Generally I am an optimistic and confident person, but one thing that has really got me down lately is when I am faced with bureaucracy and filling in forms. Because EVERYTHING that I consider to be of value and worth in my life - EVERYTHING I consider to be an achievement and a success - NONE OF IT seems to have any value at all in the eyes of bureaucracy and filling in forms. There is literally no place for any of it on the forms or in the phone conversations etc. It really makes me despair.
Of course my principle Achilles heel in all this is the concept of money. It seems to me to be one of the least interesting things in the world. My mind literally goes blank whenever I attempt to think about it. There are so many many more interesting things to focus on in life. How does anybody find the motivation to sacrifice so much of their life pursuing anything as dull as money? It is a genuine mystery to me.
Showing posts with label Cognitive Liberty. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cognitive Liberty. Show all posts
04 May 2011
20 March 2011
14 July 2010
I am an information activist.
"You get the information out to the people."
"We believe a richer intellectual and historical record that is fuller and more accurate is in itself intrinsically good, and gives people the tools to make intelligent decisions."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/jul/14/julian-assange-whistleblower-wikileaks
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Assange
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikileaks
http://wikileaks.org/
"We believe a richer intellectual and historical record that is fuller and more accurate is in itself intrinsically good, and gives people the tools to make intelligent decisions."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/jul/14/julian-assange-whistleblower-wikileaks
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Assange
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikileaks
http://wikileaks.org/
13 May 2010
19 April 2010
*THE MENTAL ENVIRONMENT* and the tyranny of *THE NATURAL*
Frequently, when people mention authenticity it comes hand in hand with an underlying and all too often unchallenged (romanticist) assumption that only face-to-face experience can truly be authentic.
But why should we be required to have to share the same temporal and spatial co-ordinates as another person in order to experience or share something authentic with them?
To be human is to be neurodiverse; I believe passionately in the importance of cognitive liberty.
What best suits some people doesn't best suit everybody. And different experiences (including different mediated experiences) will give varying degrees of nourishment depending on each individual. And equally what might seem authentic or of value to one person may be entirely meaningless and empty to another also.
Variety and diversity is what's important, I reckon. And the more options we have to communicate and share with one another and learn about one another, the better.
But why should we be required to have to share the same temporal and spatial co-ordinates as another person in order to experience or share something authentic with them?
To be human is to be neurodiverse; I believe passionately in the importance of cognitive liberty.
What best suits some people doesn't best suit everybody. And different experiences (including different mediated experiences) will give varying degrees of nourishment depending on each individual. And equally what might seem authentic or of value to one person may be entirely meaningless and empty to another also.
Variety and diversity is what's important, I reckon. And the more options we have to communicate and share with one another and learn about one another, the better.
17 April 2010
Creativity is as important as Literacy
Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity. He champions a radical rethink of our school systems, to cultivate creativity and acknowledge multiple types of intelligence.
20 November 2009
The People Will Give Strength Unto Their Poet
engraved on the Gdansk monument is the defiant penultimate stanza of Czesław Milosz's poem,
"You Who Wronged"
"Do not feel safe.
The poet remembers.
You can kill one, but another is born.
The words are written down, the deed, the date."
Czesław Miłosz in the Guardian 2001
Czesław Miłosz in Wikipedia
enslavement through consciousness
The Captive Mind via Wikipedia
The heart of his book, The Captive Mind, is a portrayal of four gifted Polish men who all capitulated, in some fashion, to the demands of a totalitarian state.
He highlights the processes which force, cajole and woo thinking men and women to believe self-evident lies.
The Captive Mind via Amazon.co.uk
While banned in Poland, The Captive Mind circulated underground there, Czesław Miłosz being among those authors whose name could not be mentioned even in order to denounce."
"You Who Wronged"
"Do not feel safe.
The poet remembers.
You can kill one, but another is born.
The words are written down, the deed, the date."
Czesław Miłosz in the Guardian 2001
Czesław Miłosz in Wikipedia
enslavement through consciousness
The Captive Mind via Wikipedia
The heart of his book, The Captive Mind, is a portrayal of four gifted Polish men who all capitulated, in some fashion, to the demands of a totalitarian state.
He highlights the processes which force, cajole and woo thinking men and women to believe self-evident lies.
The Captive Mind via Amazon.co.uk
While banned in Poland, The Captive Mind circulated underground there, Czesław Miłosz being among those authors whose name could not be mentioned even in order to denounce."
19 November 2009
KETMAN
Ketman (Arabic kitmān كتمان "secrecy, concealment") is the act of paying lip service to authority while holding personal opposition.
It is a sort of political or religious camouflage, for the purpose of survival, in circumstances where open opposition would result in persecution.
Ketman can be practised through many generations, and eventually erupt in the form of revolutions, uprisings, etc.
Though the term was originally used exclusively in regard to Islamic authority, the term is most frequently encountered in reference to Communist authoritarianism.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketman
It is a sort of political or religious camouflage, for the purpose of survival, in circumstances where open opposition would result in persecution.
