Seeing our power is quite easy upon self-validation (with art)

We can validate how we intuitively see. We can validate the powers we all have, the genius we all have; we all have a purpose for being here, and this is the right time. We each lean towards our purposes but others have been hooking our attentions.



We are the remnants of the *natural glues* which kept extend'd families and villages together for thousands of years. Only relatively recently have we been largely separated from our memory of these truths; and when we intuitively art our lives we uncritically accept the frames of references provided for us. Thus, we forget our purpose. And, to outsiders looking at our our infetesmal differences (so "normalized"), it's easy to assume neurosis, aloofness, without even thinking of the contexts which lead us to our mutually challenged situations.

When we begin to remember our powers..."we cease to run in circles," says John Trudell, a Lakota wisdom keeper. "We cease to destroy our bodies and our neighbors and our planet. We cease to let others tell us which way to walk. We cease to let others tell us how to think and what to believe. We cease to let others tell us WHO and WHAT we are. We cease to be miserable. We cease to be in pain all the time. We cease to be mindless automatons. We cease to hate. We cease to be able to hate. We cease to be a part of the insane world.

"We cease to be profitable commodities."

We begin to enjoy our lives more. We begin to escape the comfortably numb. We begin to be less afraid all of the time. We begin to explore beyond the corralls planted in our heads. We begin to find meaning to our existences. We begin to reach out in more authentic ways. We dare to go into such a process as we experience the reflections we create, instead of letting others create "for" us.

resources:
www.ic.org
Mental Patients Liberation Alliance (Utica, NY)(ask me about their toll free crisis line)
www.donmiguelruiz.com

More info about John Trudell http://www.okimc.org/newswire.php?story_id=720&type=otherpress&language=all&results_offset=60
(includes audio and a large amount of text excerpts of Trudell's insights)

Review of The Child Savers, a book demystifying the 'Polytricks' of the Adjustment Game

posted 16 Sep 2003 at ucimc.org

"The problem with children, and with working class children in particualr, was that they refused to be integrated smoothly into an oppressive society. ...The child savers turned political problems into adjustment problems. Instead of seeking political solutions to the problems of young people, they chose therapeutic remedies, thereby deflecting criticisms of capitalism onto its victims." (excerpt)

Note from the one who posted this on ucimc.org:
While the focus of the following article is on the *poli-tricks* of juvenile "justice" from 1974, we can certainly garner valuable insights into the ways alleged "child savers" of today work their games.

Notably, the continuing and prevailing use of *emotionally potent oversimplifications* (which do better to hype people up and get them often quite uncritically implementing some policy which isn't up for discussing) is a most interesting and recurring phenomenon...Whatever topic about *children* you read in the mainstream (and often "alternative") press, we get this same pattern of hype first and foremost, and certain policies being implemented which turn out to go against our interests. Enjoy!


The Child Savers: The Invention of Delinquency, by Anthony Platt; University of Chicago Press, 1969; Reviewed by Keith Hefner (FPS, December, 1974; p29-32)

Platt provides the historical background necessary for a truly radical critique of juvenile justice.

The people who worked to establish a separate juvenile justice system in the United States have typically been depicted as noble humanists, combining high ideals with practical zeal. They swooped down on our foul and fetid cities to rescue American young people from a life of crime and degeneracy. If it weren't for them, we would not be save in our homes tonight because juvenile delinquents would be roaming the streets looking for trouble.

That characterization of the "child savers" of early 20th century America has been repeated so often that most people believe it. A sprinkling of books published in the past 10 years (among them, Lisa Richette's The Throwaway Children and Lois Forer's No One Will Lissen) have begun to show that there is something drastically wrong with the juvenile justice system. They are usually filled with horror stories about long sentences for minor crimes and beatings in jail followed by pleas for more understanding, lighter case loads, and numerous reforms.

In The Child Savers, Anthony Platt takes us a step beyond the horror stories. He investigates the origins of the juvenile justice system and shows that the outrages of today are in many cases just logical consequences of the past. The child savers left a legacy of courts, prisons, new definitions of criminality, and new methods of "reforming" the young. But, he says bluntly, "the child savers should in no sense be considered libertarians or humanists." Critical research reveals that indiscriminate arrest, indeterminate sentencing, military drill, and hard labor were the concrete results of their reforms. And in most cases these were not accidental results--the child savers championed them.

