Community, art Vs economically forced philosophy: The plan I made up

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Callan S.

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« on: February 12, 2014, 01:37:14 am »
I have this plan - it's taking a few years to really get it going but I'm pretty certain it's viable and didn't want to wait until it's done to start spreading the idea. I'm describing it in rough form here as I've mostly had it in my head.

The base of it is resource generators - ie, growing food. Yes, I can hear some of you groan from here - how is that sexy? But really it's just a replication of the structure that keeps you alive right now - someone grew that food you just had, right?

The antagonist here is basically the sort of fiscal singularity coming up or that exists - everywhere ends up as part of, to various degrees forgotten, America (or whatever is the fiscal heart of the world - maybe China soon?). Further the idea that beauty and art, not just on our walls but in the very structure of the town/city you and I live in requires charity or generosity. Think of the old building in your town with their ornate stone work - now look at the new building made of graveyard slabs of stone thrown together in an effort for the least cost for the 'most' result. This is the fiscal singularity reaching out - because the economic map is stretched out to the world, businesses don't form cosy little complacent cul de sacs where the businesses do not enter into ruthless economic play and so they start being indulgent and spending money on nice buildings and other community forming structure. Ie, being charitable and generous. The global financial structure does not allow such cul de sacs of complacency to form, because as soon as anyone in the world gets ruthless about money (and someone will, of course) everyone has to get ruthless or otherwise be out competed by the ruthless ones. Thus the ugly slab buildings entering your community - the harvest of the global ruthlessness.

That horse has essentially bolted on that, I think - especially as it hinges on everyones desire for 'cheaper!'.

The idea here is not just that producing your own food leads to more political indepedence relative to the amount of your food supply you can meet (taking into consideration a ceiling on that due to 'land taxes'), but as the very source of charity and generosity to reinvigorate the artistic domain of your community rather than the economic singularity turning where you live into more and more of a battery hen. I mean, think about it: Imagine all of the advertising on the walls of the businesses your community hinges around were all just one uniform shade of graveyard grey. How incredibly ugly would it all be - yet this is where you'll live your life, to a great degree? And the 'levity' of the advertising you see is all weaponised - they just fake happy, smiling faces and just emulate the idea of bright colours=good times, so as to lever money out of you. Perhaps the old signs from the early nineteen hundreds or earlier, with their ornate art were actually beautiful additions in themselves. But again they were a product of indulgent businesses who had not yet had a reason to become ruthless.

It's funny that it's the antagonist that is complicated in this matter, but the idea here is fairly simple - an exchange structure that is based largely on generosity, of providing food stuff in a certain, metered extent, for free as an act toward building community and further food stuffs for the exchange of art. What art you say? Those big expensive canvas things, just for some spring onions? No, not at all. In fact I've seen art exhibitions from a group who used to paint upon the lids of cigar cases - just for a little money but after many years these became important and collectable works of art that warranted their own exhibition.

So the art could be on the back of recycled paper (ie, something printed on the other side) and in biro! Indeed some biro art is amazing and there's an example in my local gallery that was short listed for a prize of 12 K, as I recall. This would also includes texts/stories (as in selling a copy of it, not selling the rights to the words. The exchange simply grants the capacity to sell the material object, like second hand book shops sell books. I'll have to look at the legals to ensure an ethical structure is written in explicit ink). And I will be glib and assume people can access biro's pretty easily - even if they do a quick sketch in a bank using one of their chained pens - heh, now that's subversive! :)

Further the model I'm looking at may even have a return policy - if the art is not sold after a certain amount of time, the artist can simply pick the art back up, having kept the food stuffs he'd gotten from turning it in - possibly even turning it back in immediately for more food stuffs.

The capcity for the art to be sold allows this structure to marry into the global economic singularitys currency system and to subvert it. To quell the ruthlessness, to the degree this structure is practiced. Part of that would be by (with a formula I've yet to map out) not only give food stuffs, but take part of any profits from art sales and actually give food stuffs and money for the art works. Thus feeding money into the artistic communities that lend the artistic life to the greater community. I would dare say even make community worth forming (for surely we don't just form community to protect ourselves from the elements anymore, do we?).

The giving of food stuff here is a structured thing - it involves in part giving some for free to each individual, but with a limit, so as to make further trading for further food stuffs attractive. Even the art for food stuffs exchange is fixed at a limit per individual. And indeed the whole structure is set at a hard limit as to how much food stuffs you can produce anyway. The exact trade ratios are contentious and their integrity at an ethical level is vital to the whole structure and...I haven't worked the ratio out yet! I'm sure it's workout-able but right now I'm at a place holder idea - if you want to shoot the idea down, okay, but please do it from a 'Without a ratio explicitly stated, you offer nothing!' position, rather than 'This wont work!' position. Without the ratio, you don't really know if it wont work.

Further structures I've considered are food stuffs being traded for money and a ticket lottery for part of the moneys paid. I really dislike pure lotteries, as they give you nothing - here the traded food stuff (remember that each person only gets so much food over a certain time period, so to get more involves trade) definately gets something and with that the chance to get even more. This seems more fair to me instead of what seems to be exploiting peoples hopes. Then the remaining segment of money is segmented again and used as part of the art trade or straight donation to charity or even trickled into a hard luck fund that can be granted at discretion (with a time cap on it - if it's not used it goes back into art trade and starts refilling, so as to stop a few issues that come with stagnant money). However I do not know the local laws about what you have to have to run a lottery - I've been waiting to get my resource generators fully into gear before researching this. I'm guessing it wont be any exorbitant fee to do a small scale local lottery (though I could be wrong).

This, essentially, is my fight against a multitude of issues I feel exist beyond those I outline here (and I can get into them if you ask!), because it fights the very economic structure who's self serving nature means those issues continue because no one has a buck to lay against those issues. The generosity of giving from resource generators (from gardens/urban farming) lays the foundation for defection against the world wide economic structure, instead of repeating its semi invisible dogmas (think about it - how much can you give to oxfam or other charities - is this restriction not a kind of dogma?) for not having any alternative way to live. Here is an alternative - thus allowing some different philosophy to form than one that is beholden to money and thus beholden to the global structure/whatever is the global economic power and the degree they are disinterested in your particular welfare.

Some philosophers try to find a way of living with integrity and honour in light of various nihilistic cognitive science findings - I do not find this the first and foremost issue, especially when the structures of money exchange colour our philosophies so much. With the battles of cognitive science & philosophy, how on earth can we fight when we neglect the very fundimentals of war? Our supply lines? To just try and win this in our heads - I do not think this works. The war, at it's roots, is earthly. The head in the clouds part is part of it, but to just concentrate on that is to have your feet swept out from under you in short order. Where your feet are swept, so too will your head shortly follow.

Thank you all for reading.