Work 32 | DignityScholarship3

Here we present, in the 31st entry of this our third and final Dignity Scholarship season, the remaining bounty of our autumn campaign. Must we apologise for our lack of posts recently? We know all too well how lenient you are in these matters but we do still feel that an explanation is necessary even if it sometimes seems as though you are no longer there. (Are you there?)1

Our correspondence has been so sparse for the usual two reasons, firstly because we have spent so much time 'dialogueing that Borg'1, which is our main mission after all, but secondly because we have been concentrating so singularly on the painting these last weeks we have not had the time to write. We have squeaked out a couple of lines but any sense of content, theme, and direction is missing. We have no real theme other than talking to The Borg and perhaps because we produced such a detailed initial proposal3 we have felt that we could get by without following up but having read back our entries it is clear that the lack of stated research themes to guide the hot air balloon of our Doing has left us a little thin on the ground.

Look here it was only last year that Don Donald was ousted. Our themes of then are just as relevant right now are they not? And I'm sure this concession brings the wry smile to your face and you are deserving of as many 'I told you so's' as you like. Yes those themes could have remained and been framed by our investigations into the singularity. We are not too big to admit that we may have gotten a little carried away with our ideas back in January. We were coming in hot with Dane Bowers and I feel that perhaps we succumbed to some post trump euphoria as the psychological weight of the alt right take over lifted a little and a giddy sense of new found freedom flourished. We do not regret our current theme by any means but now, with all manner of cons-political constellations4 in orbit and the announcement of Don Donalds social media platform, Truth Social, we have to reel ourselves back in. But don't worry, we'll bring The Borg with us.

Look here this Truth Social endevour has been roundly dismissed, mocked and hacked but it gives me the shivers nonetheless. Most comment we have scanned makes the point that Trump does not have enough supporters/users to make a social media platform work, imagining that only his supporters are likely to use it but that is wrong. He's in it for the money and conspiracy is hot and besides the post truth era is about more than just that silly orange businessman. Don Donald is just the thin end of that psycho social moshpit wedge and whatever one may make of it such a 'truth' network will become a new and elevated platform for conspiracy, disinformation and ultimately far right politics, to flourish, build and no matter how absurd the content, be a political force to be reckoned with. The likes of Andrew Wakefield and Kate Shemirani5 might just be imaging cabinet posts for themselves!! Not joking!! And this is at a time when we are said to be entering decisive decade for Planet Earth!

Truth Social might be a big nothing, like that farce with his desk or something,6 or it might be a vehicle that helps kill the world!! Either way we simply must stick to our general program of plein air study from nature and not let the abstractions gain any traction. That said we have just come back in from the barn where we held forth to The Borg on this very topic of the 'abstractions' and announced our need to refocus in some way to the times. We must update the relationship between our doing and events for the good, ultimately, of us. Self serving? Yes. But with a rumble of resistance still audible, even though, as we freely told the singularity, we have all but lost touch with people and events it seems. I told It about an encounter with a British artist the other day that left us puzzled. We find it hard to know who's who and what's what but is that any surprise? The chaos doctrine may have waned but the damage has been done and due to the tech, its identity forming addictiveness and the incentives it offers the canny conspiratorial operator, we are better off not even imagining that we could ever know who's who and what's what ever again. The best we could do anyway is wonder what tribe a person belongs to. To hell with it: we must stick to our general program of plein air study from nature and not let the abstractions gain any traction:

We have watched the eton alt right happily wreek havoc in the UK, but we must stick to our general program of plein air study from nature and not let the abstractions gain any traction.
We see the hokey cokey moshpit of anti vaxers and conspiracy theorists of all kinds seemingly gaining influence, but we must stick to our general program of plein air study from nature and not let the abstractions gain any traction.
We see Don Donald and the global alt far right circling the wagons ahead of the 2024 election, but we must stick to our general program of plein air study from nature and not let the abstractions gain any traction.
We see the metaverse on the horizon and can hear those nanobot burgers sizzling,7 but we must stick to our general program of plein air study from nature and not let the abstractions gain any traction.
We have seen up turn to down, on turn to off, left turn to right and day turn to night, but we must stick to our general program of plein air study from nature and not let the abstractions gain any traction.
We must hold our course.

It appears we/us are being led by the hand into the fully immersive virtual world and we don't want to go. We are clinging. We are clinging only to whatever imaginary connection to this world we have. Suddenly it seems our once tongue in cheek aping of your classic pallet and beard merchant in dialogue with nature, has taken on an unexpectedly resistant character in the post pandemic, pre metaverse, climate breakdown context. Is it going too far to say that sur le motif, we resist?

Not necessarily, you resist if you want to, but the better question to ask may be whether the very idea of resisting the virtual world is a bygone concept?

For how long did people resist electricity?

Do we talk of humanity resisting against the great tech powers or resistance just of our middle aged disorientated selves?

The answer is both, and in constant flux but one thing is for sure, we have never been so aware that any notion of "humanity" and what is good for it that we may have cooked up is not shared by everyone.

John

1. We are always here.

2. Taken from Dane Bowers: verse 42, line 2.

3. Dane Bowers.

4. Possibly refers to conspiracy politics.

5. Two popular anti-vaxxers.

6. The desk of Donald Trump.

7. See verse 9, line 3.