The Architecture of Oppression

The Architecture of Oppression

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Jake Ferguson · Anthony Joseph · Jermain Jackman

I think as humans, we forget. We are often limited by our own stereotypes, and we don't see that in everyone there's the potential for beauty and love and all these things. And I think The Architecture of Oppression, both parts one and two, are really a reflection of all the community and civil rights work that I've been doing for the same amount of time, really - 25 years. And I wanted to try and mix my day job and my music side, so bringing those two sides of my life together. I wanted to create a platform for black artists, black singers, and poets who I really admire. And it was a no-brainer to give Anthony a call for this second album because I know of his pedigree, and he's much more able to put ideas and thoughts on paper than I would be able to.

PRIYAMVADA GOPAL · FRANÇOISE VERGÈS

PRIYAMVADA GOPAL · FRANÇOISE VERGÈS

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on the Recent Elections in Britain and France

I would say what we can celebrate is the incredible mobilization of the young people. They went everywhere, they knocked on the door, they mobilized. This was an incredible, incredible mobilization. So that was extraordinary because it showed real mobilization and an understanding that the National Rally was a real threat. We knew that if they came to power, the first people who would be targeted would be people of color, and that was absolutely clear.

S. D. CHROSTOWSKA

S. D. CHROSTOWSKA

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Author · Historian · Curator
Utopia in the Age of Survival: Between Myth and Politics · The Eyelid · Marvellous Utopia

I like to think of utopianism as “effective social daydreaming” because utopia is associated with consciously imagining societies. Our imagination is always involved in creating reality. The opposition between the two, reality and the imaginary, is not a stark one; they're porous.

RICHARD BLACK

RICHARD BLACK

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Author of The Future of Energy · Fmr. BBC Environment Correspondent · Director of Policy & Strategy · Global Clean Energy Thinktank · Ember

The fact is you've got a lot of industrial and political muscle now coming behind clean energy, especially from China, which is the leading country deploying wind energy, solar, and the leading manufacturer and user of electric vehicles. "We have petrostates in the world. China is the first electrostate." And China is on its way to becoming the world's most powerful country. So, where China leads, the rest of the world is almost certain to follow. Yes, there are massive air pollution problems in China, of course, but I think it's more than that. It's also about seeing that this is the future that the world is going to have. And if these goods are going to be made anywhere, well, the Chinese government clearly would like them to be made in China. And they've set out, you know, industrial policies and all kinds of other policies for, well, at least a decade now, in pursuit of that aim. It's interesting now to see other countries, India, for example, and the United States now sort of deploying muscle to try and carve out a slice of the pie themselves as well.

CHRIS CARLSSON

CHRIS CARLSSON

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Writer · Organizer · Activist
When Shells Crumble · Shaping San Francisco · Critical Mass

The novel When Shells Crumble begins in December 2024, when the US Supreme Court nullifies the popular vote in the Presidential election and awards the presidency to an authoritarian Republican, who proceeds to demolish democracy and install a fascistic state that hastens ecological havoc. The novel is much more than your usual dystopian tale—it focuses on how to resist political cynicism and defeatism, and rebuild on planetary wreckage. It is a world-building project filled with wisdom, sadness, and joy. We specifically put this fictional text in conservation with his brilliant non-fiction work, Nowtopia, which offers a radical redefinition of “work” that restores dignity and value to their proper places.

On the War & Famine in Sudan

On the War & Famine in Sudan

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with Dr. Osman Hamdan & Umniya Najaer

The ongoing conflict in Sudan has pushed millions to the brink of famine, threatening to devastate an entire generation. Despite the severe humanitarian crisis, global awareness remains limited. Today learn about the long history behind these events, the people and groups involved, and the roles that foreign governments and international organizations like the IMF have played. Importantly, we learn how civil society groups are bringing a form of mutual aid and support to the people of Sudan where the national government, warring factions, and international humanitarian organizations have utterly failed.

HENRY AJDER

HENRY AJDER

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AI/Deepfakes/Synthetic Media Advisor · BBC Presenter
Adobe · Meta · European Commission · Partnership on AI · House of Lords

I would like to preserve a real sense of empathy and humility, which comes with understanding that the world is messy, that people are messy, that defects and imperfections exist, that things don't always necessarily kind of go the way you want, even as much as you wish they could. Imperfection is part of life and I guess my concern is that AI-generated content, which smooths and perfects a version of reality to precisely what you want and forces you or makes you feel pressured to represent yourself in this absolutely perfect way, fundamentally gives you no room for error and kind of detaches you from the reality of growth and life and and how people work. Empathize with other people. Everyone has their challenges. Things don't always have to be exactly perfect to how you want them to be or how other people want them to be. And that involves having some humility about yourself as a messy creature, as we all are. I hope that's retained, but I do see this kind of move towards this sort of smoothed and shaped reality that AI is enabling, potentially creating more of a disconnect between that imperfect, messy, but also quite beautiful world. This sort of polished but ultimately plastic version of reality increasingly is becoming the default for some people over the kind of fleshy, messy human side of things.

