Will Self
Will Self: PsychoGeography
Published: 29 December 2007
On a recent plane flight from Heathrow Airport, London, to Glasgow, I entered into a typical – but for all that grindingly depressing – altercation. I had been assigned the window seat, while the aisle was occupied by a man two decades younger and a head-and-a-half shorter than myself. I pointed this out to him and suggested that he might have some compassion for his elder, taller, better; but he demurred, saying that he wanted to "get out quickly" at our destination. "What are you," I snapped irritably, "a bloody brain surgeon?"
Will Self: PsychoGeography
Published: 22 September 2007
My friend Marc believes that all that happens when you buy carbon credits is that a man rushes into a remote African village shouting: "Turn off de generator! Big man taking a flight!" But then he's a hopeless cynic – or is he? Marc's view encapsulates the reality of a lot of environmentalists' practice, which is that wealthy Western consciences can be salved by token gestures. Carbon trading schemes are absolute bunk in my opinion, a get-out-of-this frying pan card for arch-capitalists that will dunk us straight back in the fire.
Will Self: PsychoGeography
Published: 04 August 2007
Consider Doggerland, the landmass that before the end of the last Ice Age connected the British Isles with The Netherlands, Denmark and Germany.
Will Self: PsychoGeography
Published: 28 July 2007
In George Orwell's magnum opus, 1984, Winston Smith, the initially exiguous, then rebellious, and finally cerebrally rinsed protagonist, imagines and re-imagines the manner of his death. He pictures himself, released from the dreadful torture chambers of the Ministry of Love, and walking down a sunlit corridor. There is no prickle of nape hairs to anticipate the fatal blow, as he is culled, painlessly, from behind by a high-velocity rifle bullet. It is the very essence of the hideous totalitarian regime of Oceania to encourage doublethink in its citizens, even as they're being executed.
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