ob[li]f(e)ious: it's about time: October 2006

01 October 2006

Question: WHAT IS THE AMERICAN MAINSTREAM?

Is it possible to discover what the "mainstream" culture's perspective, goals, interests, and ideals are? Or is mainstream not people, but an artificial (i.e., designed, created, established, constructed) status quo based upon some convenient law of average, one which is constructed and maintained institutionally? I find it hard to believe that most people fed mainstream actually buy it because they like it; it seems more likely to me, rather, that the majority that buys into the presented mainstream does so because the alternative is discouraged, disdained, or believed (i.e., imagined, created, expressed, reinforced, experienced) as/"to be" unavailable. It seems unreasonable to accept, furthermore, that the section of the American population not subscribing to the allegedly mainstream culture, although a minority, perhaps, does not represent a significant percentage of the American population. It seems this population, however small, is to be properly assembled and organized, in order to be (self-) defined. Once it is defined, it seems that it will be easier for this multi-faceted tribe to expose the artifice of mainstream, if such a hypothesis turns out to be accurate. This project has the potential to organize and define this under-recognized class of Americans, as well as to expose the artifice of mainstream culture--in America, and potentially, where applicable, in the rest of the world. If this agenda is realized, we potentially possess the ability to make our own mainstream public, and possibly even threaten the survival of the present popular mainstream culture of ideas that define Reality for its "mainstream."

If the source of the stream stops pumping, will the fish seek us instead?

Recommended reading for paper topic:

Heath, Joseph and Andrew Potter. . . . Nation of Rebels: Why Counterculture Became Consumer Culture.
Hoffman, Abbie. . . .Steal This Book!
Niedzvieki, Hal. . . .Hello, I'm Special: How Individuality Became the New Conformity.

LIFE

"Life," by Decio Pignari, conveys, perhaps, my favorite idea: compression and combustion (as creation), expressing concepts such as oneness and compression, while achieving simultaneously an image of evolution. Like the title of this zine, "Life" seems to operate intuitively as an asemic poem, being the thing itself that it wants to express. It conveys even more when, appropriately as a cinepoem, it is played as film reel in which the fundamental principles, the phonemes (the linguistic or fundamental one-syllable human sounds which are known as letters in written form) join together in a procession, to form one unit (word), and conveys many ideas in that central condensed byte of information. As theorists and authors such as C.G. Jung, James Joyce, and Joseph Campbell have indicated, definitely influenced by Biblical and other mythical imagery, a word, as a symbol, is the thing itself. Within its form is its concentrated essence, which it may at any time choose to leak out, thereby manifesting itself in the material world.

A Guiding Principle

Accurate information begins with a question, rather than a statement.

We can say this because a statement reinforces an existing belief and the only way beyond it is to look at it differently, from another perspective, which is why we question.

From the question comes a hypothesis as we gather information and appreciation for what we're studying. The goal is maximum appreciation, maximum analysis and maximum willingness to adjust our view in light of what is discovered in that awareness.

Further, through dialog--discussing and analyzing ideas in a nonconfrontational way, presented with trusted others--we work at seeing things from other perspectives that we could not have considered ourselves before due to the limits of subjectivity.

For instance, a paper topic may resemble the following.

paper topic:

violence in media: mass effect on society (all age groups): desensitization? intention? who's behind it?

First of all, if such a question is to be proposed as a topic to explore by the group in consideration for publication, I would suggest that the question must first be asked, "Is this a question worth exploring?" This is not to say we instantly should dismiss any proposed topic; to the contrary, appropriate consideration should be taken to determine factors such as whether the topic agrees with the intentions of the publication, and whether the available evidence on the subject could generate a thesis which would agree with the publication's theme and general purpose.

After these considerations have been made, the group would discuss the above sample topic. In this scenario, one must be careful with the question, "desensitization," since it is one that appears to be leading one to a conclusion, promoting bias. However, if one is willing to accept an alternate conclusion, and keep the process of discovery open-ended until adequate information is received that properly evaluates both or more possibilities, the question can be reasonably answered. Perhaps "desensitization" could be rethought and replaced with a word that would answer this question without promoting bias. Answering a question is the intention of this group; answering questions from a precept, bias, or any other motive than to discover the essential thing itself, will not yield the results we intend to grasp. I am, so far, encouraging the observance of a subject-object continuum, where all viewpoints are valid, though objective information may be separated from subjective experience and exposed as artificial and problematic.

The Ax Handle Story

". . .by living with them on a daily basis, I was continually struck by their profound practicality. They did not talk of doing things; they did them. One day I was walking in the forest with a man named Rafael. I mentioned that I needed a new handle for my ax. He stopped in his tracks, saying, 'ah yes,' and used his machete to cut a little hardwood tree a few steps off the path. Then he carved an impeccable handle that was to last longer than the ax itself. He spent about twenty minutes doing the bulk of the work right there in the forest and an additional twenty minutes at home doing the adjustments. Perfect work, carried out by eye alone. Up until then, I had always thought that ax handles came from hardware stores."-Jeremy Narby, The Cosmic Serpent: DNA and the Origins of Knowledge