PAUL AUSTER

PAUL AUSTER

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Writer · Filmmaker 1947-2024

What happens is a space is created. And maybe it’s the only space of its kind in the world in which two absolute strangers can meet each other on terms of absolute intimacy. I think this is what is at the heart of the experience and why once you become a reader that you want to repeat that experience, that very deep total communication with that invisible stranger who has written the book that you’re holding in your hands. And that’s why I think, in spite of everything, novels are not going to stop being written, no matter what the circumstances. We need stories. We’re all human beings, and it’s stories from the moment we’re able to talk.

JEFF OLSON

JEFF OLSON

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Co-founder of the Largest Bike Share System in North America · NYC’s CitiBike
Co-founder of re:Charge-e: Wireless Bike & Scooter Docking Stations
Author of The 3rd Mode: Towards a Green Society

The key number for people to remember is one to 150 for the cost and energy that it takes to charge a single electric car, our system could charge 150 bikes or scooters in public space that then people have access to. So the question from an equity standpoint, from really achieving our climate goals standpoint is, do you invest in getting one person mobile and maintaining maybe the current lifestyle that goes along with those cars? Or do we make some changes and invest in 150 to 200 people being mobile with the same energy? Clearly, we think the answer is more people moving more often, more sustainably. And we have to make that shift or we're never going to hit the 2030 goals. They are probably not even in reach, you heard the Secretary-General say just last week. And even 2050 seems a long way to go if we're still investing in technologies that only essentially help the 1 percent that already have the resources. It's the larger population that we really need to reach.

LEE McINTYRE

LEE McINTYRE

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Philosopher · Author of On Disinformation: How To Fight For Truth and Protect Democracy · How to Talk to a Science Denier

One thing people don't realize is that the goal of disinformation is not simply to get you to believe a falsehood. It's to demoralize you into giving up on the idea of truth, to polarize us around factual issues, to get us to distrust people who don't believe the same lie. And even if somebody doesn't believe the lie, it can still make them cynical. I mean, we've all had friends who don't even watch the news anymore. There's a chilling quotation from Holocaust historian Hannah Arendt about how when you always lie to someone, the consequence is not necessarily that they believe the lie, but that they begin to lose their critical faculties, that they begin to give up on the idea of truth, and so they can't judge for themselves what's true and what's false anymore. That's the scary part, the nexus between post-truth and autocracy. That's what the authoritarian wants. Not necessarily to get you to believe the lie. But to give up on truth, because when you give up on truth, then there's no blame, no accountability, and they can just assert their power. There's a connection between disinformation and denial.

STEPHEN WOLFRAM

STEPHEN WOLFRAM

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Computer Scientist · Mathematician · Theoretical Physicist
Founder/CEO of Wolfram Research · Creator of Mathematica · Wolfram|Alpha

I think as there is more automation, there is more kind of emphasis on this question of our choice. The story of the development of things tends to be what do humans decide that they care about? In what direction do they want to go? What kind of art do they want to make? What kinds of things do they want to think about? There is in the computational universe of all possibilities, there is sort of infinite creativity.

KEITH FRANKISH

KEITH FRANKISH

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Editor of Illusionism as a Theory of Consciousness · Cambridge University Press’ Elements in Philosophy of Mind
Author of Mind and Supermind · Consciousness

What I like about the sort of view I have is that it represents us as fully part of the world, fully part of the same world. We're not sealed off into little private mental bubbles, Cartesian theaters, where all the real action is happening in here, not out there. No, I think we're much more engaged with the world. It's not all happening in some private mental world. It's happening in our engagement with the shared world, and that seems to me a vision that I find much more uplifting, comforting, and rewarding.

PAUL HAWKEN

PAUL HAWKEN

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Founder of Project Regeneration & Project Drawdown
Author of Regeneration: Ending the Climate Crisis in One Generation

We and all living beings thrive by being actors in the planet’s regeneration, a civilizational goal that should commence and never cease. We practiced degeneration as a species and it brought us to the threshold of an unimaginable crisis. To reverse global warming, we need to reverse global degeneration.

