Shifting Tides: Poetry, Anthropocene, UK's Leftward Lean
Rishi Dastidar's poetry. Do we have climate art now? A look at UK's leftward lean in attitudes. Thoughts on the median voter, AI round up. Fellowships. Microschools.
Art: Are the climate stories here?
The UK Shifting left, why?
AI advances round up (Zvi)
Climate: Median Voter
Links: Micro schools, Polaris fellowship; Unbelievable Truth; housing, longevity, X-risk, UK tax take.
Skip the first section if you want to skip the poetry thinking…
I like to carry my small red bag with me everywhere. The bag has been my manbag for several years now. People have noted its redness and its reuse status. For me, the contents are more important. The items change around but always contain a book, a note book and a pen/pencil.
An idea can strike you at any time. While phones can receive those ideas fine. Many times I prefer a notebook. Especially if drawing might be involved.
Similarly, you can be stuck at any point with time to read. Waiting anywhere, doing anything.
I picked up this habit early. In part due to my art teachers who advised (commanded even) to always carry a sketchbook. In part due to my chemistry teacher who suggested you could learn chemistry while waiting for the bus.
For the last several weeks I’ve had a book of poetry with me. The poems are Neptune’s Projects by Rishi Dastidar.
Reading work by friends is different. We are never free from bias but the works of friends enter another realm where usual criticism (if you had any) would not apply. Still, I did want to note the different emotions and thoughts these poems made me feel.
The poems are modern. The writing is of now. This applies to form and structure. This applies to content. These poems as a whole would be nonsensical twenty years ago in part due to references to Anthropocene and riffs on technology such as AI.
The structures of the poems vary. Line breaks, sounds; visuals, at times part almost found, they riff off newspaper headlines, football; off water imagery; off the whole range of modern writing. The poems riff off WhatsApps, bullet points, coloured text and memes of life now - artificial general intelligence, Anthropocene, emoji art.
In this sense the poets of Ezra Pound’s days may have been puzzled or astounded. The forms these poems use have emerged over the last 50 to 100 years. Rishi plays with this variety, marrying form and structure to purpose. A linking oblique discourse of the gods (water god in particular), nature and humans now.
If you’ve never read modern poetry or read poets from the last 100 years the surface of these poems could be bewildering as well. They oft times channel the joy and exuberance of Emily Dickinson (is Rupi Kaur a descendant of that poetry tradition?) but where Dickinson speaks easily to inner stories of emotion Rishi tackles nature, water and man-made climate change.
I don’t think you need to have read huge amounts of poetry to enjoy or reflect on these poems, but if modern poetry is new to you then you may have to spend a little time reflecting on a poem. Its form, it’s sound, its visuals. Its breaks, its content, its imagery. Its allusions - spoken and unspoken. There is a small touch of the crossword about these types of poems.
Tackling subjects greater than us. One way is to attempt this head on. The grand narrative. The mega story. An explosion of ideas, sounds and words.
Another way is to come at the subject askance. Hit the ideas obliquely. Comment by allusions, by what’s missing, by what’s observed.
To me, Rishi hits the subject from all sides obliquely. The Anthropocene is too large to be contained in one mind so Rishi avoids that. (I recall a podcast with a philosopher, David Edmonds: the paradox can God create a breakfast so large, that He can not eat it. I think, can Neptune create an ocean so wide, he can not swim the whole of it?)
The form of the book takes you on that journey. An individual poem may sit as an island but dipping in and out of the work for several weeks, I find the poems make an archipelago. A string of islands. You can swim or sail to and from them. By this you have a sketched idea of the world Rishi builds.
Let me show a few of these ideas.
Bullet points, messages and emojis as form.
This poem:
has emoji art in the the title. I note the line breaks. The poem is also a joke, or at least humourous.
This poem riffs off bullet points, made into a trident-like symbol. The points riff off Whatsapp. Echoes of gods, unanswerable questions and geopolitics.
Here is another fun poem. The gap echoes the image of a clapping seal. Echoes self-help, echoes the humour of earlier.
This poem is more classically filled with sound play and repitition. Dense vocab, a repitition of form. Capitalisation and lack of full stop, notable as other poems have no capitals.
There is a close read analysis of this poem in the Guardian. Including this reading:
“…The ground plan consists of a noun beginning with “B”, a genitive (“F”) noun ending in “y” and an adjectival clause, where the phrase “full of” leads, usually, to various pairings. The alphabetical choice feels random. The sounds add significance, though – the contrast between the loud pint-drinking B and the shy-lipped feathery “f” (a voiceless labiodental fricative) might even add up to a sound sketch of England.
Barque of frailty is a phrase that inevitably evokes the infamous “small boats” and the associated mass tragedies. But the barque’s passengers in line one, the “reformed rakes and bookish hearts”, are seemingly ensconced in the safety of nostalgia.