Platt re-examines the child saving movement in this country, reviewing the motives, methods, and institutional results of the efforts of the self-proclaimed savers. His method of analysis is significant in that it does not automatically accept the criminality of the "offender." Instead, he shows why certain types of behavior were categorized as delinquent, and how the reformers attempted to modify that behavior. (Platt's method would be baluable in many areas, but it is particularly applicable in the area of juvenile delinquency. Over half of the crimes committed by young people in the U.S. are so-called status offenses--offenses like truancy, running away, and incorrigibility, which are not crimes for adults. Understanding how and why people are judged criminal is crucial to understanding who is a criminal.) Platt aplies his method primarily to a study of Illinois around 1900, because that is where the most influential and pioneering work on juvenile delinquency was accomplished.

Changing Views of Criminality
In the late 1800's and early 1900's the dominant opinion in criminology held that blacks, immigrants and many working class people were, in various ways, sub-human. They formed a "criminal class" which was incurably anti-social. Criminology concentrated on containment, and the biological origins of criminology were stressed. Sarah Cooper, who pioneered the kindergarten system in California, complained that many criminal children "came into the world freighted down with evil propensities and vicious tendencies. They start out handicapped in the race of life."

Such biological determinism was inconsisten with the practice of reform, and gave way to new theories which included the possibility of rehabilitation. The concept of the criminal was modified to suggest that the "natural imperfections" found in the criminal class could be remedied.

The first salient theories of childhood criminality were developed in this context. While the view of the young offender was greatly influenced by prevailing theories, it was less biologically deterministic. Children were less likely to be thought of as non-human or inherenetly evil. Christian ethics made it impossible to think of children as being entirely devoid of moral significance. Consequently young people were the first to benefit from the "new penology" of redemption: first because they were young and couldn't be held morally accountable for their actions, and second, because they were considered more malleable than older criminals.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The child savers could have articulated the criticism being acted out by the young people, and joined them to struggle against an unjust system. Instead they chose to mold them to fit that system.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Invention of Delinquency and Its Effects
Having provided that background, Platt askas what he considers to be the most important question. How was it determined that certain types of behavior were criminal, and what were the implications of those decisions?

He basically contends that the child savers took behavior which had previously been dealt with informally, such as begging, rowdiness, and disobedience to authority, and defined it as delignquent. The most important tactic used by the child savers to gain control over the lives of young people was to blur the distinction between delinquent and dependent young people. Originally there were two categories. Delinquent kids were those who had committed a crime, and were tried in adult courts and sentenced to adult jails. Dependent kids, such as street sellers and orphans, were generally ignored by the courts. The rationale for the blurring was that young young people who came into contact with the court or other agencies assigned to deal with them were being helped, not punished. Since they were being "helped" there was no need for procedural safeguards or constitutional protections. The behavior of young people was labeled and categorized. Then kids were stripped of their rights.

The state and various religious organizations were able, unfettered, to define dependence and delinquence as they saw fit. Standards for a "decent home" for example, were set so high that practically any young person could be declared independent. Poor and Black people, whose lifestyles didn't coincide with those of the child savers, were most likely to be found "in need of supervision." In addition, parents were allowed to commit thier children to the Illinois Reform School with the consent of the school's board of directors, and any "responsible member of the community" could turn in young women who they felt acted immorally. Enoch Wines, an influential authority on reformatories, proposed as early as 1870 that state authorities should take control of all kids who lack "proper" care or guardianship.
In 1870 the Illinois Supreme Court ruled that commitment without due process was unconstitutional (100 years ahead of the similar Gault decision), but child savers regarded the decision as "irresponsible." They ignored it; so did the courts. In 1882 the same court ruled that young women could be incarcerated without due process in the Illinois Industrial Training School for Girls because it supposedly wasn't a prison. The Court said:

We perceive hardly any more restraint of liberty than is found in any well regulated school. Such a degree of restraint is essential to the proper education of the child and is in no sense an infringement of the inherent right to personal liberty...

In short, almost any kid could be deemed dependent, and could be imprisoned for it. However, not any kid was sent to jail. It was mostly Black and working class people who did not conform to middle class values.

