Yes to all of that. It seems to me that the rich and powerful are afraid of trusting; there is a vulnerability in acknowledging that at some point you will need to rely on the kindness of others. So they isolate themselves in their fortified houses and cliques and become ever more estranged from the rest of us and 'real life'. I am exhausted by the continuing horrors that are unfolding across the globe in this era of disintegration; there is the tension between needing to know and witness what is happening and wanting to run away and hide. I try to remember that I am responsible only for my own actions and their effects; trying to live a kind life: walking lightly on the earth, being a useful member of my community, honouring those who have gone before me and who will come after me in the continuum of human existence. Not turning my back on the destruction but witnessing, acknowledging and doing what I can to support the brave ones (XR, Greenpeace, Amnesty International, Medecine sans Frontiers) by fundraising, emailing and so on. It never feels enough but we all do what we can; I want to be able to face the Ancestors, when my time comes, and say I did my best and tried hard not to make things worse. I find your writing inspiring and thank you for it. We must keep beauty and laughter like little flames in our hearts.
Your post brought good tears. Lots to contemplate.
One thing I wonder though...
Caro, you and I have never met in person. I live 6,000 miles from where you call home. But you, Dougald and others are part of my wise counsel, with me every day in spirit.
I'm not on any social media. Never have been. But the virtual online web of connection that the internet permits (at least for now) has been very real and powerful for me. I think it was Peter Limburg of the Stoa, who describes these kind of relationships as "intimacy without friendship" - friendship requiring physical presence. Being there with and for one another. So while you and I may not be friends, I am very grateful for you and for the, albeit limited connections this media allows.
Thanks, much to ponder! I am lucky to be embedded in a few communities, and I think to experience the trust you talk about in some way. What I’ve lost trust in is what you might call high culture, and commercial pop culture. It seems at best decadent and empty and at worst full of lies if not outright evil. Anytime (not often anymore) I’ve gone to to a movie or the theatre or even a concert (depending what it is) I find myself inwardly bracing, wondering (if I’m with my children especially) what sort of perverseness I will be exposed to. There is something demoralizing about this, something that’s hard for me to get used to, even as I become more accustomed to relying on smaller communities. I feel perhaps kind of like the rich people you talk about who only interact with other rich people, except I’m not rich. It’s the constant anxiety and defensiveness that feels wrong.
“So, this nameless thing, which is only the same as ekklesia, I think, is perhaps just the guts to be trustworthy, and to say ‘These are the people and I'm here for them.’ I feel, St. Wite is my patron in all this. She had the guts to say, ‘These are my people. Do them no more harm.’”
Hmmm, by your earlier comments my experience of Instagram is so much different than yours. I’m overwhelmed with politics. I assume you are aware instagram added a political filter when the worst images started coming back from Gaza and it’s default setting was to off. Meta claimed it was for the upcoming US election but it was clearly to limit exposure to seeing genocide. Also I see the way Instagram monetizes the ekklesia. I see junior photographers and artists given booster rockets while making drivel.
All of our experiences on social media especially Instagram/FB are vastly different. Those of high social rank are the “entertainment” and are given one experience. Those of low social rank another (I’ve checked and shown others my feed to confirm this.) I am never sent followers, I’m always sent cam girls, ai sex bots, and people who will never in a million years understand what I’m doing. I suspect these are even bot accounts that unfollow me when I post which suppresses my posts. Let’s just pretend for a moment that I’m playing a game of “how you treat the least of thee” and the answer is we mostly treat the least of thee like garbage online. Almost all of us, I am / have been guilty of it, especially the “call outs” you mention.
I am not quiet about what I see and the algorithm does not like to be verbalized or exposed in any way. I take screenshots and record my screen and post it back to my stories. Women in particular are often shocked at the difference. I’ll gladly show you should you ever care to see that dark abyss.
I wholeheartedly agree about the problem of billionaires. I even have personal experience of being in a long term relationship with a partner whose mother owned 4 homes. (There’s a lot there I could say but won’t)
On the trust front, I was explicitly told I was “not allowed to be friends with fellow employees” in that previous relationship while in a new city and working so much that outside work relationships were impossible.
I was nauseated by it and eventually found a way to bring it to an end explosively. Through that though I saw myself behaving like an entitled ass and I also saw the reason for the lack of trust. People as a whole tend to have no concept of what it’s like to run a company. In many instances, it is not something I would wish on my worse enemy. It’s not meant for empathetic humans.
People are often at their worst and most deceitful at work and are quick to take for granted privileges and are completely out of touch with how things actually work in the system that we have. There is so much negative projection it’s not funny. People who refuse to take initiative or take on any responsibility at all are the first to criticize a decision they actively chose not to be involved in making. Worse still, privately owned small business has to constantly worry that big business will discover them.
