Mediation

Check, check...

I've been thinking on this one for a while so I hope it flows right.

It started with the latest trench coat killer guy in Montreal. "He's right", I thought, remembering that I had also though the same thing about the originals when I was writing The Love Artist. These people aren't dumb, or even crazy, they've done the math and see no alternative. Which doesn't mean there isn't an alternative, just that they didn't see one.

What they've figured out is that our society has almost no room for individual knowledge--from true outside, unique, UNMEDIATED sources. Which means that to get along, to even feed yourself, you've got to put your dick in the machine. You can put it in a cool way, or a way that look like it's not really in, but you will insert it. And the machine will do it's thing. Life wasn't always like this (although I'm not wistful for a microsecond about those days), things used to be funky and weird. Maybe even primarily defined by how unmediated they were. Going from New York to Texas used to feel like going to India now feels. Almost anyway. Now going to India feels like the next town over. Almost (not really, but it's heading that way--India's going to be a tough one to tame).

My point is that the world is coming together in a radical way. In my youth you couldn't find fun in downtown Seattle for love or money. Skateboard wheels were so rare as to make securing a pair a month-long ordeal. Now you'd be hard pressed to leave your neighborhood to find some. And that would be just so you could get the exact micro-type you wanted.

So what is being mediated? It basically means being a secondary source. It is knowledge of the community rather than knowledge of the individual. It is anything that has been okayed to broadcast.

But, you say, everyone has their own broadcast--the internet, etc., etc.

I agree, but in a sense, this level of decentralization of broadcast authority can only happen in a society where people have largely internalized whatever community controls (mediation) would ordinarily be used. You could also say that this would only happen in a society advanced enough (you cultural imperialist!--I'm just describing the development of technology) to extend enough power and education to enough people that it would happen. And that they would want to communicate, do buisiness, share their art, etc., etc.

The gatekeepers is us.

In some sense, I feel that the world is a process of preparing people to be responsible for themselves. Responsible enough to wield the power that people can wield. And that all the controls that people see as external ("the man", your boss, parents, rich white men, tradition, etc.) are nothing but lessons in self-reliance and love maintenance. Love, as I'm sure you know by now, takes a fair amount of discipline and maintenance. It's certainly doable--and in my experience to a level unthought of by most people--but it is a radical and complete practice.

Let me pause to say this more thoroughly if I can without getting sidetracked: life as we know it, on this planet, can be almost as good as we want. (And I only put the almost in there because of my limited sight). Put another way, when I have been willing and able to do the work required, I have never seen a barrier to how enjoyable my life can be--both in the moment and as an ideal--something in history moving toward something. (That would be both in the eastern spiritual and western physical senses, meaning that enjoyment and and progress are both compatible and complimentary).

So, what's in the way: our love of mediation. We love media.

When nothing was media, when we had access to no information, no cultural mores outside our own family or clan, we relied upon mommies and daddies for structure and authority. Kings, queens, minstrels, griots, shamen--they told us what was and that's what was. End of story.

As we started to learn more--enlarge our community and experience--we gained enough experience to make more of our own decisions and choose our own risks. We internalized some of the power of the king or queen, the minstrel, even the priest. This process has continued wonderfully--at no time in history have more people wielded the essential power in their own lives than right at this moment. That's love. And progress.

But in the parts of the world where this has been happening the longest--say Seattle for instance--the mediation is becoming toxic. Just as Rome brought roads and clean water and peace with their conquest, so mediation has brought political and social freedom, education, safety, leisure, and standards of cleanliness and health that were never available in the old days (even to the emperor himself!). The problem being that people initially grasp for more mediation--the thing that has helped them come so far for so long--to solve their new unease. And it just compounds the problem.

This is what we referred to in college (back when we used to know everything!) as not being able to build a new house with your father's tools.

The counter-culture (you knew this was coming) was built in many ways with old tools. Which is why it is not salvation, but more of a token improvement on the mainstream. (One reason why indy folks are constantly dissapointed and angered when their ideas and memes are absorbed by what they perceive as the mainstream.) If it was salvation, it would get down and thank whatever lord it wanted when even one small idea was taken up.

When Nirvana went big there was a general feeling of being coopted by those in the "original" community of so-called grunge. I was extatic. I thought we had won--and how else could we win but by winning. By capturing the ears of every sentient person from Omaha to Tokyo.

But grunge didn't want to succeed. Or at least was conflicted enough that it took the suicide pill upon take off. Which is just as well in my opinion. As it's leadership characteristics were almost nil. In a sense it set up a power vaccuum where behind the scenes folks with much less consternation about ambition could operate freely. And created a huge and powerful playing field where they could do so.

The original mainstream was created as a reaction to fear. People were afraid (of all sorts of things--real and imagined) and saw correctly that by ditching a few old world traditions and quirks they could come together and face the dangers of the new world much more forcefully. Out of Swedish, Italian, French, Spanish, Dutch, etc. white folks were created.

