Brian Dean on Anxiety Culture

David Cameron (the head of the Conservative Party here in the UK) is a ghoulish, possibly evil powerfreak. His new campaign is a stern-sounding warning about a pending social recession, a phenomenon that didn’t exist until he commissioned it from some spin doctor or other. It’s a dim little fiction he brainstormed in order to rekindle those 28 Days Later anxieties we had when we first heard about the global financial crisis. It’s natural to fear a ‘worst case scenario’ but they almost never happen. Fretting constantly about them is no way to live, so ignore Cameron’s shit-stirring and that of others like him.

Instead of barricading the door and stocking up on canned goods, try turning off the telly and reading fewer newspapers so that you don’t have to swallow this torrent of damaging crap any more. Be selective about the media you consume.

Brian Dean of The Guardian, Anxiety Culture and Media Hell writes in the pending Issue Three of New Escapologist. As a special social recession gift to you, here is the properly typeset article for free.

Issue Three of New Escapologist – the Practicalities Issue – will be released in February.

An Escapologist’s Diary. Part 9.

On a train to London, a friend confides that he’s become a “light-switcher-offer”. That is, he finds himself devoutly switching off the lights in unoccupied rooms. To me, this is not a big deal: I’ve always been a light-switcher-offer. My friend, however, worries that his new habit is somehow miserly, and he interestingly describes it as ‘sexless’.

That it is sexless, I think, can be refuted. I suggested on the train that switching off unnecessary lights (and conserving power generally) contributes to a smaller carbon footprint. Being in-vogue, small carbon footprints are sexy. Therefore, so is the act of switching off lights. My friend remained unconvinced. Read the rest of this entry »

Design recognition

We had the 36th best-looking website on the whole of the Internet yesterday according to design blog, CommandShift3. We only have a simple WordPress.com site but this clearly impressed someone.

Proper post coming soon.

Houdini ephemera

Harry Houdini’s letterhead appeared this week at the brilliant new Letterheady website.

Come to think of it, the equally wonderful Letters of Note recently posted a piece of correspondance from the man himself.

Tangential to our idiom of ‘New’ Escapology, of course, but everyone should love Houdini.

Oppression by technology?

Laptops and the Internet provide unparalleled opportunities for mobility. A beautifully designed cloud computing arrangement can be the Escapologist’s friend.

There is the concern, however, that most people don’t use technology in a way that ensures the greatest benefit. Gadgetophilia and over-dependency come at a high cost and the world could so easily become a bleeping, malfunctioning, information-heavy technomess.

There’s a page in this week’s New Scientist written by Yair Amichai-Hamburger that offers a rather brilliant articulation of the problem and some simple solutions. Allow me to point you at it.

An Escapologist’s Diary. Part 8.

Some of our readers don’t enjoy fiscal solutions to The Escape Problem. If you’re one of those readers, you might want to look away now. Sorry about this.

A lot has been written online about Tim Ferris’ concept of Musing: creating a low-maintenance business capable of generating an ‘optimum monthly income’, enough to allow you to fulfil whatever dream you have.

To us, of course, the dream is one of maximum mobility (of not having to report to work every day) and of ending the relationship between submission and reward. That’s how Musing connects with Escapology. It has the potential to replace work and maximise mobility.
Read the rest of this entry »

Two websites of note

Two New Escapologist editors have handsome new homes on the web:

Our sub-editor, Reggie C. King has collated his some of his fine works of literature, journalism and musiphilosophistry at The Stuffed Owl.

Meanwhile inside the mind of a turtle, our illustration editor Samara Leibner has opened a gorgeous weekly web comic called Astronaut.

May both sites live long and prosper etc.

Not Local?

Because New Escapologist has a political dimension, people will make not-unfair assumptions about the issues we’re “for”. For example, I sometimes receive article submissions about the importance of buying locally-produced food. Given that we’re associated with the Idler, this is perhaps understandable but culinary issues are somewhat tangential to Escapology and there’s a lot about the “Buy Local” movement that makes me uncomfortable.

In the UK, the sort of people who are most passionate about buying local tend to talk about “English apples” rather than “British apples”, a paralinguistic betrayal of their real agenda. Buying Local to these people is nothing to do with carbon footprints. It’s Patriotism.

If one is genuinely worried about the carbon footprint of importing, it is worth remembering that “abroad” may well be geographically closer than other parts of your country. Apples grown in Normandy are closer to London than anything grown in the North of Britain.

“It’s mad!” they say when they hear about Spanish asparagus being sold by a greengrocer in Solihull. “Mad!” Yet they overlook the logic that if there were no economic incentive, the greengrocer wouldn’t stock such goods. Who knows what other benefits are involved in importing? A single import initiative might be the lifeblood of an entire equatorial village for all we know. Even from a right-wing perspective, isn’t it better to let other nations do the dirty work while we concentrate on being world leaders?

Yes, there are advantages to Buying Local and New Escapologist is all in favour of certain types of autonomy and simplicity. But we’re not in favour of bumpkinism.

An Escapologist's Diary. Part 8.

In the first part of this blog series, I wrote about how I had quit my office job and how I intended to escape to Montreal on a ‘mini-retirement’ with my girlfriend. Since then, we’ve enjoyed Montreal as planned but have also spent additional time in England, Scotland and Holland, hatching various schemes, some of which are already underway.

Five months later, I’ve taken a day job again. I’m working part-time as a contract librarian in Newcastle, England. Don’t squint so suspiciously though: this isn’t a tail-between-the-legs return to employment after a wild period of faux-rebellion. It’s a hobby.
Read the rest of this entry »

Issue One extra features

The reformatted edition of Issue One is the definitive one but there’s a bit of stuff we cut out. As a website bonus, we’ve posted some of these ‘deleted scenes’:

The above fresco is by the almighty Pete Thoms. Read the rest of this entry »