The Dark Mountain Project: Fatalistic Hokum

Self indulgence has a url, and it's www.dark-mountain.net. 

Follow it, and you will be welcomed to the Dark Mountain Project, the brain-child of journalists Paul Kingsnorth and Dougald Hine, and a global movement of 'writers, artists, craftspeople and workers with practical skills' who, to cut a long story short, don't believe in civilisation. They have therefore created a process named Uncivilisation. Unfortunately it's somewhat difficult to find anywhere on the website what the process involves, or aims to achieve, or what it actually means, other than being a fairly catchy hook of a title. Hopefully the manifesto will explain this, as I am already slightly unnerved by the amount of scare-quotes used on the home page. They are not 'activists'. They are not trying to 'save the world'. They are not interested in 'apocalyptic fantasies'. Still don't know what they actually do. Want to find out.

The manifesto of the Dark Mountain Project begins with promise; we are promised the end of the world, and soon. The collapse of the world's ecology and of human civilisation's economy are brought together in parallel to create an 'equal' sign pointing to imminent disaster. The writing in the manifesto is excessively flowery, but the leading points are highly pertinent, once you've plucked all the fluff off them, and point to some really problematic issues facing us today.

• Human civilisation is fragile, and built on such horrors as forest burnings and battery chicken sheds
• Blind belief in progress is dangerous, capitalism will eat us
• The fact that we've created a word for 'nature' proves our belief that we are not part of it
• Our human-centric cultures are destoying the planet

Ten pages later, we are led, finally, to the crux of the matter. The bit we have all been waiting for. What are we to do about this overwhelming state of affairs?

We believe that artists—which is to us the most welcoming of words,

taking under its wing writers of all kinds, painters, musicians, sculptors,

poets, designers, creators, makers of things, dreamers of dreams—have a

responsibility to begin the process of decoupling. We believe that, in the age

of ecocide, the last taboo must be broken—and that only artists can do it.

Ecocide demands a response. That response is too important to be left

to politicians, economists, conceptual thinkers, number crunchers; too

all-pervasive to be left to activists or campaigners. Artists are needed.

The rest of the manifesto cites some poets that the authors think are rather good. And that's it. It transpires that the Dark Mountain Project really isn't about 'saving the world'. It's about watching the world die, and writing a haiku about it. So, if you're a politician, an economist, an activist or a campaigner, hey man, why don't ya just stick that in your pipe and smoke it.



Dark Mountain: Issue One is available on amazon.co.uk for £11.99, free delivery with Amazon Prime. Although there probably won't be the free delivery any more. You know, once the world has ended and all.