revolution 3.0

Man is a politically animal. If I was smarter I could tell you who said that. But I can't. Might have been Aristotle, or Plato. One of those Greek fellers I Think.

But this statement has for a long time caused me a lot of frustration. 'Yes!' I shouted when I first heard it - 'Yes - it's true!'. But of course, like most philosophical statements they rarely survive contact with the real world. When all around me people seem to turn instantly off at the slightest whiff off current affairs and most believe papers open from the right and begin with the sport news - I felt like an outcast, why was it only me, and maybe a select few others - that got angry, that got passionate about this stuff?

Well, I do. Nothing fires me up quite like a political tract or a bold speech made in the Commons. Before you jump to conclusions, just remember one thing - some people watch Big Brother. So go easy on me.

So it is that I can go back and pin point exactly when and where my political opinions were formed and why. They usually involve books. The first book to do so was a gift from my High School (and stands as the only positive to have emerged from that horrific experience). It was called 'Captive State' by George Monbiot. And like all best sellers it was a well written critique of Labour's Private Finance Initiative. It set me off. I had become the stereotypical middle class teenage socialist. Never again would our rights be sold out to big business! Then this propelled me into a second populist text that was to change my outlook. 'No Logo' by Naomi Klein, a sensationalist account of how brand bullies were enslaving the working poor of Africa and the Far East. Shock Horror. That was it. I plunged my head into globalisation theories and vowed to bring down the capitalist machine from within.


Yet my convictions could not be sustained and slowly it dawned on me that these 'working poor' were once upon a time 'the starving masses' and that corporate investment in far away lands was in fact one of the best things to have happened to them. Which put me on a cautious but upbeat pro-capitalist stance for most of my university years. University however changed the nature of my reading, I came to read a lot about far away planets in far away years and of course the occasional book about a teenage wizard. Only very slowly did my politics mature during these years.

But now, free from the shackles of reading lists and eassy deadlines I can finally stomach non-fiction once again. Accordingly - I bring to you – the third book, my third phase change. 'Collapse' by Jared Diamond. It is a blend of historical forensics and human tragedy and it has pierced my political heart to the core. He looks at civilisations (large and small) throughout history and charts their decline, attributing their eventual failure to poor environmental management. This book confirms our worst nightmares but also provides hope for the future, it is quite simply stunning.

I beg, I urge and I plead with all to read it - for great swathes he gets lost in frustrating detail and statistics - and his narration picks up pace in stops and starts - but by the end, with his concluding chapters the urge to make a significant lifestyle change is irresistible. You simply must read this book, it might not be a barrel of laughs and the temptation to skip chapters does occasionally rear its ugly head but this book is simply too important to miss out on.