How I learned to stop worrying and love the hive mind

Attention on “horizontal” or leaderless political movements has focussed on the behaviour of crowds in confrontation with authority, on the spectre of mobs, looters and riots. There has been less attention on the occupations of cities as microcosms of their societies; on the wisdom of the crowd as a source of creativity, new political ideas and energy.

In this article I argue that pathways to channelling this creative energy can be discovered by the superimposition of ideas from, perhaps, unexpected sources: contemporary art practice, and the study of insect and swarm behaviour in Nature.

#15M in Brussels. Photo by Agnes Hermapix (c) 2012. Shared under creative commons license.

One year after Spain’s “Indignados” began occupations of the centres of major cities in protest at austerity measures, protestors have returned to the streets. There have been similar actions across Europe in solidarity with the Spanish Occupy movement. Spain’s new radicals are credited by their comrades with starting the wave of occupations across the world in opposition to spending cuts, following the 2008 global financial crisis.

The policing of these protests appears to becoming progressively more heavy-handed. In London, the Olympics are fast approaching and there is an atmosphere of increasing paranoia and state surveillance of dissent, amid the perceived danger of a repetiton of last Summer’s riots. Excessive policing and the arrest of journalists continues to be a feature of #occupy protests in North America.

In Spain – with a quarter of the potential workfore unemployed – the emergence of the Twitter hashtag #HolaDictadura, or HelloDictatorship, is another sign of the way deepening ‘anomie’ is combining with fears of rising political extremism, a Greek-style breakdown in law and order, and memories of Spain’s long exlcusion from the mainstream of European culture under successive fascist and military governments.

The bullet of nationalised toxic debt is still ricocheting around the global financial system, and will for some time to come. Portugal’s economy is in a parlous state, as is Italy’s, still. If you want to really ruin your day, search on ‘Gladio‘ and ‘Italy’ for an idea of how grim things could get.

In addition to the Olympics acting as a vast shop window on Great Britian’s tawdry firesale of baubles and geegaws, inviting a metaphorical brick to be hurled through it, the UK is experiencing a rumbling crisis of confidence in the political Establishment. This makes our leaders jumpy and irritable. The Leveson inquiry is exposing deep interconnections between politicians, big business, corrupt and illegal journalistic practices.

As I type, I can hear Business Secretary Vince Cable on BBC Radio 4′s ‘The World This Weekend‘ prattling on confidently that we’re not exposed to the risk of soveriegn debt if there’s a Eurozone collapse this Summer, only by obstacles to “growth”. The permissive atttiude to global financial regulation that created the debt in the first place – especially the attitude of law makers to risk management in the City of London and on Wall Street – remains unaltered.

The “movement” to question the wisdom of all of this is leaderless and incohate. There’s no overarching political narrative, manifesto or set of demands common to the loosely affiliated national #occupy groups. It’s a self-propogating, global, memetic social and cultural phenomenon; criticised for being directionless, and hung up on its own decision making processes.

From the beginning of the occupation of St Paul’s Churchyard on 15th October last year, I have hovered around the London camps as a friendly supporter rather than active participant. There are many things about this new form of political action which I am excited about, and others things about which I’m profoundly wary.

Donning my trusty ‘V’ mask (more as a statement of my affinity with Anglo-Catholic anarchists than with Anonymous, in fairness) I obtained the permission of the General Assembly for the first act of Evensong to be held simultaneously inside and outside the Cathedral after the occupation began. ¹

The huddled masses gathered on the steps of St Paul’s seemed nonplussed by my innocuous request. This led to two small but miraculous outcomes: a multifaith service on the steps of St Paul’s Cathedral, and eventually to the formation of Occupy Faith; and – before that – Flash Evensong, an spontaneous act of worship by people who had never met before, organised through social media.²

Next page…

Flash Evensong, St Paul's. (c) Tim Concannon 2011. All rights reserved.

1. Alan Moore on V at St Pauls: Channel 4 News, 11th January 2012 ‘V for Vendetta: the man behind the mask’.

   Alan Moore on ‘Hardtalk’ talking about V and Occupy: ‘Hardtalk’ 10th April 2012.

2. The Telegraph incorrectly stated: “The singalong has been orchestrated on Twitter by St Paul’s parishioners who are determined that the Occupy protesters do not stop their worship” contradicting their own point in the next paragraph:

   “Kathryn Rose, who organised the St Paul’s-in-the-camp Flashmob Evensong, said in her blog: “A cathedral is more than architecture and establishment. Cathedrals exist to serve the local community, as well as to support parish churches in their work.

   “Their primary task is of public worship, and it is difficult to see how Occupy LSX are a significant threat to that.”

   The Daily Telegraph, 26th October 2011 ‘Musical flashmob at St Paul’s Occupy London Stock Exchange protest‘ London.

It’s been claimed that, four hundred years ago to the day, Shakespeare’s ‘The Tempest‘ was performed for the first time: at Whitehall Palace, on Hallowmas night by the King’s Men before James I and the English court.

Subsequently, it was probably performed at Blackfriars Theatre, built in the ruins of the old Dominican priory. The argument for this being the case is the reliance on Deus Ex Machina in the stage directions.

