Thursday, January 11, 2007

but the good news is................

that once we understand the tools of manipulation that are used against us, we can use them for our own benifit.

we are a form of media also. our dress, our language, our tone of voice, our mannerisms and our pace are all ways of communicating the message we want to get across.....

and it`s highly manipulative.

so the question becomes; what do you want to happen next?

once you have that answer then you can begin to go and make it happen.

does that sound familiar?

2 comments:

Charles Bergeman said...

This reminds me of my High School years.

I had a neighbor who was an artist and he taught me how to silkscreen.

I made many t-shirts for myself and some of my friends.

Here are some of the things we printed on them:

- Great minds don't think alike
- Question Authority
- Why be normal?
- Bull Shirt (with picture of winking bull)

I grew up in a very conservative area where most people stayed in lock step with everyone else.

Most people had either service jobs, factory work or farming as their trade.

Most did not aspire to move away from our town or take on non-traditional roles in the community.

I learned from my neighbor that there was a different way of looking at the world. I was an artist from a young age and I related to his point of view immediately.

Things made more sense to me when I questioned the authorities in my community and in the media we had available to us.

I found alternate means of learning about the world through books, graphic novels, and films we saw in gallery settings.

It gave me the courage to go to college in a far away city and eventually move to the San Francisco Bay Area to lead a lifestyle that most could not imagine in my small town.

This year marks my 30th High School reunion. I am tempted to return and see what has happened to my classmates that I did not stay in touch with.

My "artist" friends from that time have all moved away and are involved in interesting careers.

I know we were looked at as oddballs by most of the folks in our town. But, I also know that there is some envy associated with the questioning stares.

They probably wonder at times about what they might be missing out on.

Dr.Alistair said...

the majority of people have to be programmed otherwise it would be absolute chaos out there.

there are few artists in society. there isn`t room for too many doing what they want when they want and with who they want, but for the determined few there is a reward and a role in society..........the same one that rejected us in the first place.
that role is visionary......we are the ones who peer into the future and come back with tales of mystery and imagination and clues as to what to do next.
great minds don`t think alike.
thankfully.
my favorite book of all time is artists, craftsmen and technocrats. in it there is a decription of how the three different types get along.
it talks of how the technocrat wants to run the craftsmen and kill all the artists.
it`s exactly like life.
that`s what you experienced in the area where you grew up.
artists scare bureaucrats.
they want to destroy that which they don`t understand.....or see as a threat.
the only chance an artist has is to become a bureaucrat or partner with one who is.......otherise there will eventually be a gallows built.