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?