In the early 1600s, only Blackfriars with its covered stage provided a suitable setting for Shakespeare’s masque, reflecting on the passing of the old magic – the complex occult mechanisms that held sway under Queen Elizabeth, under the watchful eye of her court thaumaturge John Dee – and the emergence of a more empirical worldview; the beginnings of Scientific method, of which her successor James I was an early patron.

A brief walk from modern St Paul’s Cathedral to Playhouse Yard takes you to the site of Blackfriars Theatre. The clue’s in the name, but little else would let you know that this was the original London theatre. Now it’s Euromoney’s London headquarters. Small, tidy graveyards lined with chunks of ancient masonry provide a space for quiet reflection and a quick fag break.

Nor would any signage let you know that Shakespeare lived moments away, in the Priory’s old gatehouse which he paid £140 for – roughly where the Cockpit pub is – and near to the King’s Wardrobe.

It’s irresistible to imagine that Shakespeare played Prospero himself, that he walked from the empty stage at the end of the night’s performance, laying down the actor’s mantle at his writer’s desk. We could take this short stroll ourselves, past jovial City workers getting drunk, updating Facebook or playing Angry Birds on their phones. We could step back four centuries and share the magician’s silent procession of solemn doubt, returning to a monk’s cell. But there’s no evidence for this. There are only glimmers, suggestions that lead us to the tantalising conclusion.

In later life, Shakespeare the actor played patriarchal roles and there seems to be so much of Shakespeare in Prospero.

The old master decrying the new kids on the block, Ben Jonson and his St Paul’s choir boys, the Minipops of their day.

Shakespeare the political rebel and secret Catholic, mourning for the mystery plays and the Sacraments, the icons, incense and stage theatrics of the Latin Mass.

Shakespeare the scholar and folklorist, yearning for Old Albion and Queen Titania; vanishing worlds of superstition, sprites, shape shifters, sorcery. The worlds of Ovid, Plautus and the traditional fairy tales of the English countryside.

‘The Tempest’ draws on street theatre and carnival traditions, Commedia dell’Arte as well as court masques. The likely site of the first performance was designed specifically for masques: now the only part of the Palace of Whitehall that remains in its entirety, following numerous fires in the late 17th Century, Inigo Jones’s Banqueting House.

The historical symmetry of the asymmetric protests erupting across the City would not have been lost on Jones. Some historians – mainly Roy Strong – have pointed to the possible influence of Juan Bautista de Toledo, designer of the Escorial in Madrid, on Whitehall’s design. Bautista de Toledo was a student of sacred geometry, and of the great Catalan writer and thinker Raymond Llul.

Near to Downing Street and the modern Palace of Westminster, and on the way to Trafalgar Square, tourists often pass the Banqueting House by. This is a shame, because it’s a mere £5 for adults to get in, and free for under 16s. (Compared with £14.50 for adults and £5.50 for children at St Paul’s Cathedral). We must be grateful to Her Majesty the Queen for her charitable status.

You may want to update the website, guys. Captured 1st November 2011.

The Banqueting House contains one of the last sights King Charles I ever saw, before he was beheaded in front of the crowd assembled outside.

On the ceiling of the Banqueting House are three vast canvasses – 30′ to 40′ – by Sir Peter Paul Rubens. They depict The Union of the Crowns, The Apotheosis of James I and The Peaceful Reign of James I. Masterpieces by one of the greatest European painters (as well as one of the cleverest diplomats and spies of the 17th Century) they are allegories praising reconciliation and peace, instead of violent conflict.

Sir Christopher Wren’s 1698 plans for a new palace were never completed.

Two of Prospero’s speeches from four hundred years ago could be about the Reformation of the English Establishment – financially, culturally, spiritually – that a prolonged camping exercise at the steps of Wren’s Cathedral may initiate.

Following the wedding revel, Prospero goes from certainty to doubt, from boom to bust, in one speech. A masque – a party that Prospero conjured up from spells and algebra, the aspirations to marital harmony and carefree revelling – were an illusion.

Act 4, Scene 1

PROSPERO

You do look, my son, in a moved sort,
As if you were dismay’d: be cheerful, sir.
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Ye all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep. Sir, I am vex’d;
Bear with my weakness; my, brain is troubled:
Be not disturb’d with my infirmity:
If you be pleased, retire into my cell
And there repose: a turn or two I’ll walk,
To still my beating mind.

FERDINAND MIRANDA

We wish your peace.

Exeunt

At the end of the play, having abandoned the old magic, Prospero calls on gentle trade winds to return him home to Naples. Without the mercy of forgiving enthusiasms, Prospero cannot reclaim his title.

Epilogue

PROSPERO

Now my charms are all o’erthrown,
And what strength I have’s mine own,
Which is most faint: now, ’tis true,
I must be here confin’d by you,
Or sent to Naples. Let me not,
Since I have my dukedom got
And pardon’d the deceiver, dwell
In this bare island by your spell;
But release me from my bands
With the help of your good hands.
Gentle breath of yours my sails
Must fill, or else my project fails,
Which was to please. Now I want
Spirits to enforce, art to enchant;
And my ending is despair,
Unless I be reliev’d by prayer,
Which pierces so that it assaults
Mercy itself, and frees all faults.
As you from crimes would pardon’d be,
Let your indulgence set me free.

View Larger Map