After making my video last Autumn, The 1972 Project has stalled somewhat, thanks to something that happened around March. It's also mutated because it comes from my brain, and my brain responds to circumstances, and circumstances have changed. The project was an attempt to make sense of the world as it is today by looking at the world 50 years ago, culminating on my 50th birthday in 2022, and the world today is very much not the world of last Autumn.

But the core idea hasn't left me and I think it still has value. The state of today was born in the early 1970s, just as I was. Of course the seeds of the early 1970s can be found in earlier decades and so on, but for the sake of clarity I'm using my life as a frame of reference and it's proven to be surprisingly fruitful one.

One side-effect of my furlough and lockdown has been the consumption of significantly more big-budget media products, specifically prepared for the television and cinematic industries. Attuned as I am to the concept of the 50 year cycle, I have noticed that I am not the only person exploring it, either explicitly or tangentially.

Mrs America is a high-caliber, talent-heavy television show ostensibly about key US feminists of the 1970s and their campaign to pass the Equal Rights Amendment against a backlash from conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly. But what it's really about is the decline of a post-war consensus where liberals and conservatives sought compromise, and the emergence of the bifuricated political landscape, sparked by the embrace of Christian fundamentalism by the Republican establishment, that has lead, ultimately, to President Trump.

Regardless of its successes or failures, it's a really interesting way to frame a historical drama, to be explicit about how it's really about the now. All historical fiction (and sci-fi for that matter) is about the moment in which it was created, even if it doesn't make it explicit.

A good recent example is the HBO miniseries Chernobyl, which, you might be shocked to hear, is not really about the nuclear reactor disaster. Nor is it really about how the Soviet regime was crippled by dogma and corruption. It's not even about the danger of nuclear energy (which is actually very safe, presumably because everyone thinks it's too dangerous, and could solve the climate crisis, except everyone thinks it's too dangerous).

Chernobyl, the tv series, is about the denial of truth by persons whose power and authority depends on the denial of truth. It is about how uncomfortable realities that do not fit the narrative are swept under the carpet and not dealt with until it's too late.

A year after broadcast the parallels with today are shockingly clear. You can broadly correlate those countries that have dealt best with the pandemic with those that have a healthy relationship to the truth. Those that had pretty much institutionalised reality denial in the years prior are suffering the most. When the pandemic began, Trump had full control of the Republican party while the UK had just elected a Brexit government lead by a man who seems to honestly believe the myth of British exceptionalism, and we won't even start on Brazil. Swap out the reactor for the virus and that period from December to March is disturbingly similar to the last week of April 1986.

It's worth noting that this was not just the individuals in power who refused to take this seriously. As the death-toll grew in China I was on a pub quiz team with the name "Coronavirus with a twist of lime disease" who were beaten by "Wuhan Clan". In January I attended a workshop on risk assessments where the tutor, who had looked at the numbers from China, accurately predicted how the pandemic would play out, and we all laughed him off. Our leaders might have exploited this culture, but the culture was already there. Trump and Johnson are populist, opportunistic politicians after all.

Criticisms of the historical and scientific accuracy of the Chernobyl series, like Gloria Steinem saying Mrs America misrepresents the equal rights movement are fair but ultimately aren't very interesting. Leaving aside the fact that 100% historical accuracy is both impossible and would make for terrible viewing, the value and purpose of history, beyond telling us what happened, is to help us understand and frame ourselves in the present. And so a piece of historical art should ultimately be judged on that basis. What does it tell us about how we became us?

The most shocking thing about Mrs American was, on a fundamental level, how familiarly it is drawn, how easily you identify with the heroes and villains. I suspect this was deliberate, because it made drawing the thematic parallels between now and then so much stronger. Mad Men, where Mrs America creator Dahvi Waller served as a producer, went to great lengths to show the period, and those living it, as alien to the present. The past was very much shown to be another country, meaning we would laugh in horror at the blatant discrimination and bigotry on display, satisfied that our 21st century society was cured of such ills. We would certainly not behave as Don or Pete might. Mrs America corrects that misnomer by having the lead characters behave and emote like 21st century women. Yes, the past was terrible, but the present is not that different, all told. Don Draper and Phylis Schlafly still walk amongst us.

