[-empyre-] Creativity as a social ontology

Fri Jul 9 05:56:11 EST 2010

Simon and Eugenio, there is always "Hatebook" <http://www.hatebook.org/>.

But, really, I think that this thread touches upon the general spirit
of depression that seems so pervasive these days (as well as the
counterinsurgency techniques that have been deployed to neutralize
it).  For a period of time, just about every adult that I associated
with was on a medication to "correct a chemical imbalance."  So, at
once, this means people have a hard time feeling OK.  And, that there
was nothing they could do to feel OK.  And my worry is that this
medicalization of being dissatisfied robs the person of the validity
of their feelings of dissatisfaction.  I understand that when one
doesn't feel OK, they should try to figure out how to feel OK.  But
when the world basically tells you that you have nothing to feel bad
about, except that your brain makes you feel bad until you take this
pill....  you are basically being told that nothing in your life
matters except how you feel about it.

It always sounds judgmental to argue against the banal neutrality of
technocapitalism, but I think it's a pretty big slap in the face to be
told that a pill is going to fix you up, if you are upset about the
absurdities of the workplace, the tragedy of widespread
disenfranchisement and dispossession, the lack of agency you have in
the world, the banal ideals of "love" advanced in self-help
industries, the disappointment of the spectacle, and, finally, the
idea that your life is a treatable disorder.  It seems to me that the
real solution to feeling shitty is to know that no matter how shitty
you feel, your life is not without consequence.  I watch my four year
old climb trees....  he loves to climb trees....  And he doesn't care
if he gets these big bloody scrapes, bruises on his knees, knots on
his head.  It would be easy to say, let's make a game where you
pretend to climb a tree, but you only get hurt for pretend, because
climbing trees is dangerous....  he's not going to go for it.  Because
it is great to do things that are hard.  It feels good to take risks.
It is assuring to pass through danger successfully.

There might be something immature about adults doing dangerous things
for no good reason (I cringe when I see a grown man doing wheelies on
a motorcycle where other people are trying to drive).  But I do think
that, socially, we do really want our relationships to have
consequences.  We want our deeply held ideas to effect people.   And
we want the people that we value to be able to effect us.  I think
most of us actually kind of feel good when someone changes our mind
about something.  We might argue like hell about it.  But in the end,
it feels good to have learned something.  And, if you have something
to share, and another person responds to it, either positively or
negatively, that is also a powerful feeling, too.

To get back to Johannes' question, "what is a relational
consciousness?", maybe human consciousness itself is relational, maybe
it is at the point of relationality that we come into our being.  At
some level, it is possible for us to think things without
communicating them to an other.  But even in isolation, when we take
our thoughts away from impulse, and place them into the stream of
time....  we are relating our thoughts to prior situations and
speculative situations.  We take thought into representation, into the
"ought," into the ethical.  Yet this relation to what we were and what
we might become is not entirely unlike our relationship to external
others--both relationships are based in speculation, in assessing
probabilities, trying for the one we desire, coping in various ways
with the failure to achieve this desire, and initiating the anew
process instantaneously.  This might not be art (but I think it is, if
we view art as techne), but it certainly is creativity.

Davin

On Thu, Jul 8, 2010 at 10:06 AM, Eugenio Tisselli <cubo23 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Simon,
>
> I have seen people in Facebook toy around with the idea of having a "dislike" button, but it hasn't been implemented. I wonder what would happen with such a button. My guess is that few people would use it. It's so easy to "shut down" anyone in Facebook (or other large-scale digital networks, for that matter)... you can simply ignore dislikers and, as an extreme case, delete them from your list. People would not use the button because of fear of being excluded or deleted.
>
> Can networks like Facebook be regarded as disciplining technologies for individuals, as training grounds for adapting to the disengaged, "everybody happy", positive thinking stance favored (and needed) by contemporary capitalism?
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Eugenio Tisselli Vélez
> cubo23 at yahoo.com
> http://www.motorhueso.net
>
>
> --- El jue, 7/8/10, Simon Biggs <s.biggs at eca.ac.uk> escribió:
>
>> De: Simon Biggs <s.biggs at eca.ac.uk>
>> Asunto: Re: [-empyre-] Creativity as a social ontology
>> A: "soft_skinned_space" <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
>> Fecha: jueves, 8 de julio de 2010, 02:01 pm
>> This begs the question why nobody has
>> setup a Facebook-like system based on
>> actual human characteristics and behaviour, reflecting how
>> we socially
>> interact in practice? Such a model would require an open
>> and generative
>> approach to what characteristics and modes of engagement
>> are possible, with
>> constantly emerging dynamics and modes. Hate, love,
>> tolerance, boredom and
>> distaste would be only a few of the states that connections
>> between people
>> could be set to. People might choose to determine these
>> states themselves or
>> the system could heuristically do this on their behalf.
>> That could be
>> fun...and revealing.
>>
>> Best
>>
>> Simon
>>
>>
>> Simon Biggs
>> s.biggs at eca.ac.uk
>> simon at littlepig.org.uk
>> Skype: simonbiggsuk
>> http://www.littlepig.org.uk/
>>
>> Research Professor  edinburgh college of art
>> http://www.eca.ac.uk/
>> Creative Interdisciplinary Research into CoLlaborative
>> Environments
>> http://www.eca.ac.uk/circle/
>> Electronic Literature as a Model of Creativity and
>> Innovation in Practice
>> http://www.elmcip.net/
>> Centre for Film, Performance and Media Arts
>> http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/film-performance-media-arts
>>
>>
>> > From: Eugenio Tisselli <cubo23 at yahoo.com>
>> > Reply-To: soft_skinned_space <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
>> > Date: Thu, 8 Jul 2010 02:36:47 -0700 (PDT)
>> > To: soft_skinned_space <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
>> > Subject: Re: [-empyre-] Creativity as a social
>> ontology
>> >
>> > Davin,
>> >
>> > When I read your phrase
>> >
>> >> And, if we live in a true community, our
>> >> ideas and actions
>> >> are bound to modify, be modified, contradict,
>> and/or
>> >> complement the
>> >> negotiation of being.
>> >
>> > the rose-colored environment of Facebook immediately
>> came to mind. You know,
>> > you can "like" but not "dislike", and people rarely
>> disagree or contradict
>> > each other. You say that we are bound to be
>> contradicted when we live in a
>> > true community, and I would say that we actually need
>> to be contradicted in
>> > order to set arguments, discussions and debates in
>> motion. The fact that we
>> > are here at empyre, not necessarily contradicting each
>> other, but offering
>> > continuous counterpoints and different viewpoints,
>> makes us all richer.
>> > Knowledge can emerge from disagreement. So, in the
>> almost complete absence of
>> > a minimal quota of agonistic exchanges between people,
>> how can a community
>> > emerge from Facebook? Are there so many contradictions
>> and conflicts in the
>> > "real world" that we turn to Facebook simply to escape
>> from them? Could we
>> > then see Facebook as an "anti-community", where we all
>> just whiz by other
>> > poeple's walls, stopping only to acknowledge what we
>> like and
>> >  ignoring what we don't?
>> >
>> > Eugenio.
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > empyre forum
>> > empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>> > http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>>
>>
>>
>> Edinburgh College of Art (eca) is a charity registered in
>> Scotland, number SC009201
>>
>>
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>
>
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