All Together Now
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CULTURE All together now Our social networks are deluging us with data; surely we can do more than simply make a profit from it, asks Pat Kane cooperators”; this has been our Monbiot enriches his biology- Out of the Wreckage: A new politics crucial adaptive advantage. compels-community thesis with for an age of crisis by George Mutual aid is the “central, real-life examples. We are told Monbiot,Verso; crucial fact about humankind”, how time banks in Japan have Assembly by Michael Hardt and says Monbiot. “Yet we remain, to promoted bartering and the Antonio Negri, Oxford University Press; an astonishing degree, unaware of creation of self-help Technically Together: Reconstructing it.” He makes scientifically literate communities, and how community in a networked world by points about our storytelling theAustralian men’s shed Taylor Dotson, MIT Press capacity – the way we use stories movement is improving public AS POLITICAL, economic and to help us connect our emotional health; we hear of car-free “pocket environmental controversies responses to our capacity for parks” in South Korea, and the bubble and fizz around us, we rational thinking. way “reading rooms” organised cannot fail to know what our by The New Institute in Rotterdam power elites think; their “ If we really understood are building conversations across pronouncements and solutions how community works, cultures. are given full reign in the could that be the basis of In the UK, the communal mainstream media. Yet what a new political vision?” picture is complex and exciting: about the response “from there are food assemblies, streets below” – that is, from activists From these insights, Monbiot reclaimed as playing grounds, including improved mental and and communities? wants to build a grand narrative of local currencies, and the physical health, reduced alcohol People may ask this question change, with a pro-community grassroots projects of the and drug dependency, and a fall in out of social concern, seeking account of human nature at its transition town movement. One repeat crime. representation for the under- centre. He hopes a “politics of initiative in the London borough This combination of science represented. Or they may see belonging” will dislodge the of Lambeth argues for the efficacy and practice feels like an electoral those people as a source of fresh general assumption – installed by of community self-organisation. strategy waiting to be picked up. data. A better understanding of the post-war New Right – that it is Devoting a mere 0.1 per cent of In the UK, one might imagine people could, after all, bring about our competitive individualism public spending to it saw returns Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party, the improved policies. If we that drives societies and Greens, or civic-nationalist parties understood how community and economies forward. Community-based currencies like like the SNP and Plaid Cymru common endeavour work – to Like the diligent journalist he is, the Brixton pound are on the rise being particularly eager. strengthen people’s character, say, Yet with only a mild tweak of or to inspire them to be emphasis in Monbiot’s basic idea, enterprising and ambitious – one could imagine quite a could that be the basis of a new different politics of communality political vision? emerging. Three new books make the case The fact is, humans are also for the power of the communal, “deeply weird” in their capacity but display fascinating overlaps for imagination, creativity and and clashes. abstract thought. We hunger for George Monbiot’s Out of the stories that make sense, but we Wreckage draws its arguments are also consciously artful with from neuroscience, psychology them ourselves, and reflexively and evolutionary biology. He alert to being caught up in the begins by saying humans are stories of others. As an account of “deeply weird” among animals in the damage that stress and their “astonishing degree of isolation can cause, Monbiot’s altruism”. We are the “supreme AMBROSI/LUZPHOT/EYEVINE ANNA chapter on “alienation” has much 42 | NewScientist | 4 November 2017 For more books and arts coverage, visit newscientist.com/culture capitalism are largely parasitic on, turn, instead, towards a bearded extracting profits from the thrum patriarch. Aiming to seize those of our mutual responses. As we boring old ramparts of the state, tap away on social networks like the leader of the Labour Party Facebook, Twitter and Google, for promised them the eminently example, our rich interactions are attractive policy of ending tuition mined for advertiser-friendly fees in further education. patterns by these same “Oh Jeremy Corbyn” might well corporations. But there are also have been the community sectors of what Hardt and Negri anthem of the year. But it was call “affective” labour – care, retail sung by those who pined for a less and education sectors – where indebted road to career progress, the success of the enterprise