We end our close readings of poems at school or university, if we ever did them at all. Perhaps a close reading is not needed to enjoy a poem, but some times the parsing out of the deep structure of a work can reveal some other insights.
One last part example. This riffs on football and news. You might miss this reference if you have no sensitivity to sports.
An aside, an adjacent
I’ve written before on observing and on reading Amitav Ghosh, why there seem to be fewer art works on climate.
Contra, I’ve spoken at length to my friend and collaborator David Finnigan on how all art is now art of the Anthropocene.
Arts reflects human stories and have reflected nature in many ways.
I wonder now that we do have art all around that reflects climate and the anthropocene. Maybe we do not tackle this head in the way Ghosh alludes to and its intersectionality with the human condition
(inequality, capitalism, colonialism; Ghosh might argue | innovation, longevity, wealth and literacy; an optimist might argue)
True it’s so large that only gods fully comprehend the scope so our art only reflects nature and our role in it obliquely.
Perhaps, David is correct. All art as of now is art of the Anthropocene.
Back to poetry:
Is this the book for you ? I’d suggest answering a different question.
Poets have been around for a few thousand years. What being a poet of now changes with the time.
If you are inclined, just pick up any piece of modern poetry. See / read / hear - what this is about.
Exchange an hour of Netflix or TikTok or Doomscroll and try some poems out.
And if so, Rishi’s poems are as squarely modern, and as squarely now, as anything else I’ve read.
They are poems of now. Of gods, of nature, of Anthropocene; of football, of whatsapps, of bullet points.
In the UK, the current government has weakened certain climate-related policies. For instance “a delay to the deadline for phasing out the sale of new petrol and diesel cars, from 2030 to 2035, in line with other European countries, with those vehicles still allowed to be sold secondhand after that date.” This is actually quite annoying for some business (eg Ford) that has been investing in EVs and would like certainity of policy. Esepcially, if another govt changes it again.
At the high level, I could make two possible observations. Important people in this government think cliamte policies are harmful (at least near term), but secondly they presumably feel they are reflecting the “median voter”; or at least are being influenced by “key stakeholder feedback” eg business leaders, voting polls.
So… how do you influence the median voter, or the overton window as such? Here there is a legitamate debate as to the best tactics and strategy? Is it mass civil protests, is it writing to your politicians…. is it innovation, is it climate stories? What’s most constructive. I think on this as I increasingly worry that certain actions actually push back the position of the median voter.
Sam Freedman has a post on how the UK has shifted left the last 2 decades. In that there is more support for govt programmes, Eg more support for benefits, more support for the role of the state.
One reading suggested is that when the economy and growth is doing well, there is less support for government help, but in this more recent lower growth phase support for government intervention has increased.
Some interesting stats and takes:
“Again this is not about “woke lefties” but a trend that we can see is even stronger amongst Conservative than Labour supporters. As the authors of the BSA report say:
“This is particularly surprising because the composition of Labour supporters changed with the tumultuous politics of the 2010s; Labour supporters from 2015 were on average less authoritarian than before (with highly-educated, young, socially liberal voters being more likely to support Labour after Brexit and Corbyn), which should, if anything, have made the gap in attitudes between Labour and Conservative Party supporters even larger.”'
Another core insight is that this seems to be driven by a rise In the perception of poverty
Sam concludes:
So what’s going on here? The report authors note that Brexit contributed to the age gap growth – though it started before then. But also that the gap hasn’t shrunk despite the EU referendum becoming a less potent issue. It seems more likely that Brexit played into a wider perception that the Tory party has no interest in young people, and it’s this, rather an ideological shift leftwards, that has driven the generation gap.
This would also explain why younger people are less keen on tax rises: they think, probably correctly, it would be them paying, whereas much of the increased spending would benefit older people in need of pensions and healthcare. I’ve written before about changing conceptions of fairness and aspiration, and the growing belief amongst younger people than they can’t succeed just by working hard, a view the government have reinforced.
If all this is correct it has quite profound consequences because it means there is a route for the Conservatives to win back young people by focusing more on their economic interests. It is not a generation lost to them for ever – on either economics or culture. A key question for the next decade of British politics is whether they can signal this without changing position on Brexit – which is such a totemic issue.
The barometer
Commentators often incorrectly assume that because voters typically have minimal interest in Westminster politics – speeches, white papers, parliamentary debates and so – that they are easily misled. Both left and right argue media bias against them leads to misconceptions and false consciousness. This is, essentially, Truss’s argument.
