of privilege, ineptitude and ideological malice. The polar opposite of alchemy, where base metals were turned to shit on a daily basis. 

How did people cope? 

Many involved in the business of ‘change’ kept calm and carried on. 

At Absurd Intelligence we’ve spent two years co-creating a plan to bust out of La-La Land. We have already found a bunch of thinkers, artists, economists, scientists and faith leaders; writers, democracy experts, film-makers and campaigners; musicians, community workers, business people, politicians (and more) who agree it’s a half decent plan. 

If you’ve not been on that journey with us, maybe some historical context is useful.

Carry On Business As Usual

Keeping calm and carrying on has become something of a comforting national narrative, a part of our common story. But it isn’t looking like the best strategy any more, is it. Here are four reasons:

1. The Broligarchy, having told us they would turn America fascist via Project 2025, are now doing exactly what they promised
2. Keir and the Starmeroids, having promised “Change”, are now not doing what they promised (simultaneously sounding like a terrible Broligarchy tribute band)
3. Turns out climate wasn’t a hoax after all
4. [______________________] feel free to add your own.

All of the above should be seen in the grand tradition of Keeping Calm and Carrying On bullshit.

‘Carrying on’ in the face of an existential threat had form, even by 1939, when the poster above left was printed, but not deployed. In fact, it was a phrase commonly used during the First World War. And far more interesting than the exhortation to keep going was the context in which the intention was framed. On 4 August 1914, the day the First World War was declared, Chancellor of the Exchequer David Lloyd George reassured a group of bankers that the policy of the British government was “to enable the traders of this country to carry on business as usual.”

Less than a month later an advert for Iron Jelloids was already asking: “Are you ready and fit to tackle your everyday duties and to carry on “Business as usual”?

First Lord of The Admiralty Winston Churchill gave a speech at Guildhall on 9 November where he said: “The British people have taken for themselves this motto – ‘Business carried on as usual during alterations on the map of Europe’.” 

By 1915, The Times was saying: “No more stern test of any man’s mettle could be imagined than he should have to “carry on” when death is doubly present in the mines below the water and the shells bursting above … Those fishermen, too, who have continued to follow their calling have found that “business as usual” has not been without its added risks.” Carrying On and Business as Usual were absolutely entwined, Herbert Asquith’s government demanding patriotic Britons see the war as a continuation of normal life.

It’s a story oft-repeated over the ensuing century in different guises, but with similar intent. From “there is no real alternative” to “build back better” to “growth” – carrying on with business as usual is still presented as the only acceptable (and a particularly British) way to navigate human existence. No wonder Mark Fisher kicked-off Capitalist Realism with the Žižek-referencing: “It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism”.

Thatcher’s Trickledown

And it’s easy to see why so many people involved in ‘change’ have found it possible to keep calm and carry on: (adopts Thatcher voice) “I believe people accept there’s no real alternative”.  The flow of resources into activism (by which I mean the full spectrum of change-making actors) has for too long been a top-down affair, determined by vested interests, philanthropists or government grants, all with multiple funder-defined agendas, and hoops through which to jump. And when I say flow, of course I mean trickle. There’s never enough – either measured by cash or time. Work that is necessarily emergent is beset by constant emergency. People who should be allies are forced into competition with each other, when they should be enabled into collaboration. 

Such challenges amplify a deeply weird co-dependence with business as usual, for who can afford to do the work in a landscape that isn’t adequately funded? Those who can afford to work for bugger-all. The older, richer, posher perhaps (have you ever met a charity board?), or the younger, less experienced, just starting out. The former are (by no conscious fault of their own I hasten to add) likely to be stuck in their own version of Blake’s “mind-forg’d manacles” as conservative and change-averse; the latter are racing towards penury and burn-out, soon to be forced back onto the hamster wheel so that they might put food on the table.

In turn, funders are able to preserve the ends-justify-the-means top-down model of philanthropy, while maintaining the requisite wriggle-room should circumstances change. One only needs to look at the US tech-activism-funding taps turning off since Trump 2.0 to see how precarious the model is, and who suffers. 

Carry On Business As Usual does a remarkable job for those who seek to maintain the status quo. It simultaneously keeps people in a collective doldrums while exacerbating the individualised nature of our society. A double-whammy of inactivity-inducing challenge: more alchemical shit.

This needs to change. Exiting La-La Land requires more than piecemeal drops of aid. We see every day a growing willingness for people to work collaboratively, and people inside institutions desperate to do the joined-up, long-term work society requires. The old, siloed ways of operating aren’t fit for purpose any more. As we increasingly collectively understand the intersecting nature of the crises that beset us, we need an ecosystemic approach.

No Such Thing As...

It’s been 38 years since the aforementioned (last time, I promise) Thatcher stated that there was “no such thing as society” in an interview with Woman’s Own. As with most tropes, even the most cursory investigation reveals far more nuance than the (inevitably misquoted) sound bite. Go down that rabbit hole if you can face reading 10,000-odd words, risking reanimating her once safely six-feet-under spectre. 

Perhaps the most interesting (and concise) part of the above link from the Margaret Thatcher Foundation is a clarifying statement issued to Sunday Times, published 10 July 1988:

“All too often the ills of this country are passed off as those of society. Similarly, when action is required, society is called upon to act. But society as such does not exist except as a concept. Society is made up of people. It is people who have duties and beliefs and resolve. It is people who get things done. She prefers to think in terms of the acts of individuals and families as the real sinews of society rather than of society as an abstract concept. Her approach to society reflects her fundamental belief in personal responsibility and choice. To leave things to ‘society’ is to run away from the real decisions, practical responsibility and effective action.”

The real kicker, in what might arguably be read as an interesting ideological take on responsibility (and will consciously have been set out with that intent), comes in the last two sentences. All a set-up for the fuck-you punchline.