as much as by those who would depends on channelling the embrace the anarchic and emotional and group “machinic” future anticipated by commitment of the workers. Hardt and Negri. What if that collaborative commitment was pointed in a different direction, somewhere Creative destruction beyond the market or even the In the meantime, the regulators state? For that, new institutions steadily regulate. In Technically might need to be invented – or Together, Taylor Dotson is a little perhaps old ones given new teeth. too exhaustive in his quest to Both Monbiot and the authors of dethrone key Silicon Valley Assembly seek to establish a zone assumptions. He argues, for of resources that can support example, that “creative these invigorated communities, destruction” is all that tech called “the commons”. innovation has to offer, borne JOHN RENSTEN/GETTY JOHN For Monbiot the commons is forward by individuals willing to primarily about taxing land to break all communal ties. to commend it. But what jars is his Small community investments can build up revenues for a capital But Dotson is probably right assumption that our produce dramatic social returns fund that could support a basic when he says that if you want to entertainments, consumptions social income, among other subject disruptive technologies to and techno-pursuits are to create, as well as to belong. We things. For Hardt and Negri, “the the test of community, then essentially “a mask the machine have always reached for tools, common” is a more mysterious municipal and national oversight wears” – the machine being techniques and technology to affair. It is glimpsed briefly in the might be the best way to do it. corporate marketing and finance. manifest that creativity: AIs, events of the Arab Spring, the When Transport for London These “grey monoliths” need algorithms, automations and Occupy movement and the recently revoked Uber’s carriage sparkly celebrities and interfaces simulations are part of that protests in Gezi Park in Turkey. It licence in the city, for a variety of to “induce a click of recognition”. history. So shouldn’t that capacity glimmers in free software public-interest reasons, the That “click” is revealing, and be located at the heart of projects, in festival cultures and in tribunes of the techno-future somewhat disingenuous. Doesn’t communities, rather than be pro-migrant initiatives. hissed through their teeth. But Monbiot also want his well- considered a threat to them? deployed properly, this is the kind fashioned story to trigger This is the case made by “ This combination of of communal authority that could “recognition” in the citizenry? Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri science and practice feels compel new, human-friendly Towards the end of the book he in Assembly. It is the latest in their like an electoral strategy enterprises (or “combinations” as urges top-down “regime series of collaborations, which waiting to be picked up” Hardt and Negri might say) to change” – electoral victories that have beguiled a generation of spring up. What would a people’s might support a communal activists since the late 1990s. The Assembly authors take Uber look like? movement. But his vision of The authors have been heart from younger generations “Community” gets a bad name, dutiful telephone canvassers charting the rising power of who are turning to each other for redolent of dusty halls, faded bunting working their way through email “social production”: customer mutual support, since their and a lurking intolerance. All lists with scripts agreed from services, content-creation and prospects of work and home are three volumes show us how the central HQ sits oddly with his information-wrangling of all riddled with insecurity and communal can serve the future, previous celebrations of local kinds. precarity. “For them, existence is not just defend us from it. n autonomy and quirkiness. This is an increasingly resistance,” say the professors, This confusion indicates the cooperative realm, say the pair – hopefully. Pat Kane is author of The Play Ethic, limits of Monbiot’s socio- an “assembly” of humans and Yet the last 12 months in the UK co-initiator of The Alternative UK, and biological sources. Humans want machines that current forms of have seen the youthful multitude curator of FutureFest 4 November 2017 | NewScientist | 43 CULTURE Subjects, victims, monsters Thinking about the animals we know so well is oddly unsettling, finds Simon Ings The Museum of Ordinary Animals: The boring beasts that changed the world, Grant Museum of Zoology, London, to 22 December SOME animals are so familiar, we barely see them. If we think of them at all, we categorise them according to their role in our lives: as pests, or food; as robots, or toy versions of ourselves. If we looked at them as animals – non-human companions riding with us on our single Earth – what would we make of them? Have we raised loyal subjects, or hapless victims, or monsters? This is the problem The Museum of Ordinary Animals sets out to address.