But the BSA data over 40 years shows that voters are well aware of what’s going on around them and respond to real world changes, leading to something of a countercyclical trend in views. As government spending falls, services decline, and poverty increases there is shift leftwards: people want more spending, and more government intervention. As things improve they shift back rightwards.
That doesn’t mean media/institutional behaviour doesn’t matter. For instance, a shift in tone towards benefits claimants may have contributed to public opinion softening amongst Tory voters. But there is only so much media outlets can do to shield their readers or viewers from reality. The Daily Mail cannot hide the growing number of families visibly struggling. Nor would the BBC be able to convince people the NHS was doing well, even if it tried.
As the report authors say:
“The public first began to look to government rather more in the wake of the financial crash of 2008-9, though in the event that mood appears eventually to have dissipated. However, the same cannot be said, so far at least, of the COVID-19 pandemic. Expectations of government in the wake of that public health crisis have never been higher. The public shows no sign so far of wanting to row back on the increased taxation and spending that has been part of the legacy of the pandemic, not least perhaps because of their dissatisfaction with the state of the health service. Meanwhile, there are now also record levels of support for more defence spending. So far as the public are concerned at least, the era of smaller government that Margaret Thatcher aimed to promulgate – and which Liz Truss briefly tried to restore in the autumn of 2022 with her ill-fated ‘dash for growth’ – now seems a world away.”
Ultimately any political party that wants to survive has to respect these trends and work within them. Public opinion may well swing back in the other direction in the future, but for now anyone who thinks the Truss programme is one voters will buy is entirely delusional.
I am still reflecting on what we should be learning. I had a chat with Kelly Smith who founded Prenda on microschools. It is US only. One echo I heard is how grades have been conflated with success.
I also found out more about the Polaris Fellowship. This is an adjacent idea of learning, which you could do as a teenager, or more likely, later.
“…Polaris is a 9 month programme built to give you and 24 other exceptional fellows just such an environment. To help you think concretely about the path you want to take we will take you through a curated curriculum of books, essays, and talks. We give you money to spend on projects (be it for materials, hosting, or content), and (when needed) we support you with thoughtful guidance. We will also give you access to EF's* broad network of founders, researchers, and thinkers.
Polaris is a part-time programme which rewards serious and committed participation. While we're eager to help you start a company if that is the path you choose, Polaris is not an entrepreneurship programme. We are here to help you find your life's work, whatever it turns out to look like…”
Current applications are closed but next cohort will open so keep a look out. *EF = Entrepreneur First.
There is lots of round up from Zvi on AI. He is good to follow on AI (plus the AI risk arguments, as well as other policy or socio-economic debates eg housing, EA; he leans “rationality” cf. Scott Alexander, Less Wrong).
Ethan Mollick has an AI = Consultant paper out:
Some excerpts:
Ethan’s analysis of successful AI use says that there are two methods. You can be a Centaur, outsourcing subtasks to AI when the AI is capable of them, doing the rest yourself. Or you can be a Cyborg, who intertwines their efforts with the AI.
David Chapman in response to Mollick asks the philosophical question, what use is he who does the task that should never have been done at all?
David Chapman: Most supposedly practical uses for GPTs are in work that shouldn’t be done at all: bullshit generation. A triumphant proof of the “utility” of AI makes the case: terrific for generating marketing bumf, worse than useless for evaluating people.
That is a fascinating contrast.
…Nassim Nicolas Taleb, very on brand, takes it further and actively seeks out disutility.
"To know how something works, figure out how to break it". (Bed of Procrustes)
The Achilles' heal of ChatGPT and LLM models is that they work by finding statistical similarities, so you know WHERE you can trick them if you are familiar with the nuances.
Like arbitrage trading.
Figuring out how to break something, or profit from it or make it do something stupid or otherwise exploit it, is indeed often an excellent tool for understanding it. Other times, you need to be careful, as answers like ‘with a hammer’ are usually unhelpful.
The statistical similarities note is on point. That is how you trick the LLM. That is also how the LLM tricks you. Checking for statistical similarities and correlations, and checking if they could be responsible for an answer, is good practice.
… Keeping up with AI is a full time job, but is worth keeping an eye. Zvi is not a bad place to do so…
Happy Birthday to Anoushka. The whale picture (thanks to Dalle) was generated for her. I always joke that Anoushka was going to “teach” me Indie music, while I taught her Indie theatre. Compared to our 20s we hardly do much of either.
Still- 25 years later - Anoushka did manage to catch the Unbelievable Truth at Bush Hall.
Other links:
If you are into longevity biotech research: https://x.com/benyeohben/status/1704582996139835778?s=20
UK tax take:
https://x.com/DanNeidle/status/1704416214598951070?s=20
Arguments for and against X-risk:
https://michaelnotebook.com/xrisk/index.html
Housing:
https://x.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1703752549604491441?s=20