Unexpected Items – Issue 1 – for printing
Editorial:
Economy, progress, security. It is impossible to imagine the quality and quantity of human life which is sacrificed every moment to this bloodthirsty and meaningless triad. Financial and data-driven advancement for its own sake has achieved dictatorship over our world, not by reasoned persuasion or inspiration or enthusiasm, but by omni-resignation and perma-policing. The economy must grow, technological progress must extend, and both of these must be secured by means of militarised controls, from everyday surveillance to ‘emergency laws’ to the tonnes of explosive material dumped from planes and drones on the latest inconveniently-located population.
The need for a general desertion of norms and rules, an outbreak of heresy against the market and its massacres has never been so clear. The protests which come and go answer nothing of this problem. They amount to a dutiful collection of raucous opinions. What we want to see, write about and spread is a more total refusal of what is on offer, expressed in big and small ways. An unceremonious spoiling of the party rather than nervous responses to each invitation to join. Abrupt endings to the social discipline which has been our collective lobotomy from our school days, an overturning of tables, a leap over the wall.
The porcelein icons (economy, progress, security) demanding reverence and obedience in this society conduct everyone – friends, family, the community at large – to walk a dreary dead-end pilgrimage. Stepping away requires the daring for blasphemy: it means toppling these sacred objects, smashing them to pieces, proudly going in the other direction to the stream of the frienzied worshipers of efficiency.
This publication wants to hold up courageous ideas and acts that leave no place for the shattered icons. Ideas and acts which reveal the possibility of returning the personal damage caused by alienation and poison back to the senders. Muzzled thought and repressed activity can turn inside-out in a flash, breaking out into a storm of sabotage and fire. In these pages we want to hear the thunder. And let the din of machines, the buzz of notifications, the chatter of fake sociality, the bark of command, fall into silence.
To those who might wish to shut them up for good: we hope this will be a fruitful unexpected encounter. To those who prefer the sentiments of the national anthem (See it, Say it, Sorted): we make no apology for any inconvenience caused.
unexpecteditems [at] bastardi [dot] net