ARE YOU AN OUTSIDE-THE-GENES GENIUS?

If you suggest a scenario, please be precise and prepared to elaborate it - ie: imagine its development. I invite everyone who comes here to add your own elaborations to anyone else's ideas, as well as to contribute new ones. The point of this project is to stimulate our imagination to invent creative, non-traditional ways to STOP THE KILLING and, perhaps, eventually change the perception that killing can be the solution to conflicts.

Inspiration by itself isn't enough. If an idea is to have life beyond your brain or my brain and actually enter the real world where it might become fact, then the story needs elaboration. We have to go further into our initial fantasy and imagine the whole script, including the opposition it would meet in reality and then imagine how we would shape our idea to meet that opposition. In other words, this is more like writing a film script than it is like having a coffee table discussion about changing the world.

Traditional thinking about conflicts between nations or regions or religions or ideology tends to stick to the language and the methods of politics or, if that approach fails, of military action, whether by armies or by individuals - eg suicide bombers etc.
This thinking hasn't really changed (apart from the greater sophistication of weaponry) throughout history but you won't find a discussion of history here, or of our supposed genetic pre-disposition to kill each other for whatever reason (land, food, sex, power, self-defense, vengeance, ideology, religion, money etc). To those who bring up the "It's built into our genes" argument my question is: what about pacifists and conscientious objectors - do they have different genes from the rest of the human race?
And what about crazy bloggers trying to imagine non-traditional scenarios for stopping the killing: do we have different genes as well? If so, let's have more outside-the-gene genius!

In the worlds of entertainment, advertising, film, television, theatre, art, design, literature, internet communication, etc. imaginations can run free and sometimes come up with ideas which could, if applied to serious global issues (such as stopping the killing) provide at least new ways of looking at and perhaps resolving such issues. I'm proposing that we focus on such techniques, rather than engage in the old old worn-out debates.

Below are responses which have come in so far. I have edited them, trying to focus on scenarios that might be developed.

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Poet in Residence said...
9/1/09 19:04

We could send a radio message from a blurry UFO somewhere in a blurry desert: "We have landed on planet Earth to repair our ship. We will leave planet Earth as soon as we can. Please don't kill us. We repeat. We are here on a peaceful mission. We will leave soon. Please don't kill us. Please don't kill us..." and so on and so on until the war stops.

11/1/09 14:29
I think an inflatable UFO, or a hologram UFO, or even an invisible UFO might be ok because no Earthling knows what a UFO looks like. In fact an invisible UFO would be the best for it would show that superior scientic technology was here. A technology not to be messed with.


Nathan said...01.14.09 - 1:42 pm

You know how many computers can hook up and do distributed processing? So that all of them together can work on a problem which requires too much space for any of them to solve alone? I think people are like that, and we're all connected though our various means of communication, and we're all processing various problems that we have in common. A powerful solution to a problem may crystallize and emerge from a particular person--a particular node in the human network--but really, the solution will be the work of whatever part of the entire network that has been working on the problem.


Stray said...01.15.09 - 2:00 pm

The third is radical: an international draft. When your number is up then you must move to live in the country randomly designated to you for a year, to the place dictated by fate, swapping places with an individual or family who lived there. It is an extreme form of the 'veil of ignorance' - the concept of designing a society which afford you a decent chance in life but without knowing whether you are black, white, rich, poor, disabled etc at the point where you take part in the debate. We need to appreciate that even your birthplace is not a birth right - and that every human being deserves a safe, clean, resourced part of the world to live in.


Natalie replied...01.15.09 - 3:08 pm

I'm especially after the visceral-wake-up ideas. The next step is: how to make them work without being dependent on "Them" (any insurmountable power structure)? Can you elaborate your scenario? Bearing in mind the reality that no current government, anywhere, is going to decide to set up such an international draft. So, how would you go about it? Maybe start out with a 'reality' TV show? A model of what it could be like in the Real world? Whether we like it or not, the masses (I don't mean that derogatorily) are more moved by shows like the X-factor than they are by politics or government pronouncements.


bdieu said...15/1/09 09:58

A friend sent me this video after I mentioned your post on the list. It illustrates well the enormous power of social media combined with art that can be used to draw people together for a pacific cause.


Anonymous said...15/1/09 11:48

All the port and airport workers in the world should refuse to load and unload ships carrying weapons. All the people who make guns, tanks, missiles, etc should refuse to make any more.

