[-empyre-] transforming human culture and the ideosphere through collective intellectuality

[Simon Biggs]

Kimura's reflections are evocative of the Fordist systems that underpin many
socio-economic structures currently existent on our planet, especially those
that are industrial or post-industrial (on both the left and the right). But
I wonder if it describes all forms of human society and the manner in which
individuals form in relation to it?

Anthropologists such as Tim Ingold and James Leach take a different
approach, considering self formation as a collective activity. This starts
where Mauss's concept of the gift leaves off and moves into territory I have
previously termed social ontology. Their work also references Heidegger, but
to different effect.

This is from an abstract for a recent paper by myself and Penny Travlou. In
it you could replace the term "creativity" with Kimura's idea of "thinking".
Where in Kimura the individual is considered to compose the collective in
this account the process is seen as mutually recursive, with each composing
the other in an iterative process.

quote
In its requirement for both an author and reader art can be considered a
participatory activity. Expanded concepts of agency allow us to question
what or who can be an active participant, allowing us to revisit the debate
on authorship from a new perspective. We can ask whether creativity might be
regarded as a form of social interaction rather than an outcome. How might
we understand creativity as interaction between people and things, as sets
of discursive relations rather than outcomes?
Whilst creativity is often perceived as the product of the individual
artist, or creative ensemble, it can also be considered an emergent
phenomenon of communities, driving change and facilitating individual or
ensemble creativity. Creativity can be a performative activity released when
engaged through and by a community and understood as a process of
interaction.
In this context the model of the solitary artist, who produces artefacts
which embody creativity, is questioned as an ideal for achieving creative
outcomes. Instead, creativity is proposed as an activity of exchange that
enables (creates) people and communities. In Creative Land anthropologist
James Leach describes cultural practices where the creation of new things,
and the ritualised forms of exchange enacted around them, function to
"create" individuals and bind them in social groups, "creating" the
community they inhabit. Leach's argument is an interesting take on the
concept of the gift-economy and suggests it is possible to conceive of
creativity as emergent from and innate to the interactions of people. Such
an understanding might then function to combat an instrumentalist view of
creativity that demands of artists that their creations have social (e.g.:
"economic") value. In the argument proposed here, creativity is not valued
as arising from a perceived need, a particular solution or product, nor from
a supply-side "blue skies" ideal, but as an emergent property of
communities.
http://www.littlepig.org.uk/texts/authorship_community.pdf

Best

Simon


On 29/07/2011 13:51, "Michel Bauwens" <michel at p2pfoundation.net> wrote:

> This relates to our discussion on the collective individual in Empyre this
> week.
> 
> One of the ways I have conceived of the p2p foundation platform is through a
> process of 'opportunistic updating' using the whole web as a source. In
> other words, I'm presupposing that there is a collective wisdom out there,
> but that it is insufficiently connected or aware of each other, and that
> bringing this together in a platform as a curator, can create more of a
> collective self-awareness, a recognition of commonality, mutuality and
> complementarity, and hence, an increased mutual alignment where non
> necessiraly existed before.
> 
> This assumes that there is no center that 'knows the truth'.
> 
> I find this idea well expressed by Kimura here below. I found this today and
> know nothing else of this (Japanese?) thinker, but it resonates with my own
> efforts:
> 
> Yasuhiko Genku Kimura:
> 
> "For the locus of thinking is within the individual. It is not the
> collective but the individual composing the collective that alone can think
> and generate ideas. The ideospheric transformation of the kind I speak is a
> synergetic phenomenon that emerges when individuals in sufficient numbers
> become authentic, independent thinkers, that is, originators of ideas,
> producers of dialogues, and contributors to the network of conversations
> that comprises the world."
> 
> 
> The configuration of the ideosphere throughout history has remained
> concentric with external authorities at the center surrounded by circles of
> believers and followers, where an authority did the thinking for its
> followers. Even today, in the scientifically and technologically advanced
> Western world, our educational system is, for the most part, designed to
> produce well informed, intellectually-adept, and professionally-marketable
> non-thinking adults. Thus the philosopher Martin Heidegger states: 'The most
> thought-provoking thing in this most thought provoking time is that we are
> still not thinking.' For, authentic thinking requires self authorship, which
> in turn requires authentic self-knowledge about which our education is
> utterly silent."
> 
> 
> In following the evolutionary thrust for optimization that is driving our
> collective transformation toward an unprecedented height of culture and
> civilization, the ideospheric configuration we require for the 21st century
> is omnicentric, having independent yet interconnected centers within the
> intellectually and spiritually sovereign individuals, living and working as
> self-authorities in the matter of thinking, knowing, and acting. Then, the
> thinking, knowing, and acting of these authentic individuals will
> synergetically co-develop throughout the omnicentric configuration of the
> evolving ideosphere. The Information Revolution that is underway with the
> omnipresent Internet is simultaneously the manifestation of, and the
> apparatus for, this new omnicentric configuration of the ideosphere."
> 
> 
> Thus, the transformation of the ideosphere does not mean the propagation of
> any particular set of ideas. Rather, it is the transformation of the
> configuration of the ideosphere itself from concentricity to omnicentricity
> in which every individual will engage in authentic, independent thinking in
> synergy with others."
> 
> 
> We human beings are at our best not when we are engaged in abstract solitary
> reflection or on our individual transformation for its own sake but when we
> are engaged together in the act of transforming the world. The act of
> idea-generation through authentic thinking and the sustained engagement in
> the conversation of humankind, if conducted in the context of pursuit of
> truth, beauty, and goodness, will lead to powerful moral action that will
> engender a New World. To engage in such moral action and to become a
> co-creator of a New World is to become a world-weaver in the act of weaving
> the world and a history-maker in the act of making history."
> 
> 
> There is no complete individual transformation apart from real world
> transformation. For the individual is the whole world; for the individual is
> the whole of humanity." (
> http://wakeupdream.blogspot.com/2011/07/kosmic-alignment-principal-of-global.h
> tml)
> 
> 


Simon Biggs | simon at littlepig.org.uk | www.littlepig.org.uk

my new work email address from August 1 2011 is s.biggs at ed.ac.uk

s.biggs at eca.ac.uk | Edinburgh College of Art
www.eca.ac.uk/circle | www.elmcip.net | www.movingtargets.co.uk