great(ish) pt 45: clocks, toilets, is the 19th century to blame for everything?
Hello! Since I last wrote to you I moved house, I started a new job, I met dozens of new people and spent dozens of hours on trains to Italy. I absorbed, retained, forgot information. I'm still out here, writing occasional emails. Today: ethical consumption, a film about clocks and anarchism, a book about collectives and the destructive vampirism of money, dry toilets, Swedish dreampop and Iris Murdoch.
Article: Just Beans: What Was Ethical Consumption Under Capitalism? by Malcolm Harris, published by The Drift in November 2022
I moved house recently. Among the many strange and disturbing treasures of my past, I unearthed a badge that simply says SHOPPING IS SHIT and a piece of paper with a meme: the Microsoft Clippy lad saying IT LOOKS LIKE / THERE IS NO ETHICAL CONSUMPTION UNDER CAPITALISM. I pinned the badge to my jacket, fondly thought of a friend who once gave me a Christmas present wrapped in the Clippy meme and continued packing boxes while contemplating our weird relationship with unbridled consumerism. Is it pointless to think about consumption? Perhaps – but as Malcolm Harris argues, it is suspect (but not surprising) that people will embrace any argument, no matter how cynical, if only it means that they can buy more stuff.
Film: Unruh (Unrest), directed by Cyril Schäublin (2022)
Of all the great films I’ve watched this year, this is the one that surprised me the most – maybe because I only had a vague idea what I was about to see when I stepped into the cinema. I expected a historical drama and got a contemplative, impressionistic, beautifully shot low-key slice of life about two defining features of the late 19th century: the relentless lust for measurement/optimisation and revolutionary politics. We follow Russian geographer and anarchist Pyotr Kropotkin as he visits the Jura region, and the young clockmakers/local anarchists he befriends there. Unruh has one of the best scenes featuring music (a choir performing an anarchist song!) I have seen in some time. It is, unsurprisingly, gently thought-provoking about work and (international) solidarity. Watch the trailer and then watch the film – you won’t regret it.
Book: Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton (2023)
My review of Birnam Wood is: who *wouldn’t* want to read an Eleanor Catton pageturner about an environmentalist collective in New Zealand and their run-in with a tech billionaire who makes his money from drones? If you have conflicted feelings about how to do good in the world, or if you just like a book that commits fully to the character - plot - ideas trifecta, then this might be for you. To me, it succeeds where many other contemporary English-language novels fail, precisely because Catton is not trying to be subtle. Also, it’s fun to discuss it with friends.
Note: I enjoyed this spoilery review by Julian Novitz.
Learning: Death to the Flushing Toilet, edited by Arja Renell, The Dry Collective
I’m currently reading a book about the dry/composting toilet after visiting an exhibition on the topic of Finnish dry toilets recently. Years ago, when I gave guided tours in a museum, I used to recite stats on water usage to visitors regularly – one of those examples where knowing things about the world makes you feel a little worse every day. The exhibition offers alternatives and also suggests that composting toilets could be a solution for the global fertiliser crisis. Not sure how to install a dry toilet in a Viennese apartment building, however.
Other: Running Out of Love by The Radio Dept
The Radio Dept’s brand of dream pop is the kind of music I loved in 2008, but their 2016 album is more dance-y and synth-y, and also way more political, written partly in response to the rise of the far right in Sweden and elsewhere. Now seems like a good time to revisit it.
And, finally – for the past year I've been thinking a lot about Iris Murdoch's The Bell and the advice one of the protagonists receives from an abbess. The Bell is certainly a book of its time (the time being 1958), but I keep returning to it. In fact, it is an interesting companion to Birnam Wood: here, too, a group of people are engaged in an earnest and failing effort to do good. What can be done, if doing means failing? Here's the abbess: "Often we do not achieve for others the good that we intend but achieve something, something that goes on from our effort. Good is an overflow. Where we generously and sincerely intend it, we are engaged in a work of creation which may be mysterious even to ourselves - and because it is mysterious we may be afraid of it. But this should not make us draw back. God can always show us, if we will, a higher and a better way; and we can only learn to love by loving. Remember that all our failures are ultimately failures in love. Imperfect love must not be condemned and rejected but made perfect. The way is always forward, never back."
That's it for now! Take care!