The interesting thing about these types of shows is that they attempt to illuminate the present moment with a fairly narrow beam. Individually these beams threaten to miss the bigger picture – Trump cannot be explained purely by one bitter woman's war against the feminist establishment. It is, as they say, way more complicated than that. But deep-diving into a niche does give us the tools to explore further. These stories are a curious mix of history and allegory, employing anachronism and modern narrative tropes to place us psychologically in that situation. You, the viewer, are invited to identify with Rose Byrne's glorious, ersatz caricature of Gloria Steinem, to feel what it might have been like to fight her fight, so you can return to the present, as yourself, and apply what you've experienced to the now. It won't give you all the answers but it might arm you with useful questions.

My take on the whole "explaining the present with the 70s", as outlined in my video, has three touchstones. The NASA space program, the back-to-the-land counterculture movement, and the state of the modern corporate Internet. You can connect these three things through Stewart Brand, but as always the charismatic individual is less interesting than the ideas their work channels and the narrow beam it throws on history. Stewart Brand defined our present moment to the same degree Phyllis Schlafly, which is to say enough to be of note, but only partially.

(As an aside, I'm not the only one to make this connection. I was both delighted and daunted to see Joanne McNeil, a writer I admire, articulating what I thought were my ideas here and here. And of course there's Fred Turner's From Counterculture to Cyberculture, the perfect roadmap for this journey.)

The point is there are many ways to skin this cat. All eras are a bit puzzling when you're in them, but ours seems particularly opaque and swampy. When pondering the 1972 project in the innocent spring of 2019 I was very aware that I did not want to "do an Adam Curtis", notice a bunch of things and present my tenuous, half-baked conclusions in a compelling and definitive voice (cf). But I also kinda admire Curtis and like the way his films spark thoughts, even while they seem to deny the complexity and simply blame individuals. The Power of Nightmares was a transformative work for me and I owe it a lot, even though I came to reject his simplistic methodology.

Which nicely brings me to the reimagining of the 1972 project. I realised I'm less interested in exploring the last 50 years as I am in exploring how the last 50 years are being explored. And when I explained this to Fiona she was "well of course you are" which nicely settled it.

I think I'm mostly going to use the essay as my medium for this. I like it and it's not like the arts venues are particularly viable at the moment. Words on screen and potentially on paper – that'll do for now. I think the first piece is going to be a review of Spaceship Earth, the recent documentary about Biosphere 2 which touches on so many relevant things it's almost too much. Hell, the story pretty much bookended by the Whole Earth Catalogue and a young Steve Bannon and references the 1972 film Silent Running. Let me at it.

Get off the Internet
I'll meet you in the street
Get off the Internet
Destroy the right wing
Le Tigra, 2001

Fiona was telling me about an acquaintance who has build up a reasonable five-figure social media following which augments their business in an "influencer" kinda way who had run into some nonsense after posting something related to Black Lives Matter. Amongst other things a pile-on had occurred when someone questioned something in a way that triggered… ah, you know the drill. A scene that has been positive, constructive and supportive suddenly switches into an accusative, defensive shitstorm. It doesn't matter what the subject matter was or who was involved. It just happens again and again on social media platforms.

Back in the day we used to talk about "context collapse" where something posted to Twitter can be taken wildly out of context so your attempt at sarcastic humour makes you look like a racist or a terrorist. See also John Mulaney on jokes read out in court.

But there's also something else going on. The social media platform to which you are posting is not a neutral thing. It takes whatever you were attempting to communicate and it weaponises the shit out of it. When you type your words their meaning is perfectly clear. But when you hit post they combine with the social media machine and that meaning mutates into a monster beyond your control.

So when your carefully thought out post about civil rights hits the eyeballs of another human being, especially someone you don't have a personal connection with, it means something completely different. It's not that the context has collapsed – the context has been thoroughly augmented by a fucktonne of other stuff that you have no idea about.

And then that person, who you barely know, leaves a reply on your post. And you're confused because their reply seems to willingly miss the point of what you wrote. Not only that but they seem to be taking what you wrote personally, despite it being sent to tens of thousands of followers, and so now you're taking their reply personally, so you reply.

This reply of yours highlights the exchange to your followers, but they're also seeing it weaponised through the augmented context machine so they see something completely different again and before you know it everyone's angry with everyone else about something you'd all probably agree on if you'd just stop trying to have nuanced conversations about important issues on an image-sharing social network.