Similar to a meth-ravaged Führer sowing the seeds for his generals to cause chaos and death in his wake, we can see Thatcher’s words embodied in the Ogilvy & Mather-designed-for-BP concept of the carbon footprint. This was Greenwash par excellence: if the end of the world is coming, we only have ourselves to blame. We chose to drive that car, go on that holiday, buy the stuff made of plastic. It’s your footprint, and you can’t call for change when you are complicit. That’s not cricket.

So things are left to “personal responsibility and choice”, thereby actually running away from “the real decisions, practical responsibility and effective action.” Plus ça change for government doublethink.

And yes, it is OK to mention the Nazis: remember Reason 1 above? The situation is real. Also: our government says we can’t afford £5 billion for the disabled. Ring any bells?

I-den-ti-ty is the crisis, can't you see?

We went on a bit of a history tour there. Don’t fret, La-La Land isn’t simply a place populated by right wing ideologues cracking the whip. The Left get a look-in too!

Revisiting Mark Fisher’s other notorious work Exiting The Vampire Castle for this piece was a right blast from the past. I’d not read it since Extinction Rebellion, and while some of the references (Russell Brand) lend it a weird period quality (albeit pre-cogging Brand’s ‘extreme’ left > right trajectory), there was much identity-driven insight that resonated with leftist criticism that set out to stymie XR in its ascendence.

TL;DR – this abstract from the link above:

“We need to learn, or re-learn, how to build comradeship and solidarity instead of doing capital’s work for it by condemning and abusing each other. This doesn’t mean, of course, that we must always agree – on the contrary, we must create conditions where disagreement can take place without fear of exclusion and excommunication.”

Now that even Novara Media is heralding the Death of Woke and the End of Identity (the Joe interview below is nearly an hour, but you get the gist in the first minute), might the progressive ‘side’ be better placed to “create conditions”?

To give Ash her due, she was always a closet XR fan, even if the Lovebomb framing below played into some of the most divisive attacks on Extinction Rebellion’s nonviolent tactics back in 2019.

But look, we’re not in that time any more, nor in any other set-ups we might’ve helped (or helped start) along the way. Nor are we in the half-decent careers we previously had as writers, journalists, graphic and fashion designers, academics and more. And Absurd Intelligence has no interest in kicking-off a political argument. All this preamble is intended to do is establish a simple premise:

The right has fucked things, the left has fucked things, the centrists have fucked things, and society has been atomised into intentionally helpless individualism. Climate doesn’t give a shit about any of that and IS NOT A HOAX, nor is its wrath as far away as all denominations of La-La Land would like to think. 

Oh, and whoops fascism.

So now that it’s taken 2000 words to establish what it is we’re running away from, what the fuck is it we’re running towards?

A Theory of Change for Theories of Change
The world of change loves a theory. It links action to outcome to impact. Theories of change are measurable, they let people construct an equation, something like:

Effort + money in = visible change in the world

It makes total sense. Everyone knows what they are doing. We can measure progress, direct resources appropriately, report back to people. 

Theories of Change enable everyone to focus resources on what works. 

Err…

What exactly

is working

about 2025?

Here’s the problem with Theories of Change. In tying effort and money to visible impact there is unnecessary ‘market pressure’ brought to bear on outcomes that are deemed to be achievable. Which in turn drives incrementalism: better small wins that chip away at problems than the risk of expensive failures.

Don’t shoot for the moon, that’s impossible. Aim for something small, because that might actually happen. 

Now don’t get me wrong, sometimes a butterfly flaps its wings and all that – but a siloed, isolated, incremental landscape, where none of the protagonists know each other, or have any chance of organising together, will err on the side of Business As Usual.

Rather than an ability to strategically and collaboratively address The Shitshow in its entirety, whole generations of changemakers are reduced to a solo Groundhog Day game of whack-a-mole. 

If you’ve been (or are) this cat, here’s a Theory of Change that might resonate:

If we carry on. (action)

With business as usual. (outcome)

We will all be dead. (visible change in the world)

And the process of becoming dead will be unimaginably awful. (impact)

So let’s collectively get over ourselves and create those conditions for a different reality. 

As I wrote earlier, at Absurd Intelligence we’ve spent two years co-creating a plan to bust out of La-La Land. And we’ve connected already with architects, poets, entrepreneurs, diplomats and finance experts; tech justice activists, producers, philosophers and sociologists; educators, researchers, actors, landowners (and more) who agree it’s a half decent plan.

It’s ambitious. It’s strategic. It’s imaginative. 

It’s utterly collaborative.

If that sounds interesting stay tuned to the Absurd Intelligence newsletter. 

Next time we’ll share the plan: The Network is the Strategy.

Funding update: as this article was being written, an application was made to a climate foundation, who turned us down. It happens. It’s part of the whack-a-mole of Business As Usual, and a massive drain on (under) resources. 

We asked for feedback:

KEEP CALM everyone, and

Elsewhere in Absurdity...

A few highlights of what we’ve been up to this week:

• Nuala and Alanna have been doing vital media work for the women-led Citizen’s Arrest Network, the brilliant new environmental crime enforcement group who have made 8 (and counting!) citizen’s arrests, handing over draft indictment papers accusing top executives at international fossil-fuel conglomerates of public nuisance, including the oil majors British Petroleum and Royal Dutch Shell, and at Thames Water – follow on Tiktok / X / Bluesky / Instagram for updates;
• On Monday Charlie went to see Kyoto @sohoplace and it made him really grumpy about how many people have made it their life’s work to frustrate progress on climate. It’s an electrifying play though;
• And Today (Thursday) Daze is on a panel of Vital Minds at the Science Gallery to explore how we can create hopeful futures for the environment – get yourself along!