I’ve watched from a distance as employees force unionized an independent store that had been in operation for 40+ years at the same time as a billionaire funded competitor moved into town. The billionaire funded company literally used corporate espionage to steal the independent company’s entire business model, but made the stolen system work with minimum wage employees who had to wear uniforms, received no vacation time, and had quotas for selling bullshit subscriptions to customers at check out.
The independent company let employees wear and dress as they liked, paid well over 2-3x the billionaire funded company, had a profit sharing plan, let employees buy items at cost with no mark up whatsoever. All of this was regularly abused and taken for granted. For comparison employees at Goodwill Thrift shops only get a “generous” 25% discount and Goodwill gets everything for free!
Back in Instagram-land, sadly I think we are all becoming our own little corporations. I’ve seen it in myself in the past and I see it there in nearly everyone. Follower counts mask our insecurities, tell us how important we are by learning to play by completely insane rules. This is absolutely no different than how a billionaire sees themselves through their bank account.
I’ve written too much. I’ll end by saying that Charlotte Du Cann’s latest piece is so spot even when applied to social media:
“Alchemical planets are not concerned with power, They are interested in life, in beauty, in relationship, and if you work within their spheres of influence, you will endure many trials to find these in yourself and the world. When you stumble across a point of convergence, you can feel its many-strands-coming-together, whirling like a wheel of Maypole ribbons. You can feel the dance of life inside. You can feel the harmonic. And you don’t want it ever to end.”
Thank you 🙏 and would remind you that you gave permission to rant in kind.
In 2018 when I was teaching Wild Twins with Paul Kingsnorth, I needed a way to let artists know about the course, as he was letting writers know. Friends suggested Instagram, which I had never been on or even looked at. For two years it was great and I met my cohort of natural materials artists who are now real life friends and colleagues. Nowadays it is a mire, but I manage to let people know about my books and courses there, and I promote other people's great work using 'stories'. I have never seen the 'lifestyle' side of it, and do not use the main personalised feature page where things are recommended to you, so I never look at what they try to show me, only the 'feed'. But I know from many others who tell the same story as you.
As a sole trader and self employed writer, artist and teacher, it is still useful to me. I very much hope not to have to use it in a year or two, but I will leave my photos up to encourage people to investigate ochres, natural art materials and ethical foraging.
Instagram is what it is and has its benefits. I don’t want to pretend it doesn’t. I get to speak with people I admire and respect without a paywall. There’s just a heavy price to this and overall the content is just very shallow.
Moreso, I don’t know how many people understand how insta “silos” us. The algorithm is really dumb so it wants you to do one thing. If you do one thing, this dumb algorithm knows who is interested in that one thing you do and can share your account with others who have liked posts related to that one thing you do in the past.
This is just not how my brain works and I suppose I’m just stubborn enough to not give in. (Which I admit is might just be my own stupidity) but I am pretty concerned that siloing also has an added benefit of giving Meta’s AI lots of clean data. Instagram can look at any topic (think hashtags) and see which posts do well, which don’t, and all the associated affinity accounts.
So in a few years, if not already, Meta’s AI will know what combination of personal experience and sharing of that one thing people do tends to do well. I don’t think we really understand how much of ourselves we are giving them. I get tons of sponsored adds for foraged products now, books and specifically collaborations with Alexis @blackforager …. In a year or two Instagram can create a fictional forager of whatever race/ethnicity it wants, has all the data to speak from the perspective of that fictional identity and sell products without the need of a middle man. It could all be created by them the fictional AI character, the product etc. I suspect you are safe as an educator/maker but I I’m pretty sure they’ll be making wild and uncivilized accounts too. Sadly, I hear too much about how tech CEOs think to hope for some sense of humanity or decency.
*in short we are entering a particularly challenging transition period in history. If we don’t live up to our best selves, we as people are in deep trouble. We have our work cut out for us. Thank you 🙏 for your response.
The book is BEAUTIFUL! It exudes the freshness of the open air.
And your hilarious mate’s foreword is a delight.
What a lovely enhancement of the world that will surely induce the manifestation of much joy and beauty.
Thank you for this Caro. It’s helpful to read something so tender and determined and relational. X
I am most certainly not on a dating site, but if I were, I would quote that in my profile! x
Ha!!!!