The Juvenile Court
The juvenile court is generally regarded as the child savers' most significant achievement. The juvenile court differed in many respects from the adult courts: the young person sent there was not accused of a crime, but offered assistance and guidance. Proceedings were informal, and due process safeguards were not applicable.
These courts, operating outside of constitutional structures, often intervened in cases where no offense had been committed, or investigated far beyond the scope of a particular crime, trying to determine a child's morality. For example, Platt metnions that a young person could come to the attention of the court for "posting a problem for some person in authority, such as a parent, teacher, or social worker." The other abuses stemming from informality and lack of due process in the juvenile court system today have been amply documented by many recent books, including the two mentioned earlier in this article.

Have Things Changed?
Platt is peesimistic about the current status of the juvenile courts. He feels that the "radical changes" predicted after the Gault decision are unlikely to materialize. "Important structural change depends on legislative reform" he says, but without elaboration. The practical result of Gault, he points out, is that lawyers are now being integrated into juvenile court proceedings. A study done in California showed that having counsel made little difference in delinquency cases, except that people who had a lawyer were more likely to be jailed pending trial. Adversary tactics are a long way off, and lawyers won't won't be in the forefront of pushing for them. Platt notes that public defenders are being brought into the juvenile court, and then goes into a lengthy discussion showing why they won't be very effective advocates of young people's rights. Lawyers view children's rights less favorably than the Supreme Court, and are more concerned with admonishing their client to tell the truth and shape up, than with winning the case.

Young People Disenfranchised
The most important political result of the child saving movement was that it actually restricted young people's freedom and autonomy. The child saver's rhetoric was about liberating children from the horrors of the city and the workplace, but the reality was tighter supervision and control by adults. Young people were removed from the jurisdiction of the adult courts, and taken out of adult jails, only to receive closer scrutiny and longer jail sentences from the juvenile court. The central interest of the child savers was in controlling and monitoring the behavior of young people--their recreation, education, values and attitudes toward authority. As Platt says, "their reforms were aimed at defining and regulating the dependent status of youth," not encouraging young people to take political power into their own hands to do what they thought would best serve their interests.

The child savers turned political problems into adjustment problems. Instead of seeking political solutions to the problems of young people, they chose therapeutic remedies, thereby deflecting criticism of capitalism onto its victims. The problems of young people were effectively removed from the political arena. Platt sums up "Young people were denied the option of withdrawing from or changing the institutions which governed their lives." The child savers solidified the dependent status of young people by disenfranchising them of their rights.

Adjustment Instead of Change
The problem with children, and with working class children in particular, was that they refused to be integrated smoothly into an oppressive society. The child savers could have articulated the criticism being acted out by the young people, and joined them to struggle against an unjust system. Instead they chose to mold them to fit that system. Platt says that Jane Addams, founder of Hull House and a noted child saver, admitted she was helping people adapt to a way of life which was oppressive and unjust. He cites another author who contends that it was well recognized that correctional workers were engaged in pacifying delinquents.

The child saving ethic still permeates contemporary programs. The paramount goal of most programs whether they are in juvenile correction, mental health, or inner city youth programs, is to help young people better adapt to this society, and few programs criticize what such adjustment means.

The Child Savers is an insightful analysis of the origins of American juvenile justice and their ramifications in today's society. Platt provides the historical background necessary for a truly radical critique of juvenile justice. In addition he appears to have a genuine respect for the right of young people to control their lives. That combination makes The Child Savers one of the most important books around on young people's liberation.

The politics of the 'mind'--an exchange

The following is an exchange between myself and another person, inspiringly articulate. His words are in the blockquoted form. Perhaps you would like to join in on this communication in process?

Excerpts from The Politics of the Mind [quoting R.D. Laing's ideas]

... The struggle, then, is the struggle to control behaviour by defining experience. Society does this through its various agents by defining "reality" in terms of norms and then using those norms as ideal standards.

I would like to take a magnifying glass to "society". What is this term we so often take for granted in using? Really, it is a top-down, chain-of-command game, given cammo, and inserted in the imaginations of the inexperienced recruits (gOOd term!) new (and so unprepared) for "society".

The primary agent is the family.

I think we are agreeing here. I would just like to understand the idea of "agent"; i figure "agent" is yet another soldier ordered or mandated (or?) to carry out the value system of war mind-set (the shared values of such).

But primary agents? Hmm, yes, okay, at least as far as the young recruits are concerned. Yet the *nuclearized* family (not so much the traditional, extended, independent family largely (?) existing before the 19th century (?)) is a conditioned situation, after all. Parents excerpted away from those in (or leaning towards) solidarity with them as human beings, and put into the system of professionals "helping".

