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.

OB(LI)FIOUS PROJECT PROPOSAL OF RESOLUTION,
amended 30 January 2007, 23 November 2009

This project intends to collect together open-minded and cooperative individuals who are ready to construct a collective narrative that accurately represents new paradigms as we shift from archaic paradigms imposed on us. The project is being constructed so that persons who crave undistorted information may discover together ways of engaging in a creative process for surveying messages and prevailing paradigms--primarily, those of the dominant, imperialistic, and Eurocentric world--with the intention to construct and examine viable alternatives that allow for real freedom of expression and quality of life.

The participants recognize that everything they currently know is in flux; they, therefore, with limited judgment, resolve to question the viability of the artifice that permeates their lives, that, though designed, constructed, and reinforced by institutions that supersede them, are likely reinforced and perpetuated also by themselves. They intend, furthermore, to empower themselves through a developing inclusive and transcendent awareness, and to redefine themselves through compromise based on such open-mindedness.

In order to accomplish this resolution, the participants will conduct thorough research on topics they agree upon through active on-going dialog, through a critical lens that attempts to be unfiltered. Cognizant of the necessity of the dissolution and resolution of paradigms through analytical exploration, the project's collaborators embrace such change as part of a healthy growth process, and seek positive reconstruction and feedback.

Above all, this project's intention is to promote the solidarity of a growing community that seeks peaceful and stimulating dialog. The participants thus resolve to provide a forum for discourse that is open to all who accept the challenges sought herein, and who recognize the dignity of every individual and her right to participate in this dialog.

The participants collected feel it is realistic and necessary to engage in a growing community that practices peace and encourages global dialog. Consistent with this community's humble intentions, it recognizes this very statement as being in a state of perpetual revision. As a living, growing, breathing organism that respects every perspective, the ob(li)fious project seeks to be a passive vehicle for positive change.

Notes on ob(Li)fious (unpublished notes 8/5/04; amended 9/23/06):

ob(Li)fious [or ob(Li)vious] is a working title for the magazine/journal I am proposing that will attempt to define what is [really reality].

"Really reality" may serve as a guiding theme for the society that may be formed in answer to this blog. This blog may serve as a generative pool (out of many) for paper topics that may, in turn, form the proposed society's articles that will be researched and published in the proposed journal.

[graphic] note on graphic: original title design contains peculiar diacritic inventions, which I will not attempt to re-create here.

The title's concept was partially inspired by the Brazilian cinepoem "LIFE," by Decio Pignatari (1958). As a simple kinetic poem, the title ob(LI)fious is intended to suggest multiple concepts in one (e.g., superficially, it consists of the words obvious, oblivious, and life, which paradoxically seem to operate simultaneously as parts of the same whole); it is, however, a working title, as I believe it itself suggests above all else, and as such, it implies the evolution inherent in language, in consciousness, and in behavior of individuals, of communities, of cultures, of nations, and of the new emerging global community (essentially, evolution seems to shape many, if not all, constructs of human civilization, which include, in addition to those social elements listed above, which are, by no means, conclusive, concepts and paradigms that are culturally and otherwise devised). Ob(Li)fious magazine and its supporters seek to determine a new set of concepts and constructs through a continuous analytical process that involves reevaluation and deconstruction, and that promotes optimism and research (a fuller discussion of ob(Li)fious's agenda and mission statement will be the topic of a future blog).

The initial rationale I proposed for a previous working title, although perhaps vague without being depicted here, is, I think, relevant, not only since it demonstrates the flux which the visible working title still suggests, but because of the previous title's relative similarity in argument to the current one.

The following is that rationale.

Life is obvious unless we are oblivious. Restated, the oblivious are unaware of the obvious. Life equals the energy (i.e., "e" squared in the title) that one must exert in order to solve the equation that is LIFE, thereby breaking out of OBLIVION. Life is also, the title suggests, re-created by Society to be confusing, with things made wrong that should be right. . . .the purpose of the v and the f (coexisting in the previous title, where the (f) was an alternate letter in "life" contained in the title) is to demonstrate that there is reason in everything, even when it doesn't make sense (i.e., here, the reason of strange spellings in our language indicative of its evolution) and to present the challenge to keep pressing for the truth of something past when you think the answer is "because."

It seems logical that a magazine whose determined goals call for a rigorous method of discovery, and which publishes its findings and hypotheses, would have a title that embodies its science as well as its art. Of note is the idea that SCIENCE and LANGUAGE, or REASON and LANGUAGE, were traditionally inseparable according to the Humanist philosophy of the Renaissance and the alleged Age of Reason.