Warm Your Heart

Classic

A) feeling a bit shit is wrong, change it

B) you can fix that thing that's wrong with you by consuming

ADVERT INSPO

Hey guys, great to get moving with this last night.

Lets make an advert embracing discomfort. Capitalism doesn't like patience. Capitalism wants us to feel uncomfortable so we buy comfort.


For the tone of this advert our inspo is this classic Guinness ad

The intensity of the sound (and silence) coupled with bold visuals and a strong message with intent. SO CLEVER.  We can do that, right?!

It's about using the methods of advertising to sell not buying. To create a market for not needing to buy. OR/AND promoting the worth in discomfort, working against the commodification of comfort.

Here is the style of video we decided to go with. Stock footage edited together with videos that embody our rationale, along with footage we take. My flat mate Nicole has done lots of this so can help us. She also has editing software on her comp.

We also have Henrys remix of Natasha Beddingfield to play with. Never forget that. 

What we need to do now is all write some dialogue that we might want to go over the ad. And think of the kind of images we could use.

LC X

Alert! Project needed!

I like the new look website! And there is some very interesting thinking going on too but I'm still not seeing a project plan or a rationale. Time to make some decisions and get on with making something happen!

Sublime discomfort

Komfortismus is a term I came across which first got me thinking about comfort as a problem. German social scientist Werner Sombart coined it in World War I and it was used to glorify the ‘hero’ mentality as opposed to the ‘merchant’ mentality of Britain and capitalist Western type cultures. The merchant mentality of komfortismus is one obsessed with material and physical comfort, and generally also the making of money to ensure that comfort. Of course we could identify plenty of problems with the hero mentality too, but something of komfortismus did resonate and made me think in terms of problematizing comfort.

Situating excessive comfort seeking as a problem, or the theory that some discomfort is a natural and necessary / edifying / generative experience... As Bernadette and some of our discussions went over yesterday, there is and has been a spiritual / religious connection, if not simply philosophical, perspective on this for millenia... 

 
“what does not kill me makes me stronger” Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols, 1888)
 

“difficulties strengthen the mind, as labour does the body” Seneca (5 BC - 65)

 

“uncertainty is an uncomfortable position. But certainty is an absurd one” Voltaire (1694 – 1778)

“…my first observation… will be found very nearly true; that the sublime is an idea belonging to selfpreservation. That it is therefore one of the most affecting we have. That its strongest emotion is an emotion of distress, and that no pleasure from a positive cause belongs to it.” (Burke, p.79)

The above quote concerns the concept of the Sublime which is so interesting, and the concept of Catharsis also occurs to me as pertinent. Again both theories resonate with the potential beauty, need for and edifying / generative quality of uncomfortable affects.

THIS IS IT: let's all pack up and go home

So there is a longer post about comfort and capitalism simmering away in the slow cooker of my mind, but this is the pinnacle, I believe, of our society's attempts to transcend the everyday and reach the higher level of comfort.

Firstly fuck Starbucks. Secondly, fuck Starbucks selling a ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY DOLLAR MUG

The mug itself is v aesthetically pleasing and its main purpose is to keep your mug at your chosen temperature all day. It is, obviously, a smart mug with an ***app*** that sends you a notification when your drink reaches optimum temperature.

It's a nice idea but I think it's the idea of the energy, both the human labour, (24 attempts to get it right, no less) the costs in terms of producing this, the money spent marketing it, that makes me want to scream. If this is it, if this is the height of civilisation, when we have the ability to choose how hot our drink is, and keep it that way all day (because 6 hour old coffee is soooo nice) via an app on our phones, then we have to ask ourselves what worth it has and its significance to a wealthy lawyer, and a checkout worker. Is it that as soon as we begin to chase comfort it becomes a unattainable goal, and as we have discussed in our group work, is there the potential for dissent in our refusal to satisfy every need?

Link:
http://hellogiggles.com/starbucks-expensive-mug/?utm_campaign=socialflowfacebook&utm_source=Social&utm_medium=Facebook


p.s: the mug is sold out online xxx

The NEED FOR SPREEDY GREED

Hollow

Circle of discomfort

Discomfort of debt

Immediacy

American dream

Overdeveloped – civil – value – hierarchy

Over consumed

Over comfortable

Short term discomfort (hard well paid job) long term comfort

Short term comfort (chocolate) long term discomfort  

Means of production of our comfort

Class comfort

Security

Emotional/physical

Capitalism doesn’t like patience

Perversity of discomfort

Productivity

Status

The discomfort and alienation of lonliness

The discomfort of loneliness

Before we started this blog there was a discussion about the pervasiveness of loneliness in our society that causes us all to feel discomfort in the distancing from each other. Whether this comes in the form of the elderly generation at home alone or in the interactions between strangers that are bereft of sincerity. 

Discomfort, or the feeling of not belonging, is pervasive even in our society of constant interaction. The state of rootlessness in a place has become less important to our generation as moving out of home becomes a key part of adulthood. As such people and the places we engage and interact with becomes more fluid, yet loses the more permanent relationship that comes with knowing the land and people that live there. 

"Three months ago we read that loneliness has become an epidemic among young adults. Now we learn that it is just as great an affliction of older people. A study by Independent Age shows that severe loneliness in England blights the lives of 700,000 men and 1.1m women over 50, and is rising with astonishing speed." - George Monbiot 

I think we can have a positive intervention into people's everyday discomforts by making the world seem smaller and more local. The badges on the tube are one way of achieving this but I personally think it's still too impersonal a method of creating a tangible or meaningful change in interactions. 

Public transport is the low-hanging fruit in the potential venues for our intervention, if we are specifically going to highlight everyday interactions.

What do we think should be the target for our action?





 https://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/apr/01/future-of-loneliness-internet-isolation

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/14/age-of-loneliness-killing-us

Great start!

Great start guys! Nice to see some thoughtful and interesting posts coming on line.  (Yo Josh - get a wiggle on!) I'm looking forward to seeing you develop this idea in more earnest in the next few weeks.  Meanwhile, you've got to figure out three things to start with:

1. What is meant by the 'politics of discomfort'? What is it and what makes it political?
2. What is your rationale for looking at it? Why is it important? 
3. What are you going to do (make /change/ realise/ advertise etc) in the real world

PS Don't forget to publish your posts or they will stay invisible as a Draft. (Joe, see your last post here)

Discomfort as a positive - Is discomfort necessary for us as humans to progress?

Discomfort as a positive - Is discomfort necessary for us as humans to progress?

If we could achieve peak comfort in our lives, would we stagnate? Perhaps the discomfort we feel as humans is the subconscious giving us the drive to continue in our lives. We desire to achieve, develop, and craft; to create greater means to live, innovative inventions to change and sculpt our existence.

The medium of writing was once said to be the downfall of mankind when first invented. A means of expressing, seen as alien by the outsider afraid of what it would make humanity. To the person that created it, a means of expressing and articulating without the need to make sound. The ability to refer to information; a physical rendition of what is and was. Symbols representative of speech to save and maintain the way of the word throughout a period of time.

This idea likely came out of the imagination, and the mind’s discomfort in its realisation that this possible reality wasn’t in actuality.

With true comfort would the loss of ambition thus emerge? Are we continuing to evolve and do better through our imagination’s ability to conceive of greater comfort, therefore rending the current state of comfort as discomfort?