The campaign which won last year’s referendum for the UK to leave the European Union immediately dissolved, and in the process kindly open sourced some of its innovative canvassing software VICS - blog post, github repository.
This afternoon, prompted by a chat with Incubator of Change (a Liverpool based think tank working on new ideas for how to develop policies), I took a quick look at the code. Rather than lose what I learnt, I’m just throwing it up in this blog post.
In the late 1890s - the story goes - an ordinary boy in southern India heard an uncle mention the name of this holy mountain.
Arunchala!
Just this, just the name, started pulling him to it. The mountain is meant to be, literally, an incarnation of the deity Shiva.
Then, a while later, for no apparent reason, the boy had a sudden spiritual awakening on the nature of death. In final frustration during some pointless grammar exercises, he left home, headed for the mountain. He stayed there for the rest of his life.
Last night I watched Charlie Brooker’s news recap of the year. As I watched, the humour leavened things and left me entertained. But in my sleep, my mind has realised it had made me pretty angry. So a brief change in tone for this blog - a rant!
Charlie - both you personally, and you as a representative of the media - stop whining about the news bubble! You collectively all made the news bubble. Take some responsibility for it!
I went on a 10 day silent Vipassana meditation course in the Goenka school, at Bodhgaya in Bihar province in north India.
It was a complex event - my emotions and thoughts about it have often changed dramatically in a day.
This blog post is more in note form than a cohesive, final account.
1. Silence
For 9 of the 12 days on site we were silent. Not just no spoken words - also no eye contact, no gestures, no communication with others.
He took my hand. “Follow me. Move fast. Don’t stop.”
I’d spent the early morning looking round the tranquil mosques of ancient Champaner at the bottom of the holy hill.
(This is a good guide to them, plus I left a comment on buses which might be useful. It’s in Gujarat, west India, a little north of Bombay.)
Now it was time to get to the top. Pavagadh. During the Diwali national holiday.
A two year old draft blog post I just found, which is too good not to publish. Age leavens its earnest attempts to be ahead of trend.
New computer technology used to be my relaxation, my hope.
As the world has changed, that comfort has gone.
We grew up in a digital village. Now we’re in its seedy metropolis.
A decade or so ago, I used my energy for emotionally hard problems to try and help with international development or democracy or climate change.
They all seem to be called Lakshmi.
The first one I met at the Virupaksha Temple in Hampi.
You pay a small coin for a blessing, which he takes with his trunk and passes on to his minder.
Then he touches your bowed head like this woman in Pondicherry.
That one was at the Sri Manakula Vinayagar Temple. An amazingly clean temple, worth visiting to see what Hinduism would be like in a clean India - something I hadn’t imagined possible, but it works!
I wrote this post two weeks ago before going on a meditation retreat. It felt too negative at the time; it isn’t in that it reflects my mood then.
India is like a scouring pad.
The dirt the dust.
Litter cast uncaringly - except in Pondicherry, as if to show it is deliberate everywhere else.
The highest ambition of the government cleanup campaign is to end public human shitting. By 2019, in this space faring nation.
Zenrainman’s house is like a tree.
Grown out of the earth of its own basement on the edge of Bangalore, pressed into bricks.
Nurtured entirely by water and light from its own roof.
It breeds, symbiotically, large primates to maintain it.
Treating their sewage.
To water a rooftop rice paddy ready to grow enough to feed them.
The spaces are full of art and light.
Oh India!
There’s always another surprise, toughening your way through the day.
This week Modi, the Hindu nationalist PM, announced to the nation that the two largest bank notes were now worthless pieces of paper.
This clamp down on black markets and electoral bribes has a complex set of rules which let you trade in the old notes in limited ways, and heavily restricts use of ATMs.
As a result, for the last few days banks have turned into queues like these ones in Hyderabad.