Can a "Dream" Work for You?

Some "American Dream" Isn't Working for You?  Really?

"Happiness" abstractions are ideas different from our thoughts during sleep, which are comprised of   elements from our daytime lives.  Awake, we produce numerous thoughts that neither you nor I could ever count.  Yet, we use these same abstractions as tools much as a hammer is used to physically pound in nails.  Conscious thoughts do mental work for us as we roam the earth; sleep thoughts are scrambled ideas that we occasionally recognize if we remember them upon waking.  Conscious, mental tools are applied especially if we're exposed to them and if they're useful.  Yet, it matters little whether we're conscious believers or if we're nurtured into belief.  We believe because it helps us survive.

Dismiss this if you want, but why do you believe you need to work typing on a keyboard every day?  What's the real importance of your social life to your physical survival?  Is the "bad day" you've had without coffee really so or would it be trivial by other standards?

Arguing about abstractions is the reason why we have art, culture, or even war.  We dispute ideas from our own perspective, our own understanding of  ourselves, our happiness, and our comparison of ourselves with others.  Maybe, it's shared with others because they are "like us."  Maybe, it isn't and that's why "they" are wrong and maybe we should even hate them.  Whether it is the concept of "land ownership," "social justice," or some "holy war," mankind fights over what it thinks the real world is about.

We can still fail as species despite our best efforts.  Feelings of "failure" and "misery" are probably still going to be present in the real world, even if some people in places like America continue to feel happier.  Unless, some savior figure or some abstract system has some kind of world more perfectly organized and gifted to us because of their benevolence.  Wait!  Marxism and Nazism have failed in the real world so far, yet maybe someone can do them right?  Thank you future benefactor, whoever you are. (end sarcasm)

This unrelenting difference in belief is why humanity has disagreements.   Our undefined, abstract happiness stems from us as disagreeable beings because there are others that we can never have absolute control over.  What we've done with these beliefs is history.  But, how and why we believe in things often veers into a fruitless, metaphysical, and unsolvable debate.  (See Haybron for Happiness metaphysics).  Nowadays, does the average person really know what metaphysical means anyways?

Some abstractions should be useful as positive tools for individuals.  "The American Dream" should just be a goal-setting device, a positive, abstract direction that many people living in this "country" use to challenge themselves and to bring some greater sense of "happiness."  It's an explanation for individual drive and motivation here.  It is not the full attainment of all physical and emotional desires either for the individual or for society.  The abstraction does not describe happiness now, in the present.  Likewise, believing in the dream doesn't mean you believe that everything is perfect right now or that improvements can't be made to our lives.  So, why hamper or attack a belief that simply motivates individuals because it doesn't encompass a completely happy society?

It's just a future belief, something good and helpful.  It's a positive belief, a tool, that I've never felt wrong accepting.  Am I wrong to believe in "American Happiness" as INDIVIDUALS striving for a better future rather than having some objective state of happiness that MUST be given to everyone?  Why should we despise positive challenges when short of perfect luck, we're all going to face the good and the bad ones?  Can we  really socialize challenges so that everyone must rise to them?  Should the State do this?  Can the dream be imposed and should it?

(Don't answer...now)

Can anyone really say what "Happiness" SHOULD BE?

 

I saw an advertisement for the television show "Enlightened" that inspired me in a different way than the writers probably intended.  In the ad, Laura Dern said about America that "people are living under the illusion that the American Dream is working for them."  My first instinct was to groan.  What a defeatist attitude towards life and the problems we all face!  Recovering, I tried to figure out why this criticism was so widespread, why the "American Dream" abstraction was being attacked from such a lame show? What illusion was I under because I thought differently than these unhappy fictional people?

I researched and came to a different conclusion.  Many intellectuals groped about their existence in this place (America), yet did not flee to "better" places with less people, less diversity, and less responsibility in the world.  Apparently these other places have greater social systems where happiness flutters down from controlling governments. Where was this ultimate happy place?  Some say Denmark was it, the so-called happiest place in the world.  Really?

Others support this notion.  Writer Kerry Trueman believes that "Denmark" is better and happier.  Her idea of the place benefits many more people especially when put into contrast to the supposed failures of America and its huge impoverished underclass.  Denmark's social happiness comes from trust in each other and "at least in part to Denmark's legendary income equality and strong social safety net."  In the same article, she also attacks a strawman she sets up, whereby "Tea-party types" would probably attack Denmark as a hotbed of socialism, when it's really "just practicing a more enlightened kind of capitalism."  Again, America's critics view themselves as enlightened, with better ideas based on rationality, while those content with the ambitious nature of the American dream are uninformed, supportive of a system she believes willfully impoverishes millions.  As a group of "unenlightened capitalists," they hope for a ridiculous dream that will not come to pass with society left the way it is.

So, Danes must be happier all around.  The stats show it and their people must believe it.  And those who possess this positive formulation, a "pro-American interpretation" of some of the most complex abstractions mankind has ("aspirations," "happiness," "contentedness," etc.), don't rationally understand why Denmark is better or why a social safety net is necessary.  In fact, they probably don't understand much of what enlightened people like Ms. Trueman have planned for them.  Right?