Would you agree?

It is, Laing says, "in the first place, the usual instrument for what is called socialization, that is, getting each new recruit to the human race to behave and experience in substantially the same way as those who have already got here". As social agents, the family reproduces in the child a set of attitudes that will outfit him for life in what Herbert Marcuse calls the "one-dimensional society".

One-dimensional, surely. We as "human resources" (said right out in the open) for the meta plan and forever war.

"The family's function is to create, in short, one-dimensional man; to promote respect, conformity, obedience; to con children out of play; to induce a fear of failure; to promote a respect for work; to promote a respect for respectability.

Ah! To CON kidz out of play! Whoa, yes,,,

... From the moment of birth, when the Stone Age baby confronts the twentieth-century mother, the baby is subjected to these forces of violence, called love, as its mother and father, as their parents and their parents before them, have been. These forces are mainly concerned with destroying most of its potentialities, and on the whole this enterprise is successful. By the time the new human being is fifteen or so, we are left with a being like ourselves, a half crazed creature more or less adjusted to a mad world. This is normality in our present age.

How ignorant i've been of Marcuse!

... Society highly values its normal man. It educates children to lose themselves and to become absurd, and thus to be normal. Normal men have killed perhaps 100,000,000 of their fellow normal men in the last fifty years."

Reminds me of Paul Goodman! re: absurd...

But some cannot adapt to this imposed normality. They break down. Instead, they devise a strategy to deal with their inability to hold their invalidated experience and their sense of themselves together. As Laing puts it, "it seem to us that without exception the experience and behaviour that gets labeled schizophrenic is a special strategy that a person invents in order to live in an unlivable situation".

i like to say that we in pain create a self-taught, or *folk way* of managing our situations. i must've read this before, but don't recall it. Was it in his _The Politics of Experience_?

The schizophrenic may look like someone whose "logic" is "ill", he is, in reality, someone, who has been made an invalid because his experience has been invalidated.

Our input is not allowed, it is prohibited in the chain-of-command paradigm. And this is not only true of the "schizophrenic" or those labled "mentally ill"; we see that most of us invalidate such inside our heads (re: the biggest cops are in our heads).

For Laing and Cooper, schizophrenia is not "something happening in a person but rather something between persons". Thus when one psychiatrist calls schizophrenia "a failure of human adaptation", Laing responds that it may as well be "a successful attempt not to adapt to pseudo-social realities".

The other shrink reflects the confines he herself knows she must conform to. Laing spoke of the idea of letting people *go into their symptoms* instead of suppressing them. The blindspot I think he had tho (and led to the intense chaos of his alleged primary challenge --Mary Barnes) was that as a shrink himself he had bought into a way of doing things which separated, way too much, actual living.

Whereas, the pre-colonized (kidz, aboriginals in connection with their traditions), play and dance and self-validate their creativity. Had Mary Barnes (and Laing) been allowed/allowed themselves to escape the psychiatric corrall and *art their lives* more freely, Barnes, for one, would have a good reason to stay in only one paradigm.

... the condition of alienation, of being asleep, of being unconscious, of being out of one's mind, is the condition of the normal man."

On the other hand, Eastern spiritual practices push for folks to escape their mind--their programmed personality, tho within "ego-less" states of what i think are repressive; but non-threatening to most states, and thus allowed to exist. Agree?

On the other hand schizophrenia may be seen as an alienation from this alienation, where, "even through his profound wretchedness and disintegration", the patient may be "the heirophant of the sacred".
[size=10][list]madness need not be all breakdown. It may also be break-through.

Or a processing, which i think Laing was in touch with, even tho from an academic/semi-alienated position. Didn't he see his scientific aid as helping 'patients'/'clients' to go through this process, and then *bringing them back*? After that, i'm not certain, as i was disinclined, when i read that, to hang with intellectualized discussion for very long. (i'm more "poetic"-ly inclined)

...we have a long, long way to go back to contact the reality we have all long lost contact with. And because they are humane, and concerned, and even love us, and are very frightened, they will try to cure us. They may succeed. But there is still hope that they will fail. - Peter Levine

I would rather that they play along with us and evolve their "good education" (and their career mind-set) to where they find liberation for themselves as well! No need to attack them (only their dogma and war behavior); just show how such war imagination as their own style of chain-of-command (a microcosm of the larger picture) confines them. Underneath the war game of psychiatry (and other social sciences allowed to be established), there *is* a human being with good intentions; it's just that the institutional imagination compells them to become something more along the lines of assasins of sanity.