Ketman can be practised through many generations, and eventually erupt in the form of revolutions, uprisings, etc.
Though the term was originally used exclusively in regard to Islamic authority, the term is most frequently encountered in reference to Communist authoritarianism.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketman
05 November 2009
Creative Talent and the Mental Environment
Should the best creative minds of our generation be so focused on high-gloss dishonesty?
"We, the undersigned, are graphic designers, art directors and visual communicators who have been raised in a world in which the techniques and apparatus of advertising have persistently been presented to us as the most lucrative, effective and desirable use of our talents. Many design teachers and mentors promote this belief; the market rewards it; a tide of books and publications reinforces it."
Artists "who devote their efforts primarily to advertising, marketing and brand development are supporting, and implicitly endorsing, a mental environment so saturated with commercial messages that it is changing the very way citizen-consumers speak, think, feel, respond and interact. To some extent we are all helping draft a reductive and immeasurably harmful code of public discourse."
"We propose a reversal of priorities in favor of more useful, lasting and democratic forms of communication - a mindshift away from product marketing and toward the exploration and production of a new kind of meaning. The scope of debate is shrinking; it must expand. Consumerism is running uncontested; it must be challenged by other perspectives expressed, in part, through the visual languages and resources of design."
http://www.spack.org/words/firstthings.html.moved
https://www.adbusters.org/category/tags/first_things_first
"We, the undersigned, are graphic designers, art directors and visual communicators who have been raised in a world in which the techniques and apparatus of advertising have persistently been presented to us as the most lucrative, effective and desirable use of our talents. Many design teachers and mentors promote this belief; the market rewards it; a tide of books and publications reinforces it."
Artists "who devote their efforts primarily to advertising, marketing and brand development are supporting, and implicitly endorsing, a mental environment so saturated with commercial messages that it is changing the very way citizen-consumers speak, think, feel, respond and interact. To some extent we are all helping draft a reductive and immeasurably harmful code of public discourse."
"We propose a reversal of priorities in favor of more useful, lasting and democratic forms of communication - a mindshift away from product marketing and toward the exploration and production of a new kind of meaning. The scope of debate is shrinking; it must expand. Consumerism is running uncontested; it must be challenged by other perspectives expressed, in part, through the visual languages and resources of design."
http://www.spack.org/words/firstthings.html.moved
https://www.adbusters.org/category/tags/first_things_first
02 November 2009
THE MYTH OF SISYPHUS
ABSURDITY and REVOLUTION
"From a lucid appreciation of the absurdity of our life three consequences flow, which Camus calls Revolt, Freedom and Passion."
By 'Revolt' Camus means defiance in the face of the bleak truth about the human condition, hopeless but not resigned, lending to life a certain grandeur.
"We must imagine Sisyphus happy."
"Recognition of the absurdity frees us from habit and convention: we see all things anew, and are inwardly liberated."
"By 'passion' Camus means the resolve to live as intensely as possible, not so as to escape the sense of absurdity but so as to face it with absolute lucidity."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Myth_of_Sisyphus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sisyphus
In "The Myth of Sisyphus" Albert Camus elevates Sisyphus to the status of The Absurd Hero.
"Absurdity is a feeling which arises from the confrontation of the world, which is irrational, with the hopeless but profound human desire to make sense of our condition. The appropriate response to this situation is to live in full consciousness of it."
"From a lucid appreciation of the absurdity of our life three consequences flow, which Camus calls Revolt, Freedom and Passion."
By 'Revolt' Camus means defiance in the face of the bleak truth about the human condition, hopeless but not resigned, lending to life a certain grandeur.
"We must imagine Sisyphus happy."
"Recognition of the absurdity frees us from habit and convention: we see all things anew, and are inwardly liberated."
"By 'passion' Camus means the resolve to live as intensely as possible, not so as to escape the sense of absurdity but so as to face it with absolute lucidity."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Myth_of_Sisyphus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sisyphus
In "The Myth of Sisyphus" Albert Camus elevates Sisyphus to the status of The Absurd Hero.
"Absurdity is a feeling which arises from the confrontation of the world, which is irrational, with the hopeless but profound human desire to make sense of our condition. The appropriate response to this situation is to live in full consciousness of it."
16 October 2009
NEURODIVERSITY: how soon is now
"I am the son and heir,
Of nothing in particular,
You shut your mouth
how can you say,
I go about things the wrong way,
I am human and I need to be loved,
just like everybody else does..."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurodiversity
"Neurodiversity is an idea which asserts that atypical (neurodivergent) neurological development is a normal human difference that is to be recognized and respected as any other human variation."
Of nothing in particular,
You shut your mouth
how can you say,
I go about things the wrong way,
I am human and I need to be loved,
just like everybody else does..."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurodiversity
"Neurodiversity is an idea which asserts that atypical (neurodivergent) neurological development is a normal human difference that is to be recognized and respected as any other human variation."
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