#Occupy*

# - The hashtag symbol is used to mark keywords or topics in a Tweet. It was created organically by Twitter users as a way to categorize messages.  It is useful in identifying trends, groupings or followings.

Occupy – To take or fill up; to engage or employ the mind, energy or attention of; to be a resident or tenant of; to take possession of; to hold.

* - In computer science the asterisk is used in regular expressions to denote more repetitions of a pattern.

The arising of #Occupy*, a collective everyperson, through which all manner of projections can be cast, opens the discourse to new possibilities and configurations.  Arising out of nothing but a call to action, the message is in the medium.  The simple message of equity and equality brings no wider attention until such time that the potential for something greater begins to spread across the medium and presses on the status quo.

Once noted, the social and cultural commentators and spectators show up and begin the drone of their interpretive work.  #Occupy* is “chaotic, disorganized, adolescent, idealistic, 60’s nostalgia, anarchy, un-American, populist, anti-corporate, angry, frustrated, with unclear demands, having no coherent message…” and yet it has become an attractor.

The cynics, nay-sayers and pundits portend a steady decline of the viral meme, the movement co-opted by the latecomers, the inevitable devil’s bargain with the politicos, the beat down by the cops or the sad dwindle of energy as the weather worsens.  Yet, if #Occupy* is truly calling forth new thought forms and modes of relatedness then the old forms dominating the discourse, the forms of exchange and valuation and the methods of modern democracy and organization will ultimately need to change.

The website of Occupy Wall Street states it is a  “leaderless resistance movement with people of many colors, genders and political persuasions. The one thing we all have in common is that We Are The 99% that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%. We are using the revolutionary Arab Spring tactics to achieve our ends and encourage the use of nonviolence to maximize the safety of all participants.”

It is evident in their credo that they can open the discourse to any one, as an individual. By merely creating a link to the whole in cyberspace there is inclusion. Through interaction with #Occupy* a new code and language of progressive, integral thought can be amplified, one that is enacting rather than reactive, reflective rather than rhetorical. New memes and cultural metaphors are emergent, cynically viewed as utopian, experimental, adjunct or naïve, but now offering hope and redemption to those still clinging to sinking or fragmenting world views of archaic institutions and ancient prejudices.

#Occupy* is of the next generation. The “greatest generation” that saw the Great Depression, the war on fascism and the cold war have left their legacy and will soon be silent. The baby boomers, their activist progeny, have ridden the wave of demographic dominance but now find themselves on the inflexible end of a generation divide. Boomeritis has reached a cusp, a tipping point, and the conceits, indulgences, entitlements and excess of that generation have become the problems to fix. The most focal issue being addiction, be it process or substance, oil or power, money or influence.

#Occupy* is a cultural resonance, a feedback system, a vibe, to which an individual can contribute and from which each individual can sample, assemble, amplify and broadcast their own unique expression. However, the content is not the message. #Occupy* is not about the hallmark tales of addiction, the obsessive-compulsive madhouse rantings of dreary, frightened, little egos grasping for attention and fame. The hypostasis of #Occupy* is the openness, inventiveness and constant growing edge of human inter-relatedness and connectedness.

#Occupy*  is self-organizing. There is no leader, no party line, no dominant lineage. Yet, if the radical democratic notion of e pluribus unum, one out of many, comes into play then this cycling, pulsing, emitting entity can take on an identity.  #Occupy* is the open source, collaborative, integral common purpose of dreaming, contemplating, creating, inventing, systemizing and enacting a code of relatedness and exchange. The product of #Occupy*  is emergent.

#Occupy* is not about traffic through a site and the receiving and transmitting of signals, the illusion of movement through the web. The most profound site within #Occupy* may be an empty space. If one sees self as a place and not a person then the essence of human expression is the integrity, dignity and self-sustaining presence in your space. Occupy your space.  The choice could be to appear a busy, noisy, hectic street corner or a quiet, contemplative wayside garden. Any expression is valid. Each is integral to the whole.

#Occupy* is chaotic but chaos in its finest mathematical definition. Like any human endeavor the drama and pathos will draw attention but the underlying connotation of common humanity has the potential to draw more and more people together.  Humanity has the capacity to leap in the complexity of their relatedness be it the advent of language, the making of art, the formation of collectives, the diversifying of role assignments or the use of social networking.  Like an assemblage that moves from single hand claps in unison to group applause the change comes without expressed intention or the domination of any small group.  It is emergent.

Welcome to #Occupy*

Loko i'a

Please join with others in ventures in community vitalization and individual renaissance. Loko i’a is community-based social networking focused on coordinated and collaborative arts and the well-being and health in the community.

Loko i’a focuses on the union of a virtual community with a dynamic actual community. Memes and metaphors are attractors for expression and organization which, when taken as an integrated sequence, represent a model for a self-organizing system.

A vision for the network is to establish a forum for community organization, promote the collaborative use of studio, performance and exhibition space, model organizational civility, savvy, innovation and leadership and to bring together members wishing to join with others in improving their health, well-being, welfare and sense of belonging to a vital community.

