Do you want the codewords of your subculture to join the repertoire of the general [regional/national/global/solar] culture?
Are you a member of a guild? You know, a craft/workers union, a medical association, a political party, a corporation, a sports club, that sort of thing.
Do you share a set of words solely around something like Earl Grey Tea?
What do I share with the bird pecking on the shagbark hickory tree outside my window?
What do I call the bird? Do I give it a common name? A botanical/Latin name? A list of descriptors? The sounds that it makes?
Black and white feathers. Tends to hop up the tree. Can’t hear what, if any, sounds that it makes from its throat.
Should I say downy woodpecker? How about Picoides pubescens?
As I drink a cup of water which contains a prepackaged bag of Twinings Classics Earl Grey Tea I zapped together in the microwave oven, what else do I observe that doesn’t necessarily pass by the viewhole-cut-in-the-wall called a window?
Today, I am alive.
Thoughts left over from previous days’ influences vie for my conscious action to record them here.
One to remember: [“Fascism under the guise of democracy is the rule of financial capital itself.” — Laibach], ironically read and recorded from a video on the commercial website, YouTube, along with [“What is art? Art is the goal and the end of progress.”], “Stop the parahuman” and the fact that art both creates a new mythology and should take the system more seriously than the system takes itself seriously.
Which means a performer like Jimmy Fallon is just another fascist propagandist, if you follow that line of reasoning.
IF, that is, you take art seriously and believe that politics is in the service of theatrical performances.
Global absurdistcynical art means nothing to the bird looking for a few bites to eat on this cool, late winter day. The larvae and other insects being eaten have no philosophical funny point to make in sacrificing their lives to feed the bird.
Can you protest against a government that provides the roads and education that brought you to the steps of the government building to wave legible signs of protest?
Of course you can.
What is education? Is it not our way of tricking people of all ages, not just children, into adopting a set of codewords to increase their success when interacting with others who most often use the same codewords; i.e., share the same [sub]culture?
A white breasted nuthatch, Sitta carolinensis, clears out an old nesting hole in the same tree on which the woodpecker was searching a few minutes ago.
How do we train ourselves to observe our codeword sets and our behaviours so we can make changes before we get to the point where we feel our only recourse is to generally protest the system that got us to that point?
How do we enhance our [bio]feedback system to protect ourselves as individuals, giving easily-accessible new routes for those who wish not to perpetuate the codeword set of the [sub]culture in which they/we feel trapped?
In other words, how do we take those who are mostly followers and readily give themselves over to hypnotic leaders, who aren’t interested in promoting more than one subcultural codeword set, and give those followers the ability to break their trances and follow the leaders they are best predisposed to emulate?
Those who can follow themselves, are able to self-hypnotise belief in the power of nonconformance, no matter how much the self is a product of mass hypnosis and thus not completely individualistic/unique, just a unique combination of mass [sub]cultural codewords, we need not worry about, but should still give them the same protection under the law as conforming, hypnotised followers.
No matter how much we adore/abhore the prevailing system of social interactions, we all contribute. In fact, diversity of beliefs is an inherent part of species survival.
We can still belong to our codeword groups — our clubs, corporations and associations — creating entrance exams and other means of excluding codeword noncompliers, including official denial/rejection codeword sets (“that person is an enemy of our [religious/political] belief system,” “your team sucks,” “you are not qualified to be an official member of our witchdoctor medical practitioners,” etc.), if we wish.
In the end, we are all selling something, ourselves in opposition to or ourselves as part of a system.
How do you/I buy or buy into a system?
That’s a question the birds would understand. Sometimes, they’re species-specific, mating with others of their kind, and sometimes, they’re members of a bigger flock, taking advantage of numbers, a group of different species gathering to elude a predator and feed upon the fat of the land. Safety in numbers as prey while the predator simply gets a wider variety of food to choose from.
That’s all we are, too. You/me/us.
treetrunkdings 