This may have been the original mediation. By putting the kabosh on that wierd last name and learning a new language (literally and figurateively), you had access to a new world of opportunity. You had to become a new person, but part of that was what you wanted to do anyway. (And I'm not suggesting that the process was cute--or even not coerced, just that the access and privledge it provided were rarely undesired).

But this process was cumbersome, and ugly at best. Worst of all it was slow. Huge groups of people were demonized to represent the newly created groups fears and keep them cohesive. And to make membership--and continued and enhanced mediation--even more appealing.

So, sometime in the late 50s, those who were the children of some of the earliest mediated, and other kindred spirits, started to mediate the mediation. These be-boppers, beats, and other artistic and even spiritually-minded folks saw that the process and access was being unjustly controlled by those who had benifited the most from it and, partly out of a desire to gain their own power in a world where most of the authority had been divvied up (more unspoken), and partly out of a desire to improve conditions for those seeking access and authority (more spoken), they, very vocally, dropped out.

This was a crucial step in modern history--and even in spiritual freedom--but it was still a reaction, and like most reactions was initially conceived in an atmostphere of frustration and fear--based on the belief that those who undertook it were otherwise powerless, or somehow less powerfull than those in the seeming seats of power. Some of this fear was real and some imagined, I don't consider this some sort of comprehensive analysis of anyone's motivations, as I know it took an incredible amount of courage and an incredible amount of love to take this step, but rather include it just to see the similarities in the two major mediation movements in recent history. And how to move on from here. (Please remember also that the initial mediation movement--the move to create a mainstream--was one of both love and necessity as well. This doesn't change the fact that it was created from a initial perspective of scarcity and an "it's us or them" mentality.)

The inception of the counter-culture contains these same "us or them" seeds--ultimately a fear of scarcity--but this time applied to the spiritual realm. If their parents had been afraid of physical scarcity--not enough food for the winter, wood for heat, clean water for the baby; then these young people were afraid that their parents fear was cutting them off from a spiritual bounty that this world offered. Thus was the world of cool cats and squares started. And continues to this day, albeit it to a much more differentiated and splintered, hyper degree. (Where "emo", "goth", prep, jock, and rap kids are lame and whatever miniscule sect one belongs to is cool.)

[Knowing this, by the way, is nothing. I could just as easily just be the ne plus ultra splinter group and fighting for supremacy of that. That's why I give this blog away for free--because it comes from the left side of my brain it's worth less (though maybe not worthless) than my book, my paintings and my music, which is what I should be judged upon.]

But back to mediation. The mainstream invented it and controls access for the physical realm, where personhood and the ability to feed onesself is based, the counter-culture invented it and controls access for the "spiritual" realm, where human-ness and notions of authenticity are based.

But these are all just games. And we choose to play them. We feel they are real, and some of them certainly have real consequences on this earth that we can see, but ultimately, neither of them dictate reality. Unless you let them.

Reality number one: if you're on this planet, you've been adequately fed, housed, and cared for every day so far. If you are over 18 or taking care of yourself you are safe. Your people have been taken care of for generations. You have the same birthright as everyone else on the planet: the opportunity to do exactly what you want to do today. And to sacrifice as much or as little, as long or as short as you like to do so.

Very convenient thoughts for someone who lives in his mother's house and lived for years on credit cards he got because of familial access, you say.

My response: I believe we all have to give up everything we have access to to gain that which we want. That's the process of being remade into a new person and a new people without mediation. It is literally being stripped down to nothing and being built/building yourself back up. And I believe it is 100% universally available.

I'd also add that having to do what I have done has been a process so humbling and thorough that I never would had chosen it had I not been utterly compelled/forced. I wouldn't have even stopped smoking. :-)

So how do we get to a culture built on self-determined creativity and joy instead of mediation and fear? First, I believe that knowing what isn't going to work is crucial. I wouldn't say one word against anything if I didn't believe that knowing exactly what's up and being true with yourself about it was possibly the most important part of the process. Leave everything that doesn't feed you. You don't have to hate it or demonize it, but you will have to leave it. Only then will we ever have room to start building this beauty.

Final thoughts on mediation: mediation is about being in control. The counter culture is just as mediated, just as homogonized, just as insistant as the mainstream. Maybe more. And it is just as limiting in many ways. And more thorough because it is more sophisticated, it's motives deeper and more hidden. Appears to be more altruistic. Superficiality has benefits. As does depth, of course. The real love, the real joy, the real quantum possibility of loving your work and loving your life and being in radical every day love comes, I believe, when we take the best from both worlds without prejudice or nostalgia and craft a new third way. When we take absolute and complete physical and spiritual responsibility for ourselves both in the moment and in the future.

Love is absolutely clear about what it wants. Ruthless even. It wants adventure, and joy, and growth. It wants to be fully committed. It wants to go into and press through. It is singular. Which is why we'll have to create a more unified but much more three dimensional culture to foster it. Or, said another way, which is why we create a unified, accepting culture as we really enjoy and practice it.