It happens all the time and it's depressing, not just because of the waste of time and effort but because it's distracting good people from fighting the real battles. The far-right is laughing at us. Trump and Farage are the canaries in the coal mine. For the last few years we have been on the cusp of a fascist resurgence as good people are radicalised by those who understand how this weaponisation works really well for them. Brexit was the prelude and if we're not very careful Covid could well tip us over the edge.

Let's take the trans-rights vs feminism debate. As a straight white man I've watched this over the years with my head in my hands. I'm sure there are important issues to shake out in the overlap of women's rights and transexual's rights and I would never want to dismiss or diminish them. But for fuck's sake there are more fundamental battles going on.

This was illustrated quite strikingly by the latest shit-storm to engulf JK Rowling. Battle lines were drawn, all the progressives chose a side, and then The Sun gave Rowling's abusing ex-partner the front page to tell his side. For a wonderful moment everyone was united against Murdoch's foul rag, although Murdoch had effectively taken control of the narrative and put an abusive man in the middle of it.

Divided we are nothing. Together we are stronger. We know this. We know how to do this. So what's going wrong?

The tools we use to share our ideas and opinions are broken. Twitter, Facebook and Instagram are weaponised for attention and clicks. They need you to be at the extreme ends of your emotions, be that delighted or outraged. React, react, react. Don't think, don't pause, don't contemplate.

A photo on Instagram is radically different to a photo in on a blog post or in an email. Sometimes it's better, sometimes it's worse, but it's always different. The problem is we don't see this because we were never taught media literacy.

Have you ever had that thing where you write something in a word processor and you're happy with it, but when you publish it somewhere, on a website or in a booklet, it seems… different? I always go back and tweak my blog posts once they've been published because I need to read them in that context in order to properly judge them. Being "out there" changes something in intangible but fundamental ways. The words go from being mine to being… ours?

I did a bit of Media Studies at 6th form and it was quite the eye-opener. It turned out that when something is broadcast or printed in the media its meaning is changed. And the people who control that media also control what the meaning becomes. The medium, as the man said, is the message.

In the 90s that was interesting and all but in the 2020s, when our conversations and debates take place through media that is owned by insanely large companies, it's absolutely essential that we all know this. And not in an "oh, I know that" kind of way. Know it in a useful, practical, thorough way.

We need to be taught how to read the social media critically so we can use it effectively. Right now we're blundering through it like monkeys in an orchestra pit.

Digital literacy, especially for adults, needs to get away from the short-term practical stuff and start teaching the theory in a way that makes sense to normal people. Otherwise we will continue to fight amongst ourselves like rats in a cage while the far-right mop up.

Park your differences, get the fuck off the corporate internet, I'll meet you in the streets.

That Boris Johnson is a fool hiding under the cloak of intellectualism is not in dispute, but sometimes he utters a nonsense that is actually worth interrogating. Take his defence of statuary and condemnation of the very concept of maybe removing some of them.

We cannot now try to edit or censor our past. We cannot pretend to have a different history.

Let me tell you a story.

My grandfather, who died long before I was born, was the sort of person I'd imagine Johnson would admire. He was awarded a medal for bravery in the First World War. In the Second he slept in the factories of Birmingham as an ARP Warden, on the front line of the Birmingham Blitz. Between the wars he established Ashton & Moore a metal finishing company with a wealthy business partner which still trades in Birmingham today.

Like I say, I never knew him. The Ashtons lost their share of the company when I was a young boy and the Moores were bought out in 2004 so I have as much connection with the business as I do with the totally unconnected Ashton Engineering in Digbeth. It's technically part of my history but it doesn't affect me in any way. I wasn't brought up in Birmingham – that I live here as an adult is purely coincidence and nothing to do with family.

Ashton & Moore was based for a long, long time on Legge Lane in the Jewellery Quarter. After the buyout in 2004 the company moved to Hockley and the building lay empty, waiting its turn on the regeneration roundabout. This finally started a couple of years ago, and here's where it gets interesting.

The building where my paternal family made its living through most of the 20th century has been turned into residential flats. Like many such developments they have taken the historic use of the building as their cue in naming it. The new development is called, drumroll please, The Million Pen Building.