ROBIN PHILLIPS

ROBIN PHILLIPS

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Retired US Army Officer with a Career in Current and Crisis Intelligence and Strategic Plans and Policy at the Pentagon

We need to work together to handle the migrations that will inevitably come because of climate change and loss of human habitat and loss of agricultural lands. The wisest nation going forward will be the one that can maintain its population through allowing immigration and thinking about where you can draw folks that are coming from stressed environments and they need a place to land and you're losing population. Why should you not accept those people and encourage them to fill the roles that you need them to fill and settle in the areas where you are being depopulated because of falling fertility by choice?

ABRAHM LUSTGARTEN

ABRAHM LUSTGARTEN

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Senior Reporter at ProPublica · Filmmaker · Author
On The Move: The Overheating Earth and the Uprooting of America

Living in California, I've just come to accept the unsettledness of this era we're moving into. And I think that's really how I see the future. You know, we're living in an era of disruption, and there are others I talk to and write about in the book who also muse about the possibility of a more nomadic future. That maybe home isn't a permanent place with deep roots but is a transient place with shallow roots or two places that you alternate between. In addition to a lot of other dramatic changes that the book is about, a change in our sense of home and our sense of place is a part of this story.

MATTIA MAURÉE

MATTIA MAURÉE

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Interdisciplinary Composer ·  AuDHD Coach
Host of the AuDHD Flourishing Podcast

So for me, just removing a lot of the shame and then a lot of the energy that I was wasting trying to fit myself into a neurotypical process or framework or way of thinking or being. So, you know, some people call that unmasking, just kind of removing. I was wasting a lot of energy, basically trying to be someone else and function in a different way. And then just beating myself up internally for not being able to do that. And throughout my healing journey, as I really realized, Oh, that's actually what's happening. Like there's not actually anything wrong with me being able to...That's why it's called Love Your Brain. It's not just, you know, tolerate your brain. Or, fine, you can work with this brain that you have. It's like, no, I genuinely love the weird experiences that my brain can give me and the incredibly rich, deep experience I have of the world. Like I experience nature so deeply and so intensely. I have really strong connections with animals. I have really great intuition, which I think is just from picking up all this sensory data and putting it together. All these experiences that I get to have, but I don't get to have those experiences if I'm just trying to make myself be something else, which I think is most people who are late diagnosed, I feel like that's their experience. It's just like I've been trying to be someone else for so long. It's exhausting. And then you don't have the energy then to be creative, the carving out the time, making the time to actually create.

DANA FISHER
ESHA CHHABRA

ESHA CHHABRA

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Author of Working to Restore: Harnessing the Power of Business to Heal the Earth

The term regenerative business started coming into the lexicon in 2017, 2018. And regenerative means to regenerate, means to bring life into something. To sustain means to keep the status quo. And regenerative looks at things from a very holistic lens. You know, it's like if you're going to run a regenerative farm, it's all the different components of the farm and the ecosystem ideally come within the ecosystem.

RAPHAËL MILLIÈRE

RAPHAËL MILLIÈRE

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Asst. Professor in Philosophy of AI · Macquarie University
I'd like to focus more on the immediate harms that the kinds of AI technologies we have today might pose. With language models, the kind of technology that powers ChatGPT and other chatbots, there are harms that might result from regular use of these systems, and then there are harms that might result from malicious use. Regular use would be how you and I might use ChatGPT and other chatbots to do ordinary things. There is a concern that these systems might reproduce and amplify, for example, racist or sexist biases, or spread misinformation. These systems are known to, as researchers put it, “hallucinate” in some cases, making up facts or false citations. And then there are the harms from malicious use, which might result from some bad actors using the systems for nefarious purposes. That would include disinformation on a mass scale. You could imagine a bad actor using language models to automate the creation of fake news and propaganda to try to manipulate voters, for example. And this takes us into the medium term future, because we're not quite there, but another concern would be language models providing dangerous, potentially illegal information that is not readily available on the internet for anyone to access. As they get better over time, there is a concern that in the wrong hands, these systems might become quite powerful weapons, at least indirectly, and so people have been trying to mitigate these potential harm

DANNY CAINE

DANNY CAINE

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Bookseller · Poet · Author of How to Protect Bookstores and Why · How to Resist Amazon and Why · Picture Window

The thing that unites my poetry and the nonfiction writing is my main obsession as a writer. It's the question of, how do you live meaningfully in late capitalism? As corporations and global capitalist forces take over the world, what does it mean to try to have a meaningful human life? Bookselling captured my imagination and my heart as soon as I started working at the bookstore because I could see the potential for this great, amazing community-oriented work.