A few choice comments from people last week. First an invented word from the poet Matt Harvey whom I met on Thursday. Dystopiary.
Second, a comment about a comment made by Eric Pickles about the money that could be saved by the public sector if more people worked from home.
“Working from home is like being under house arrest”
BTW, I’ve figured out what the Wall Street and St Paul’s protests might be about. Unfocused dismay.
I’ve been thinking about the #occupy movement. Bear with me.
All actions result from the the following process: Something happens and a thought results. A thought creates a feeling. A feeling results in an action.
#Occupy is an action due to a feeling. I would agree that the feeling is dismay. And more than a little anger.
Thanks to peaceful outlooks by the organizers, I suspect that the action here is to issue a call to conscience by joining together and speaking out.
Just a thought.
I agree and think that feelings don’t get as much attention as the often deserve. I walked around the St Paul’s camp in London a while ago and the posters were interesting. Some were what some would expect, but others had more…feeling. The one I remember, above all others, was “Capitalism, we need to talk.” I liked that.
What I think this movement needs is a leader. I know it’s supposed to be leaderless, networked and fluid up to a point, but my feeling is that struggles and revolutions have a habit of crystallising themselves in a single image or person. Moreover, once in a generation someone just shows up out of nowhere and articulates what a very large number of people are feeling but cannot express in words.