U.S. Media and Infrastructure:
A Comparison of Symbols



which one of these is not (un)like the other?



















Is it possible that the big picture hides in plain sight?
Does it stare us in the face?



















STARE BACK.










SHARE BACK. Ob(Li)fious welcomes discussion and written submissions.



















Images courtesy: Google images

Organizational procedures, part 1

Writing
Research and explorations are conducted by all collaborators, submitted pieces for publication are selected based on unanimous decision of the editors. Final revisions, after being reviewed by the editors, are entrusted to the publishing committee, which will oversee the sustained production of a magazine and/or website. Blogger.com, a free-access blog website, may serve as a suitable medium for publication until the community decides otherwise.

Education
The primary educational mission of this collaborative project is duplicitous: 1. educate ourselves through intuitive experience and research; 2. open our discoveries to dialog through publication and creative enterprise. Educating ourselves necessarily involves being receptive to persons who are not necessarily in socially acknowledged positions of authority or credibility.

In addition to publication, other means for engaging in education and dialogue will be decided upon and conducted by all members, which may include interactive performances, demonstrations, and exhibits.

Government
The community will internally hold open dialog exploring its organizational structure that will give all persons operating by free will within it an environment that is comfortable and conducive to advanced learning processes.

The community will have full rights to rearrange its constitution, in keeping integrity to its ideals here set forth.

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.