Dark Mountain Project

An awesome new project, really struck a chord with me. Do check it out & if you feel inclined help them with the first milestone which is to raise a few more quid to enable them to fund their manifesto production by this friday.

- a brief excerpt below (the full story at dark-mountain.net)

The Dark Mountain project began with our feeling that, if you go deep enough, you’ll find the roots of this situation in the stories we have been telling ourselves: stories that go back beyond the latest episode of irrational exuberance, down through the history of industrial society and even further. Stories like the myth of human centrality, which tells of our destiny to separate ourselves from and subdue this thing called nature; which makes history a machine for the production of human progress, as measured in the production of ever more and better goods. What makes these stories more dangerous is that we have mistaken them for reality, insisting that we have put away such childish things as myth. As a society, we no longer acknowledge the role of stories in shaping what is real to us – and so our storytellers become entertainers, our poets harmless eccentrics, our artists cynical manipulators of the market, all taboos busted and everything for sale. This won’t do. The times we are living in demand something more.

You can contact them by emailing info@dark-mountain.net
* Paul is the author of 'One No, Many Yeses' and 'Real England: The Battle Against the Bland'. He was deputy editor of The Ecologist between 1999 and 2001. His first poetry collection, Kidland, is forthcoming from Salmon Poetry. His website is www.paulkingsnorth.net
* Dougald is co-founder of School of Everything (www.schoolofeverything.com) and writes the blog 'Changing the World (and other excuses for not getting a proper job)', at http://otherexcuses.blogspot.com. He is a former BBC journalist and has written for and edited various online and offline magazines.