Natalie replied....15/1/09 15:24

Can you now ask your imagination to describe exactly how you would go about convincing those people to follow your idea? Imagining all the reasons they would refuse such as: those protesting port & airport workers would lose their jobs then what would they live on? And: the arms dealers and manufacturers make tons of money: why would they agree to lose such a cash cow? How to overcome the resistance which would inevitably occur?

WANTED: WORLD-CHANGING IDEAS, NO STRINGS ATTACHED

This repeats a post first published today on Blaugustine and also on Augustine's Other Blog

People who have the power to change things for the better generally fail to change things for the better for one or more of the following reasons.

1. They are the wrong people to be in power.

2. They are the right people but depend on or are hampered by the wrong people.

3. Right people or wrong people: power itself is the problem.

4. Power always has many strings attached.

5. Too many strings = too many knots and loose ends and broken threads and nooses.

6. While the powerful are busy trying to untangle their strings without losing their power, the innocent and powerless suffer.

7. When the powerless adopt the methods of the powerful, they too become entangled in the strings of power, and the goal of making things better moves further and further out of reach.

THEREFORE:

WE WHO WANT TO CHANGE THINGS FOR THE BETTER

WITHOUT FALLING INTO THE TRAPS OF POWER

NEED TO CHALLENGE OUR IMAGINATIONS

TO CONCEIVE IDEAS WHICH ARE POWERFUL

BECAUSE THEY ARE NOT ABOUT POWER.

NEW WAYS OF LOOKING AT OLD PROBLEMS,

USING THE POWERFUL TOOLS

OF ART, OF MUSIC, OF DANCE, OF THEATRE, OF POETRY, OF FILM, OF SPORT, OF INVENTION, OF BUILDING, OR EVEN OF BLOGGING.

With all this in mind I imagined an unlikely but not unimaginable scenario. This is what I saw:

An army of dancers, amateurs and professionals, wave after wave of them, every style of dancing from anywhere in the world, accompanied by their musicians, moving in disciplined formation like a very long carnival parade. But not a carnival.

A massive non-violent dancing protest, confronting tanks and trucks and armed soldiers intent on their power mission, obeying their power orders. On both sides of the divide, the dancing army confronts the violence and advances inexorably, rhythmically. The fighters in their tanks and behind their rockets are flabbergasted, the music and dancing are so contagious......

Yes, yes, I know. The dancing army would nor be allowed into the country. And even if they were, they would not be permitted to enter the war zone. And even if they were, the dancers would become too traumatised by the dead, the dying, the wounded, the bereaved screaming despair and vengeance, to be able to keep on dancing. And even if they were, they would soon be mowed down by the fighting on all sides. Life is not a cabaret, oh chum. I know this.

A stubborn, childish, rebellious voice in me keeps on insisting my scenario could happen if enough people participated. There are other ways, ways that are beyond politicians and governments and armies. I'm concocting a little video to illustrate the above scenario and will post it when ready.

The killing and maiming and destruction have to stop. Not after discussions and negotiations and conferences but immediately.

If the 'experts' haven't been able to make it stop after years and years of talking and killing, killing and talking, why not try something completely different? I am absolutely not saying that a dancing army (or another idea of similar nature) would be a solution to the Israel/Palestine conflict or any other major conflict elsewhere on the planet. But it could (or so I imagine) at least stop the killing, allowing other solutions to be found.

In July 2007 I started OUT OF THE BOX which fizzled out after a very short time, mainly because I didn't keep it up. To start the new year, I want to resurrect it and am throwing this challenge out to you:

Can you imagine original scenarios which might STOP THE KILLING AND HURTING anywhere that people are wiping each other out in large numbers, for whatever reason?

Ideas which do not pretend to be solutions to the complex problems behind these conflicts but which focus only on means of putting an immediate stop to the killing and maiming.

Here are the rules:

1. Scenarios must be imaginative, constructive and non-violent.

2. Please, no lectures or analyses! Only visualisations of events that could be made to happen, using unconventional, creative, daring approaches, borrowing from the arts and entertainment rather than politics or moralising.

3. You can post your ideas on your own blog and put a link to your post in the comments here at OUT OF THE BOX

4. Or, enter your idea as a comment here and I will copy and paste it as a post.

5. Illustrations and videos welcome. Post at your own blog and/or give the link here.

6. Links to existing initiatives which tackle such issues creatively are also welcome. For instance:

Peace Child , a non-profit organization which uses music and the stage as a vehicle for grassroots repair and reconciliation processes. Serves Arab and Jewish teenagers, their parents and teachers.

Or this which documents some of the international initiatives helping to build peace through the arts.