Cognitive
Activism: mindHeroes
Today, I saw a man tearing
down some street art that was created by a young man I consider
to have verifiably prophetic abilities which I have documented elsewhere
on this site. I have not met the artist, and the art is comprised
of sketches on stickers. I remembered when, in the late 1980's a
republican congress did something very similar, and began a long
trend - of ‘cleansing’ the world of certain forms of
information, or simply seeing that they were not accessible, or
supported.
I admit, there are examples
that seem to bear out the basic idea, but they are the exception
by far.
The most interesting
thing was that he was removing something that was sacred to me,
and was 'unsightly garbage' to him. His 'cleansing' was washing
away my ‘temple’.
This problem is far
more pervasive than we might like to initially admit or believe.
For one thing, it’s at once painful and dangerous to even
notice it, because how can one notice and not be affected? In modern
lives it appears that there is ‘so much basic complexity’
that to ‘answer any injustice is functionally impossible’.
Or at least, so threatening as to present barriers far too thorny
to intentionally engage.
I began my quest to
merely encounter cognitive activism as a very young child.
Amongst my first discoveries was a basic trend, which has elaborated
itself in our time into something akin to a law: WhereEver there
are radical ideas, first books, and then people will be burned.
What is cognitively truer - gets relegated to the ignorable
realm of the unverifiable or the imaginary
Sometimes, the burning
isn’t real. It’s disregard, a refusal to credential
as meaningful. A lack of promotion can be as much a burning as a
physical one - ask anyone who lives in unwanted isolation because
their class or nature is considered somehow ‘less than’
what is ‘desirable’ or ‘enforceable’ in
their society.
In my searches I looked
for what any heartful eye might attend: the secret treasures. Those
of the women, the men, the children, the plants, the animals —
the planets the stars. The treasures of the systems and links between
them. And my curiosity and passion, like so many others, so often
led me to the realm of anomaly, or 'metaphysics' that I began to
suspect there were rich unmined veins in these terrains, and especially
their essential linkage to what we call 'art' and 'imagination'
and 'creativity'.
In other cultures and
times there have been radically different understandings of the
nature of being, and these understandings were lived - experienced.
They were not the irreal imaginings of 'primitive savages' or even
'the ancestors of civilization' - they were civilizations.
Their art and pictographs, their writing - was not merely symbolic
or superstitious.
We often decry their barbarism while in the same breath dispensing
a scalar magnification of real barbarism in the name of some
noble and long lost ideal. Our modern societies are, in the vast
majority of cases, catastrophes - rather than civilizations, when
compared to the commonly more humane and sustainable examples of
many of our ancestors. What we see, in general, is that smaller
groups in sustainable co-survival prosper, larger ones topple. But
we see much more than that. We see whole histories, hidden under
the white-out of prejudice, erroneous judgment, science, and corporate
sociopathology.
I have been involved
in integrational domains related to defining and seeking the sources
of cognitive activism for many long and confusing years. During
these years I have watched what I considered to be 'a problem' become
what I cannot but name 'a catastrophe'.
Though I cannot now
know how (or if) the future will perceive our activity, when I project
myself even 100 years into the future, I feel that a person living
then would likely have so little hope of understanding or experiencing
the basic blessings of cognitive and personal liberty that I quail
before the stark specter of what we now, as a set of global economies,
appear to define as 'progress' and 'defense of liberty'.
I define them largely
as 'suicide' and 'defense of rape'. It is a sad time indeed for
liberty and progress, and I fear more troubled waters lie ahead.
If there is anything
unpopular about the prophetic nature of real cognitive activism,
it is the stinging and everpresent threat it comprises in the domains
of habituated ignorance. I don't mean ignorance as in some lack
of cognitive potential or skillfulness; but rather a kind of lazy
inaction with the tools and modalities at hand. The presentation
of 'paths and informations' which are 'scalarly more useful or true'
than the more common paradigms - without being absolute in any case,
is often functionally perceived as a threat, and the common defence
is denial, obfuscation, avoidance, filibustering, or spuriously
superficial propagandisms.
But because humans are
essentially creative, Cognitive Activism is - obscure though it
may be, always with and around and within us. We are Cognitively
Active Beings. Problems arise when large populations attempt to
define or commodify, arbitrate or judge the ‘reasonableness’
of Cognition in Action. This has historically resulted in pogroms
of erasure, silencing, imprisonment and execution. And somehow the
Victims are always to blame for their own ‘misfortune’.
The sites I’ve
chosen are comprise a unique glimpse into the realms of Cognitive
Activism, viewed from a variety of perspectives. None of this information
is safe unless you only consume it. Consumption of information
is akin to eating a life, rather than living it. If you are
one who can really enter a text or idea, these pages will be cognitively
transgenic - because they contain not truth, but a greater and more
liberal degree of accuracy than is commonly available or
easily accessed in a single location. We are grateful to those who
create, maintain and champion human and biospheric cognitive liberty,
for they are the oxygen in the bloodstream of culture. Let us hope
we can avoid global cyanosis together...at least for our species,
and preferably the planet as we know and exist upon it.
I’d like to suggest that, at the core — these varied
gardens have a single author. If you wish to meet the author directly,
learn everything there is to know about your own hand...
We
find that the courage, integrational prowess and brilliance of
these sites and their creators renders them of incredible and
lasting value to a global society. Please join us in supporting
their persons and efforts, and in learning from their powers of
vital and heartful integration, exposition, and playfulness.
The
Organelle Cognitive Liberty Awards, 2002 - 2003