Arguments, no doubt, can be made, to the perhaps folly of trusting those artificially enamored to such authoritarian structures, but my method/theory/practice seeks to keep doors open for human beings no matter what imprisoning machine has grown around them.

As for "a long way to go"? I strongly disagree. The long way belief seems to me an example of what aboriginals call modernized man's curious penchance for making things a lot more complicated than they really are! (surely, an illustrating symptom of most of modernized peoples' belief that social overhaul can only come about by increasing insanity quotients via such dark age ideas as armed struggle)

(note: i'm not saying that those who believe they must pick up the stupidity called such things should or must desist; each of us makes our own decisions. But i'll speak my "mind", anyway, while seeking to inspire radical's radical imagination beyond the pale of "What Must Be Done"!

the Left-wing of colonization--in our heads and everywhere else

I may sound like I'm rambling here, but it's an attempt to get something across. Part of an ongoing process of awareness. Maybe those who like to think will pick out something valuable to them and we can toss it around. That's all I can offer, perhaps. And you know I'll keep at it,,,I've found no other forum nearly as thought-provoking, even tho it feels sooo deadening even then. (Maybe if you want to truly get rid of me, you can suggest a more lively, thoughtful forum? And no, the GA thing doesn't interest me much,,,,)

People I pay attention to say that the Left is the left-wing of capitalism/capital and I see this as true, yet only part of the truth.

The Left is the left-wing of colonization, aka colonialism.

Formal and informal colonization. The colonization planted in our heads, in "our" politics, in our very imaginations, not to mention all the cammoflauged programs, formal and informal, getting us (and so many others) to give away our power, and assume that we never had any in the first place.

And then to "fall back" on all that we've been programmed with: war. STupidity.

To me saying that the Left/left is about colonization goes to the heart because it exposes the game without all the bullshit.

To not expose the big picture of bullshit that the Left is (not to mention the Right/right/rightism, etc.) is to continue around and around in the same old shit--that is, the way we "anti-politicals" continue with these internecine fights about Who's Right (pardon the pun) and Who's Wrong, and yadda yadda yadda. We go in circles, and it's just like a certain aboriginal said about us settlers--such actions/inaction expose how *we don't REALLY want to solve the difficulties facing us all.*

I want to think about this, and I say it's about time others did, as well, and stop this nonsense about labeling aboriginals (in "australia" and every other occupied land--such as the "U.S.") with euro-centric simplifications like "nationalist". Or labeling *anyone* with reductionisms which hide within them games designed to control thought.

It's this superficial consciousness, I think, which keeps "anti-politicos" in yet another form of corrall...going in the same old intellectual circles...

Take crime. The idea of what crime is and how such *symptoms* of people unable to cope bubble up time and again in myriad forms seems to escape the consciousness of those supposedly in solidarity with "the workers" --as if "working people" are somehow hierarchically important over all others.

Why not direct such sentiment to HUMANITY AT LARGE? Why not speak to human beings in GENERAL--human beings who hate their superficial lives, who feel numbed and dumbed. Who are sick and tired of the same old bullshit! "The workers" are not the only people in pain, and not the only people who can bring solutions. They may be the "biggest group", but that sentiment plays into the perpetual war of the need for 'constituencies'. Many of us talk about "mutual aid" and "interdependence"; why don't we broaden that out upon the general public as well? (And those actually imprisoned within the supposed "wealth" of the Ivory Towers).

I say it's time more of we began seeing that the Button Pushers/Orderers and designers of this hell are simply only CRAZY. I'm crazy, myself, and it takes one to know one. To respond to such CRAZY (ready at a moment's notice to become INSANE, with B2s bombing whole neighborhoods, et alli), we must see the value of not "fighting" fire with fire, but by creating radical's radical bridgings.

Of the kind that bring out the John Stockwells from their indoctrinations. And once bringing them out, not mowing them down (in the stupidity of "revenge"), but being radically human with them.

For instance, radically human by inviting them, in their fear, to the worlds we set up; and to invite them to discover who they are, more than what they understand in the world they've grown up in. You may label such "naive" (based on reading only???), but I have to ask what are your actual interests?

