A short film produced in collaboration with EJNI, Ravenhill Films, Newcastle University View here
A short film produced in collaboration with EJNI, Ravenhill Films, Newcastle University View here
Book: A political economy of attention, mindfulness and consumerism: reclaiming the mindful commons The process by which capitalist investment seeks to re-engineer and privatize nature, government, social life and even genes and physical matter is at once breathtakingly ambitious and subtle and insidious. The great contribution of Peter Doran’s A Political Economy of Attention, Mindfulness… Continue reading David Bollier’s Preface
First, we must grasp that humans consume compulsively—insatiably—in large part because our clever circuit for reward learning now encounters too few sources of small surprise. We may rail against the capitalist manipulations that drive consumption from the top down, but that will not satiate our innate, bottom-up drive to consume. Therefore, social policies should follow… Continue reading Peter Sterling on the Neurology of Consumer Behaviour
The writer, Philip Pullman (2008) has observed that environmentalists – essentially – tell a story about ‘us’ and ‘themselves’ and about our place in the universe (e.g. Thomas Berry: the new cosmic story) In this sense, environmentalism has something in common with the function of religion. Questions are posed: why are we here? What is… Continue reading Mindful and conscious living emerges as an imperative with the dawn of the Anthropocene.
‘And the multitude cried: “Bio-rhythms….Not Algorithms”‘ (Doran, 2015) A word from Bifo “Semiocapital puts neuro-psychic energies to work, submitting them to mechanistic speed, compelling cognitive activity to follow the rhythm of networked productivity. As a result, the emotional sphere linked with cognition is stressed to its limit. Cyberspace overloads cybertime, because cyberspace is an unbounded… Continue reading Semiocapital puts neuro-psychic energies to work….
Those who introduce mindfulness into corporate, university and public sector settings have a growing responsibility to engage with the biopolitics of our neoliberalized institutions. It is not sufficient to present disembedded tools for ‘wellbeing’ to a located, context-specific client [subject] for she is already embedded within a complex of targeted disciplines and power complexes, notably… Continue reading Wellbeing and Mindfulness Operate in the Key of Neoliberalism
‘Countdown to Zero Waste Conference’ Hears Challenge to Transform the North West Economy (Creating an Intelligent Economy – How the North West Can Lead the Way on Zero Waste and A Circular Economy) Addressing a European Conference on Zero Waste in Derry on Monday, Dr Peter Doran, set out a series of steps… Continue reading Towards a Zero Waste – Circular Economy Strategy for the Derry-Strabane City Region
A powerful depiction of our imaginative absorption into the horizons of capitalist realism. “If I cannot dance, I want no part in your revolution Where once the rhythms of the Earth danced with my soul Today the algorithm translates me-me”
