Glossary
| Do you notice anything about these letters? Who's stories are in your brain? (Adapted from "American Alphabet" by Heidi Cody) |
ABCNNBCBS - the increasingly blurred brand names for the same narrow stream of U.S. corporate filtered mass media. This is the delivery system for the advertising product that giant media corporations sell to the general public. This process used to occur primarily through overt advertising, increasingly however it has become a complex web of cross-marketing, branding and self-promotion among different tentacles of the same media empires.
advertising - the manipulation of collective desire for commercial interests. Over the last 20 years as it has grown to be nearly a $200 billion industry it has become the propaganda shell and dream life of modern consumer culture. (See Control Mythology)
articulating values crisis - a strategy in which radicals lay claim to common sense values and expose the fact that the system is out of alignment with those values
control meme- a meme used to marginalize, co-opt or limit the scale of social change ideas by institutionalizing a status quo bias into popular perception of events. The type of memes that RAND Corporation analysts and Pentagon information warfare experts spend countless hours and millions of dollars designing.
control mythology - the web of stories, symbols and ideas which define the dominant culture's sense of normal (including limiting our imagination of social change) and make people think the system is unchangeable.
confirmatory bias - psychological concept in which studies have shown people are more likely to accept/believe new information if it sounds like something they already believe.
defector syndrome- the tendency of radicals to self-marginalize by exhibiting their dissent is such a way that it only speaks to those who already share their beliefs.
earth-centered - a political perspective through which one defines themselves and their actions in the context of the planet's ecological operating systems, biological/cultural diversity and efforts to re-center human society within the Earth's natural limits/cycles. An emerging term to draw links and build alliances between ecological identity politics, land based struggles, indigenous resistance, earth spirituality, agrarian folk wisdom and visions of sustainable, ecologically sane societies both past and future. (etc.) A politicized acceptance of the sacredness of living systems.
global crisis- the present time in the history of planet earth characterized by the systematic undermining of the planet's life support systems through industrial extraction, unlimited growth, the commodification of all life and emergence of global corporate rule. Symptoms include : accelerating loss of biological and cultural diversity, the deterioration of all ecosystems, the de-stabilization of global ecology (climate change, soil erosion, bio-contamination etc.) growing disparities between rich and poor, increased militarization, ongoing patterns of racism, classism and sexism and the spread of consumer monoculture. Part of the endgame of 200 years of industrial capitalism,
500 years of white supremacist colonization and 10,000 years of patriarchal domination.
image event - an experience, event or action which operates as a delivery system for smartMemes by creating new associations and meanings
meme- (pronounced meem) a unit of self-replicating cultural transmission (ex. ideas, slogans, melodies, symbols) which spreads virally from brain to brain. Word coined by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in 1976 from a Greek root meaning "to imitate" to draw the analogy with "gene". "A contagious information pattern" - Glenn Grant. A meme often operates as a container, anchor or carrier for a larger more complex story.
movement - a critical mass of people who share ideas, take collective action and build alternative institutions to create social change.
points of intervention - a place in a system, be it a physical system or a conceptual system (ideology, cultural assumption etc.) where action can be taken to effectively interrupt the system. Examples include point of production (factory) point of destruction, (logging road) point of consumption, (chain store) point of decision,(corporate HQ) point of assumption (culture/mythology) and point of potential (actions which makes alternatives real).
political space- the ability of an oppositional idea or critique of the dominant order to manifest itself and open up new revolutionary possibilities.
psychic break - the process or moment where people realize the system is out of alignment with their values.
psycho-geography - the intersection of physical landscape with cultural and symbolic landscapes. A framework for finding targets for direct action at the point of assumption.
smart meme - a designer meme which injects new infectious ideas into popular culture, contests established meaning (control memes) and facilitates popular re-thinking of assumptions. These are memes that act as containers for collaborative power, reveal creative possibilities for change and help grassroots social movements contest idea space.
subverter-an effective radical who works within the logic of the dominant culture to foster dissent, mobilize resistance and make fundamental social change imaginable
Values crisis- the disconnect between common sense values (justice, equality, democracy, ecological literacy) and the pathological values which underlie the global corporate system
Values shift -a recognition that the global crisis is the expression of pathological valueswhich we will need to change. An area of extreme difficulty to organize since people's values are very ingrained and the values arena is often appropriated by powerful reactionary traditions and institutions. (government, organized religion, patriarchal family etc.)
Xerxes- ancient Persian emperor who despite having the world's largest military force over extended himself and was defeated by the unity and creativity of the Greeks starting a long decline that led to the end of Persian dominance. A conceptual archetype for the fall of all empires. U.S.A. take note.