And why MUST so-called "radicals" forever follow along with the 18th/19th century imagination about all of this??

Why can't "we" see the value of attacking alienation and challenged behavior, instead of human beings? (I can turn that back on myself, as well, then; as long as the kind of dialogue is allowed where contexts and reasoning is explored)

Take the generalized attack of Trotsky. I'm quite ignorant about him (tho have some experience with when trotskyists tried to allegedly "take over" a group I used to be involved with); but I bet you money that he was like a lot of formalized, reduced human beings of his era. Probably like most "pragmatic", "well-educated" aspirants of authority. That he was merely a product of his era's larger system! And that his ideas wouldn't have been allowed a second of serious engagement hadn't many other "pragmatists" been acting behind the scenes!

That we are supposed to focus only on these single characters/persons, or these *symptoms* of alienation and the stupidity of "our" cult-ure, seems to me to be basically doing the work of tyranny for them! The war cult-ure is perpetuated forever! How convenient.

And then you have people like Sascha and Wolfi trying to label me, as well. You don't try to understand, you just keep the knee-jerk lockstep, and reflect the reality of your alleged vision.

Yes, I'm more and more "enraged". But you don't want to hear about me as a human being, much more than my dared confessions! All you know is war war war, and if someone who has spent a lot of time here, bringing input from another perspective and praxis confesses "the wrong things" then chalk up another of the mass of despised. Really, how different is this bullshit from tyranny? (Oh, you just don't have the so-called "power", is that it?)

To continue with the Left as yet another game of colonization, we see that
"The Law" is hallowed, like the christian bible. (Religion persists far beyond those organizations perceived as 'religious'!) And the game of criminalizing (and punishing/suppressing/invalidating) inarticulate/under-articulated dissent is ignored, EXCEPT when it fits within these 18th and 19th century ideas about what to do and when to intervene. I.e. apparently only at work, or when riots surge up.

WHY do we subordinate ourselves to the 18th and 19th century, anyway??

I'm not going to rant on much further. I "understand" about the meta game that has to be played (the meta game of propaganda in a propaganda-oriented society). Yet I see this belief that things "have to be done" as a game; a choke-chain pulling so-called "radicals" around and into the stupidity of war war war.

As one who is slated for the worst that humanity can do to me (and has experienced to various extents), I remain *still* wanting to hold onto my visions; they are the only thing that makes me want to continue in this life, actually.



How about these other things we don't think through. The idea that "wealth" can be accumulated, instead of experienced. The idea that people are "rich" if they buy into the colonization game, and largely discard their humanity (or human potential).

I may sound like I'm "way too" simplistic here, but I really think that the biggest thing we're facing is one of uncritically accepting a whole set of values. And then acting as if we must react to that, instead of getting back in touch with the values that brought us to this kind of thinking in the first place!

...As if those lost (they smile, yet look at them as their faces fall in old age; their faces speak them more honestly than their illusory possessions) persons who accumulate huge resources via terrorism (I'm thinking of State (and para-State) terrorism) have "power". The idea that they are somehow "happy" while others "cannot" be.

What are some others we take so much for granted?

Really, we've got to see the value in thinking these things through (I know the longtime regulars have thought through these things, generally, but I'm not addressing this to you, unless you want to have your periodic "check-up" for yourself) (then again, I recall that self-critical thinking isn't supposed to be "valid" --right?-- and I have to ask, in what context?)

input to 'Misery Loves Company'--with cruciaL aRt stYLe

Comes from a cross-posting to a bunch of diffrent forums, beginning with the article linked to below.

Phirst off, i want to say i agree with the angle in which Ron Sakolsky is coming from in his Why Misery Loves Company, i just don't totally buy into the idea of "warrior" that the indigenous are using to perhaps bridge with we whom have been so programmed towards war. The warrior angle may well reach many more than my ideah, but that's okay; i aim to reach a pivotal few.

So i play in a most serious way with a poetic ideah i call "Orrior" (one who sees value in taking on a term for themselves which is not in subordination to the imagination of war, as in "warrior"), from here. (re: in the context of the CruciaL aRtz, not Martial Arts)

My vision wants to mesh with the indigenous traditional ways, yet perhaps go further in a most mutually-beneficial way.

Thus, an ideah i came up with iz to art the miserable, in a way where we glorify their orientation, yet do not aid in further institutionalizing or entrenching it. Rather, we inspire them into going into a processing.