Yes to all of that. It seems to me that the rich and powerful are afraid of trusting; there is a vulnerability in acknowledging that at some point you will need to rely on the kindness of others. So they isolate themselves in their fortified houses and cliques and become ever more estranged from the rest of us and 'real life'. I am exhausted by the continuing horrors that are unfolding across the globe in this era of disintegration; there is the tension between needing to know and witness what is happening and wanting to run away and hide. I try to remember that I am responsible only for my own actions and their effects; trying to live a kind life: walking lightly on the earth, being a useful member of my community, honouring those who have gone before me and who will come after me in the continuum of human existence. Not turning my back on the destruction but witnessing, acknowledging and doing what I can to support the brave ones (XR, Greenpeace, Amnesty International, Medecine sans Frontiers) by fundraising, emailing and so on. It never feels enough but we all do what we can; I want to be able to face the Ancestors, when my time comes, and say I did my best and tried hard not to make things worse. I find your writing inspiring and thank you for it. We must keep beauty and laughter like little flames in our hearts.
Nest time we are together we could make this into a hand-decorated zine with the title "Caro Off the Cuff." Just beautiful and fittingly enraged.
Yes to 'nest time' :)
Next time we nest...that must be what my subconscious was trying to say.
Your post brought good tears. Lots to contemplate.
One thing I wonder though...
Caro, you and I have never met in person. I live 6,000 miles from where you call home. But you, Dougald and others are part of my wise counsel, with me every day in spirit.
I'm not on any social media. Never have been. But the virtual online web of connection that the internet permits (at least for now) has been very real and powerful for me. I think it was Peter Limburg of the Stoa, who describes these kind of relationships as "intimacy without friendship" - friendship requiring physical presence. Being there with and for one another. So while you and I may not be friends, I am very grateful for you and for the, albeit limited connections this media allows.
And here's a poem your post brought to mind.
Why I Am Happy
Now has come, an easy time. I let it
roll. There is a lake somewhere
so blue and far nobody owns it.
A wind comes by and a willow listens
gracefully.
I hear all this, every summer. I laugh
and cry for every turn of the world,
its terribly cold, innocent spin.
That lake stays blue and free; it goes
on and on.
And I know where it is.
— William Stafford
Much needed gentle missive. Thank you. The revolution is in the minds and hearts of the people.
Congratulations on the new book! I have pre-ordered and look forward to treasuring it.
Thanks, much to ponder! I am lucky to be embedded in a few communities, and I think to experience the trust you talk about in some way. What I’ve lost trust in is what you might call high culture, and commercial pop culture. It seems at best decadent and empty and at worst full of lies if not outright evil. Anytime (not often anymore) I’ve gone to to a movie or the theatre or even a concert (depending what it is) I find myself inwardly bracing, wondering (if I’m with my children especially) what sort of perverseness I will be exposed to. There is something demoralizing about this, something that’s hard for me to get used to, even as I become more accustomed to relying on smaller communities. I feel perhaps kind of like the rich people you talk about who only interact with other rich people, except I’m not rich. It’s the constant anxiety and defensiveness that feels wrong.
“So, this nameless thing, which is only the same as ekklesia, I think, is perhaps just the guts to be trustworthy, and to say ‘These are the people and I'm here for them.’ I feel, St. Wite is my patron in all this. She had the guts to say, ‘These are my people. Do them no more harm.’”
Hmmm, by your earlier comments my experience of Instagram is so much different than yours. I’m overwhelmed with politics. I assume you are aware instagram added a political filter when the worst images started coming back from Gaza and it’s default setting was to off. Meta claimed it was for the upcoming US election but it was clearly to limit exposure to seeing genocide. Also I see the way Instagram monetizes the ekklesia. I see junior photographers and artists given booster rockets while making drivel.
All of our experiences on social media especially Instagram/FB are vastly different. Those of high social rank are the “entertainment” and are given one experience. Those of low social rank another (I’ve checked and shown others my feed to confirm this.) I am never sent followers, I’m always sent cam girls, ai sex bots, and people who will never in a million years understand what I’m doing. I suspect these are even bot accounts that unfollow me when I post which suppresses my posts. Let’s just pretend for a moment that I’m playing a game of “how you treat the least of thee” and the answer is we mostly treat the least of thee like garbage online. Almost all of us, I am / have been guilty of it, especially the “call outs” you mention.
I am not quiet about what I see and the algorithm does not like to be verbalized or exposed in any way. I take screenshots and record my screen and post it back to my stories. Women in particular are often shocked at the difference. I’ll gladly show you should you ever care to see that dark abyss.
I wholeheartedly agree about the problem of billionaires. I even have personal experience of being in a long term relationship with a partner whose mother owned 4 homes. (There’s a lot there I could say but won’t)
On the trust front, I was explicitly told I was “not allowed to be friends with fellow employees” in that previous relationship while in a new city and working so much that outside work relationships were impossible.
