Pathological and ineffective activism – what is to be done?

The vast majority of social movement organizations active around climate change in the UK and Australia are part of the 'smugosphere'. The smugosphere is related to our misuse of three related concepts: 'friendship networks', 'affinity groups', and 'cliques'. The critique hinges on a few terms that will be new to most readers - the smugosphere, ego-fodder, transruptive - and distinctions between affinity groups, friendship networks, and cliques, between demonstrations and protests and between mobilizing and movement-building. There are people who will never attend meetings or consider themselves 'activists', but who might well be willing to offer a specific amount of their time and expertise if asked by the right person in the right manner. Even if the 'activist' culture were healthy, our species and its 'civilization' would in all probability still be accelerating towards a brick wall labelled Pending Ecological Debacle.