Loko i’a has three core assumptions. The first is that all human interactions follow principles of self-organization. The second is that knowledge and information are open source. The third is that art is a transcendent expression of human consciousness. Based on these three assumptions imagine a network and matrix of interactions that avoids the traps of power and authority and dispenses with inclusion and costing based only on propriety and profit. While these dominant forms of our global inheritance have brought so much forward, they can be seen as auxiliary or adjunct to a core mission of open source, inclusion and artistry. Image a wide spectrum of participants focused on transformation, drawing energy and impetus from mindfulness, aesthetics, creative expression, metaphorical representation and cultivation of grace and compassion.

Self-organizing systems create an order and coherence that emergent from their own natures, transcendent of the individual properties. Envision a network that sets into motion elements that will allow participants to experience the action of self-organizing and to be part of the co-creation, be it in play, instruction, dialogue, encounter, experimentation, working flow or depth meditation. Participants will be open to enact their own truth and vision.

Given the chaos and crises found in the current state of the planet the question of how we are to be organized is most vital. We have organized ourselves into a condition that transcends us all and carries the danger of self-annihilation. Global transformation of group consciousness is an idea that has appeal but the problems of power, cultural differences, economic disparity and the drag of ancient enmity pose significant barriers. On the local level the challenges of sustainability, social and economic equitability and the humane treatment of the most vulnerable citizens offers the ground on which transcendence of our inheritance must be addressed.

Members of a social network and the metaphorical subgroups in the network are coordinated interfaces that hold and generate a pool of data. The data could be a domain of occurrences or events about the immediate surroundings of a community. Feedback could be provided to the users in the immediate surroundings. Just as in individual biofeedback a person can perceive below the level of consciousness and make adjustments, so group or community feedback might be similarly processed. Such feedback could be the ground for open appraisals and communal goal setting. The product of the system may not be content or message, but information about the process of connection.

Actors perceiving the feedback can create a new configuration by their actions that are reflected back to the source. The pulsing of individuals and the emergent nature of the rhythm and vibration of the group creates even more complex forms. Imagine ocean surf that is affected by the actions of the surfers. The resulting rhythmic or harmonic stream of information could have as complex or simple derivative representations as the medium would allow. As such, any rhythmic, periodic, harmonious, measurable, predictable oscillations of human endeavor could be logged and counted, fed back, and put into mathematical or artistic representations.

Art is as ancient as humanity. Body and natural rhythms started the drumming. Call and response became the song. The music of verse became language. Deep in ice age caves are murals of the hunt, signed by a hand. The medium and materials have changed over the millenniums but the essence of bringing form to formless and animating the lifeless remains the same. The artist enters into the gap between what has happened and what might be and draws the mind ahead through exaggeration, proportioning, abstraction, amplification, juxtaposition, distortion or transliteration.

To be artful is to strive for expression that breaks through the mundane and banal and gets to the essence of life and relatedness. Being artful is not just creativity but creativity with the rigor of excellence. To be rigorous but not creative is to be only technical. To be creative but not rigorous is to be silly. Imagine a network where the participants are striving for both creativity and rigorousness. Add sensibilities of thoroughness and mindfulness. These elements, in harmony, are transcendent. If the realized event is to be art, then the doing is art. From the point of inspiration to the moment of exaltation, the doing can be continual acts of spontaneity, originality, technical excellence and genius.

Any practice of medicine, healing, psychotherapy or personal growth is encompassed on the integral path. Some are sitting and meditating, some are exploring the mind/body interface, some teach disciplines, some are dialoguing in private and in groups. All integrate in mindfulness. The challenge is to specify how the abstract of all these approaches integrates. Across what gradients and by what mechanisms does what we do exist, from the simplest point in space to the most chaotic field phenomenon?

Since the field phenomenon will always outstrip the capacity to quantify or describe, the only available shared intellectual device is the metaphor. A map is a metaphor. A social network is a metaphor. The metaphors should not be confused with the actual reality but they can be taken as useful stepping off points. This is especially important when dealing with the integral nature of dual or polar phenomenon underlying human potential and nurture such as religion, science and art.

Loko i’a does not seek to supplant or to compete with what already exists. Integral does not vie with passions or fixations. It merely abides. Side by side with the actual and enacted, Loko i’a provides an open space in which the creative, innovative and experimental can be fostered and nurtured. It is but a hope that Loko i’a can bring forward the expressions, solutions and new beginnings to the current chaos and crises plaguing our communities.

DEFAULT

What's in it for me? If the discussion can only come to that then it is for naught. Living as free people, just as doing art, is pure expression. To focus prematurely or obsessively on the question of self interest and short-term escape from fear of uncertainty or the slipping of power is to lose the essential experiential meaning of exchange and the moment for enlightenment is lost. The value in the exchange is always conjectural, contextual and transcendent. The master work comes about in the enactment of rigor, creativity, persistence and mindfulness. If what is represented to us by our leaders is so dissonant with our sensibilities then we are free to organize our selves and means of exchange in as rigorous, creative, persistent and mindful way as our collective endeavor can sustain. If there is only passing attention or absorption then the return is minimal. Sustainability is not passive but an intentional and enacted process. There will always be a crux, a nexus of attention and action, across which there is an exchange of meaning and significance. The temporal, the non-intentional, is always at play. This is the hope. It is also the refuge of the eternal speculator, searching for that big break. We have collectively reached a point of unsustainability. Perhaps this is the cosmic joke. Then laugh, and entertain yourself and others with the capturing of moments through the transcendence of art. Participate, share and benefit in the provenance of this moment. What's in it for me? Depends on the spirit of the moment.
Amandla Ngawethu!