Panóptico

"When seeking the truth, leave elegance to the tailor." Einstein

The distance between the psyche and geography has shrivled.
Our societies have been built upon the resources we seek.
Initially, locations were based on safety from the elements.
Quickly after we taught ourselves to survive rain, wind, and
snow, the focus shifted to harvesting. We sought fertile land
with room for farming, resources for housing and climate. Just
as we learned to treat the elements subtractively (taking what
we want and leaving what we don't), we began our experiments
in an additive approach (combining elements to create new things).
In this, we discovered war. We discovered how to mug people.

Back tracking a bit, from this minor control of the elements
spawned two lifestyles in terms of how their societies were
built: Colonial and Nomad. The colonial types found one spot
and built town centers. Many metropolises show this
in the design of their maps, like the circular design of
London where a town center grew satellites that wrapped
around the city like rings of a tree. The nomads refused
to be stationary for one reason or another, controlling
the elements one place at a time, taking the knowledge from
the previous and applying it to the next.

After war had been practiced and refined, starting with sticks,
which turned into axels, which turned into wheels, which
reduced the physical labor on part of the human enough to
build boats, catapults, carts, mills for swords, guns, more
wheels, more axels, tanks, planes, video cameras, AK-47s,
social, atomic and biological weapons. In the meantime,
these double edged swords were also being used for peaceful
reasons. All these advancements went to create the computer,
internet, and all the other still possibly utopian products.

With colonialism reigning supreme on the earth, a hybrid
of boredom, community, and vivascity created culture,
ie language, art, religion, etc. Where culture inspired
a city-wide family, the globe was a different matter.
War would have it, that these families would feud. So as
humans could survive natural elements, we invented human
elements to fear and defend against. As if some stone ager
leaned over to a friend who had more food than him and said,
"Don't you know people are fucked up?" We've given this
concept so many words. Leper, peon, madman, witch, communist,
terrorist, fascist, etc. Labeling the other as such has
interfered with the evolution of our biological altruism.

Obviously, not all cultures interact through the harsh
mediation of war, which is where utopia comes in. The
existence of knowledge banks isn't anything new, but
for the knowledge to be accessible as globally as it is,
is defenitely a new occurence. Wiki-this and Google-that,
history is avaliable to us to a point in which we can
search it randomly. This has spawned a new opposition.

The metropolis had to go vertical within the last 100 years,
for lack of space. The geographical distance between
people had been purreed, leveled, pulverized. For example,
on public trans busses, we sit next to a new stranger
everyday, with our knees against the 2 inch thick seat
in front of us, where someone else is sitting. What do
we say to these "strangers" or "others"? We say nothing
assuming a sort of anomonimity that seeks to establish
signs of life and nothing else. A cough really means
"I'm alive, but don't ask me for my money or my name."

Our sense of privacy is distorted because our sense of
public has been altered. What we see as a public space
has become an overlapping of private spaces. The train
company owns the rails and platform, the Staples corp.
owns that building, and the city owns the sidewalk.
Although, you may be standing in only one location, you
are actually in the Venn of numerous private entities.

The outcomes from this confusion are too numerous to
generalize, but one really interesting aspect is the
closure between the psyche and geography. Where we
have destroyed the gap between our bodies with distance,
we have compensated for it in our minds. We have
built colonies in our minds which are usually called
sub-cultures. Sometimes they start as small as a
movement of a few people and stay there, like in
terms of collectives or campaigns that never really
made it. Often times they were tied to their geographic
location. The 1900's saw the rise of many groups whose
idea either colonized the entire earth, or became nomadic.

The Italian Futurists began as a small group of
chauvanist gear heads, whose brand name started
popping up all over Europe. The Dadaists the same,
except they crossed an ocean. The surrealists
made it into mainstream culture, appearing on TV shows
and high profile galleries all over the world.

The state we are in now, is that we are approaching
culture in the same way that we approached geography.
There are those who seek to colonize a culture or
idea, and those who just keep seeking. This is
where the conflict comes in. The John Waynes and
Frank Sinatras that we call Dad in the states have
colonized that entire culture, where as our generation
has been eating hummus with tortilla chips. It doesn't
matter to our generation as much. There is a conflict,
but there's no way to tell who's being petty about it.
Both parties are filled with jerks from top to bottom.

The nomads say, "Quit living in the past!"
Where as the colonials say, "But its sooo good!"
We're all correct, but neither are correct enough
for society at large to be one or the other.

Instead of copyright treaties and law suits,
couldn't we just agree on these two statements?

"Hey there colony person, I brought you this
strange and exotic artifact"

"Hey there nomad person, I have a nice warm
bed to go with that warm meal every time you
come back."