I was nauseated by it and eventually found a way to bring it to an end explosively. Through that though I saw myself behaving like an entitled ass and I also saw the reason for the lack of trust. People as a whole tend to have no concept of what it’s like to run a company. In many instances, it is not something I would wish on my worse enemy. It’s not meant for empathetic humans.
People are often at their worst and most deceitful at work and are quick to take for granted privileges and are completely out of touch with how things actually work in the system that we have. There is so much negative projection it’s not funny. People who refuse to take initiative or take on any responsibility at all are the first to criticize a decision they actively chose not to be involved in making. Worse still, privately owned small business has to constantly worry that big business will discover them.
I’ve watched from a distance as employees force unionized an independent store that had been in operation for 40+ years at the same time as a billionaire funded competitor moved into town. The billionaire funded company literally used corporate espionage to steal the independent company’s entire business model, but made the stolen system work with minimum wage employees who had to wear uniforms, received no vacation time, and had quotas for selling bullshit subscriptions to customers at check out.
The independent company let employees wear and dress as they liked, paid well over 2-3x the billionaire funded company, had a profit sharing plan, let employees buy items at cost with no mark up whatsoever. All of this was regularly abused and taken for granted. For comparison employees at Goodwill Thrift shops only get a “generous” 25% discount and Goodwill gets everything for free!
Back in Instagram-land, sadly I think we are all becoming our own little corporations. I’ve seen it in myself in the past and I see it there in nearly everyone. Follower counts mask our insecurities, tell us how important we are by learning to play by completely insane rules. This is absolutely no different than how a billionaire sees themselves through their bank account.
I’ve written too much. I’ll end by saying that Charlotte Du Cann’s latest piece is so spot even when applied to social media:
“Alchemical planets are not concerned with power, They are interested in life, in beauty, in relationship, and if you work within their spheres of influence, you will endure many trials to find these in yourself and the world. When you stumble across a point of convergence, you can feel its many-strands-coming-together, whirling like a wheel of Maypole ribbons. You can feel the dance of life inside. You can feel the harmonic. And you don’t want it ever to end.”
Thank you 🙏 and would remind you that you gave permission to rant in kind.
A righteous rant, indeed.
In 2018 when I was teaching Wild Twins with Paul Kingsnorth, I needed a way to let artists know about the course, as he was letting writers know. Friends suggested Instagram, which I had never been on or even looked at. For two years it was great and I met my cohort of natural materials artists who are now real life friends and colleagues. Nowadays it is a mire, but I manage to let people know about my books and courses there, and I promote other people's great work using 'stories'. I have never seen the 'lifestyle' side of it, and do not use the main personalised feature page where things are recommended to you, so I never look at what they try to show me, only the 'feed'. But I know from many others who tell the same story as you.
As a sole trader and self employed writer, artist and teacher, it is still useful to me. I very much hope not to have to use it in a year or two, but I will leave my photos up to encourage people to investigate ochres, natural art materials and ethical foraging.
Thanks for sharing your experience.
Instagram is what it is and has its benefits. I don’t want to pretend it doesn’t. I get to speak with people I admire and respect without a paywall. There’s just a heavy price to this and overall the content is just very shallow.
Moreso, I don’t know how many people understand how insta “silos” us. The algorithm is really dumb so it wants you to do one thing. If you do one thing, this dumb algorithm knows who is interested in that one thing you do and can share your account with others who have liked posts related to that one thing you do in the past.
This is just not how my brain works and I suppose I’m just stubborn enough to not give in. (Which I admit is might just be my own stupidity) but I am pretty concerned that siloing also has an added benefit of giving Meta’s AI lots of clean data. Instagram can look at any topic (think hashtags) and see which posts do well, which don’t, and all the associated affinity accounts.
So in a few years, if not already, Meta’s AI will know what combination of personal experience and sharing of that one thing people do tends to do well. I don’t think we really understand how much of ourselves we are giving them. I get tons of sponsored adds for foraged products now, books and specifically collaborations with Alexis @blackforager …. In a year or two Instagram can create a fictional forager of whatever race/ethnicity it wants, has all the data to speak from the perspective of that fictional identity and sell products without the need of a middle man. It could all be created by them the fictional AI character, the product etc. I suspect you are safe as an educator/maker but I I’m pretty sure they’ll be making wild and uncivilized accounts too. Sadly, I hear too much about how tech CEOs think to hope for some sense of humanity or decency.
*in short we are entering a particularly challenging transition period in history. If we don’t live up to our best selves, we as people are in deep trouble. We have our work cut out for us. Thank you 🙏 for your response.