Because it turns out the building that Messers Ashton and Moore purchased "was originally built in 1893 as a steel pen manufactory for George W. Hughes, the creator of The Million Pen." It's a nice story and certainly more appealing that referencing a business which dunked metal in baths of toxic chemicals, but it does seem to, I dunno, erase something.

To be clear, I find this amusing and a nice illustration of how the heritage industry, in an effort to preserve history, can quite successfully erase it. Victorian buildings seem to have an authenticity and glamour that 20th century ones lack, presumably due to it being far from living memory. And the irony of the social evils of Victorian society being cleaned up by 20th century progressives to the point where their descendants can enjoy Victorian romanticism at remove while erasing the history of said progressives, is nice and chewy.

Johnson is one of those people who thinks the Victorian era and the British Empire weren't all that bad. And I'm prepared to blame his sheltered upbringing and intellectual laziness over any inherent evil on his part. He just doesn't understand how history works.

It is a matter of record that Winston Churchill, in his youth and middle age, was a fucking dick. It's very fair for people who were colonised and people who were fighting for workers rights at home to see him as a villain. It is also a matter of record that Winston Churchill played an important and essential role in defeating fascism in Europe. He also, to his credit, did not dismantle the nascent socialist welfare state when he came back to power in the 1950s and was an enthusiastic supporter of European Union. Whether this was due to populist opportunism or educated enlightenment is not for me to judge but, like many significant figures in history, he was complicated.

I personally think that, if we are to have statues of dead leaders, it is reasonable and good to have a statue of old-Churchill outside Parliament. I think it is also good that we, as a society, develop a more nuanced understanding of where this man who helped save democracy from tyranny came from and why many people would consider young-Churchill a very bad man. To paraphrase the poet Chuck D's appraisal of Elvis Presley:

Churchill was a hero to most
but he never meant shit to me you see.
Straight up racist that sucker was.
Simple and plain.
Motherfuck him and David Livingstone"

To mark something or someone with a simple statement or monument is to literally edit and censor the past. History is complicated. Statues are not. When you name a street or building after someone you are pretty much saying the conversation is over. It's a statement so loud and clear that it drowns out any dissent.

Again, this is not necessarily a bad thing. As a society we need to be held together by loud and clear statements. Without them we dissolve into partisan, atomised units unable to function as a whole. You know, like you see on Twitter.

The trick is to balance the power of these statements with the reality of the society they're supposed to be unifying. Because if they're not doing that job then it's probably time to retire them. Just as the Victorians retired what came before them to better reflect the reality of an imperial power, there's a good case for retiring aspects of the Victorian era to better reflect out post-imperial, progressive reality.

I'm a bit torn on Gillian Wearing's A Real Birmingham Family, a sculpture which uses the language of classical statuary to explore civic identity and challenge preconceived ideas of family. I applaud it's aims but, as I often do, I think a better solution would be to have no statues at all. Wearing has replaced one dogmatic idea with another, because statues can only be dogmatic. I think this does some damage to a position that needs to be flexible and fluid. Statues are a tool of dogma. Better to fight dogma with a different tool, maybe?

But I am probably wrong and I can see what her sculpture is trying to do. It is a statement which reflects Birmingham's reality. It reflects us more than the other statues in that area might. It is, above all, a good thing. If we are to have statues then they should be in this spirit. The only real problem with A Real Birmingham Family is that it stands alone.

The problem isn't that history is edited and censored. In many ways the very purpose of history is to edit and censor, to manage the raw materials for the manufacture of myths that hold nations together. The problem is that a disturbing number of people don't seem to realise that our history has been edited and censored and don't realise that they can be part of that process. Indeed how important it is for them to be part of that process.

It is good and healthy that we find ourselves having national and local debates about the statues in our cities. Some of them have probably outlived their purpose and need to go to the museums where we look after all the other artefacts that have lost their purpose. Others have not. We have to decide this for ourselves, as a society. And if that decision process is not permitted, or worse, not open to all, don't be surprised when one of them ends up in the river.

Connecting the current #BLM protests with marches since the 1960s. (On the Walkspace blog)

I review the Weird Walk zine by looking how the concept of "weird" has been used to explore this country. (On the Walkspace blog.)