I think of the radical faerie way of making a mountain empress of a particularly bad-ass qween, and art still further. To playfully/lovingly/seriously enshrine the *sacred* spirit of those who, in the context of a system bent upon compelling their powerless feelings, don the fabrics of misery.

Think of scenarios. A symbolic, ceremonial procession and crowning of the MOST miserable. Invitation given, then, to participate in a secret society of arters. Where the Miserable Empress is most seriously allowed to play, and become much more, when they feel like it.

I think i am touching on something, but i haven't completely grasped it. Perhaps our fellow human beings, called indigenous, could add to this? Or perhaps those decolonizing their minds would like to step up and most seriously play? (can you even give yourselves permission??)

The angle is to foment communities of ecstatic imagination. And to depth charge each other, towards inspiring each other to conceive of ourselves as much more than death cult-ure dictates.

article excerpt:

In Mohawk scholar Taiaiake Alfred’s new book, Wasáse (2005), he points to the aforementioned coping as a symptom of colonization. In seeking to get beyond coping and to develop a theory of what he calls "anarcho-indigenism," he asks the question, what prevents us from decolonizing our minds? Interestingly enough from a surrealist perspective, he points to the atrophied power of the imagination as a key impediment to decolonization.

Ah-HAH!

As he explains, "We have lost our ability to dream our new selves and a new world into existence. We have mistakenly accepted the resolution to our problems that is designed by people who would have us move out of our rusty old colonial cages and right back into a shiny new prison of coping defined by managed fears and deadened emotional capacities."

A great quote for the thread i started on so-called "mental illness"!

In the process of liberating the land from the continually grasping claws of the colonial system, he calls for the creation of an "indigenous warrior ethic" based upon emancipating the occupied territory of the mind.

If we aspire to be dream warriors, we must recognize that we have all been colonized by the hegemony of civilization— both settlers and indigenous people, though not in like manner. Though this colonization is experienced differently, and is predicated on unequal access to privilege, civilization has cut deeply into all of our psyches, in effect, threatening to lobotomize our ability to dream. For surrealists, the ultimate revolutionary goal of realizing poetry in everyday life is very much about regenerating the bedrock primal connection between dream and reality that has been eroded by the same miserabilist system of civilization that has stolen the land from beneath indigenous feet. From an anarcho-surrealist perspective, moving toward a world in which we can all lead more poetic lives involves restoring the insurrectionary power of the imagination and unleashing it to create an anarchy that is not afraid to dream.

wOw!

evolve our beliefs about civil discourse

"Unless we are very very careful, we doom each other by holding onto images of one another based on preconceptions that are in turn based on indifference to what is other than ourselves. This indifference can be in its extreme, a form of murder and seems to me a rather common phenomenon. We claim autonomy for ourselves and forget that in so doing we can fall into the tyranny of defining other people as we would like them to be. By focusing on what we choose to acknowledge in them, we impose an insidious control on them... The opposite of this inattention is love, is the honoring of others in a way that allows mutual discovery." --Anne Truitt

The following comes from a discussion at free-associaton.net, in the 'civil discourse' association:

To add to the above quote, i want to say that we're going to have to evolve our beliefs about what "civil" discourse is, or do away with such, if we're going to fit humanity into the ideas of being so-called "rational".

My suggestion is that we see the intense as CHAMPIONS, and give them such admiration. See them (and ourselves) as *perfectly imperfect*, in a process, becoming (like all of us).

By freeing up (as much as we can--with such daring exposing just how deep our stated principles sing) people to speak in the languages they're enamored to, we do ourselves a service; we reflect back and forth in ways that ultimately inspire authentic relations.

i myself have blocked language (in the form of 'legal' porn pics) put up on one of the assos i started...so we all make mistakes. If i could do that over again, i *should* have left those up; because, "troll" activity or not, it was a form of arting that the poster made. And she/he was giving me a gift; a gift or puzzle that i was invited to participate in, but couldn't see, and blocked it (telling the poster that if they did it again, i was liable to re-design it with some of my weird imagination, heh heh).

intro post

Herein, you'll find posts from various portions of my *self-arting*. Some of these posts are spoken directly into this blog, others are pulled from places i have been. May you find thangs in here that inspire you on your own path! Feel free to share your thought-through input, as i can always learn from *anyone*!