Not exactly.  If these "Enlightened" are right, why was this foreign happiness so restrictive to tiny Denmark and not made available to people like me in America?  Nordic countries have smaller problems than the American superpower that has protected them.  They're smaller geographically, have smaller shares of the world's resources, and that's just a few of the geographic factors that don't allow for easy comparisons.

The people themselves are different.  Interconnected as though the two peoples might be, the USA has a lot more people, a greater cultural diversity, more immigration from more places and the problems that result from that complexity.  And there's the ideas that certainly differentiate the two.  The US is much younger than its Nordic competitors for happiness.  At its best, it is seen as a beacon for people seeking freedom everywhere.  At Denmark's best, they are Danish people with a shared identity, race, culture, as well as a long and colorful history that is incomparable to the American Republic.  Denmark even has a popular constitutional monarchy.  America threw out its king 238 years ago.

Denmark welcomes non-Danes to its country, but citizenship is different from cultural or ethnic identity.  Does being "Danish" have the same relation of shared historical, ethnic, cultural, linguistic abstractions to its believers as being "American" has with someone living in the USA?  I do not think so at all.  Those differences result in different institutions, in different acting people, and a translation of that difference to how those societies function.  Basically, they're just different "nations" with different people.  Some objective level of happiness between them would be nearly impossible to determine and trying to do so is self-serving for those seeking to change the lives of Americans.

Skepticism of Remedy:  A Critical Look at "Happiness" Abstractions and Their "Truthfulness"

I'm accepting the critic's form of argument about the American Dream.  We're putting two abstractions, two "countries" into a contrived confrontation along the lines of Ms. Trueman, one that she does for the purpose of boosting one side to chastise another.  Clearly, I do not intend to boost Ms. Trueman's side because I never perceived "American enterprise" to be a futile tool, or even one that is threatened with extinction if desired changes aren't made.  Is there a better model that can be rationally constructed and applied to reality so that the most or ALL people can achieve some objective level of happiness?  Maybe.  But, I'm not willing to give up my life for another person's conception of the world unless I feel it improves the good things we have now. 

And the better model question opened up a thousand more.  If Denmark was MORE happy, what were the requirements, the standards set by these Danish adjudicators of happiness?  What did Americans  have to do to make happiness appear as it apparently manifested elsewhere?  Should we empower these judges just so that we could meet their standards?  What authority of argument should we confer on Ms. Trueman or the fiction writers at "Enlightened" to allow them to disrupt and change the world we know?  In other words, why pick them to change us and what makes their vision of happiness right while others have to be wrong?  I didn't know.

Was it because Ms. Trueman claimed the Danish system was enlightened?  Was it because she attacked the Tea Party who, regardless of their arguments, must be bad and thus not worthy of us reading or deciding the validity of their beliefs ourselves?  Name-dropping and sarcastic references used in conjunction with logical fallacies must be acceptable forms of argumentation IFF they come from enlightened people.

A Glorious Past as Evidence of the American Dream?

(subtext: Certain things worked better in the past.  Therefore, empower the "Enlightened") 

 

America's social critics often look towards material happiness at either a desired future point of existence, someplace so designated on the planet today, or in some society that has gone or is in danger of going.  Yet, I easily found a more comfortable version of the dream, something still more familiar to 70% of Americans even today after all of our national troubles (See the Economic Mobility Project).  It was and is defined as something useful that many Americans still understand despite the turmoil in their individual lives.  It is individualistic and motivational, yet from our past.  It is without perfect social safety nets or "enlightened"  philosopher kings.   Yet, we've held on to this abstraction despite the negativity of the materialists who'd change us to be more like them. 

Let's look at the past because that at least doesn't venture into fortunetelling and these views resonate with at least surveyed opinions of what the American dream should be today.  Alexis De Tocqueville provides the most interesting early view of American material happiness and the American dream.  At the same time, de Tocqueville never painted an utopic picture  of America, bereft of some abstract concept of inequality or poverty.  America was not perfect, nor necessarily better, just different in outlook as he perceived it from "Old Europe" back home.

In Book two, Chapter ten of "Democracy in America," De Toqueville writes of the "general" feeling of Americans for the "passion of physical well-being. "  He contrasts the complex American democracy and the general feelings he observed of its citizens to equally abstract "aristocratic communities" where the wealthy, "never having experienced a condition from their own, entertain no fear of changing it."  In 19th century Europe, the rich, landed and heredity-privileged possessed economic and social stability and did not feel the need to advance.  Likewise, in such abstract societies, the poor become used to their lot.

But, he saw "America" differently.  He saw the love of well-being as the main taste of the nation where even the wealthy continue their quest for more because many knew poverty at some point in their lives.  It is this attitude of happiness that best exemplifies the "American Dream."  Americans enjoy "the bootless chase," where only death ends their unending quest for happiness.  We are "restless" in a land De Tocqueville called abundant (Book 2, Chapter 13).

I find this vision of the American dream vastly more appealing not because it places Americans at some higher level of humanity.  Rather, it presents an "American Dream" for what it is.  A tool, an ambitious one at that, but one that provides opportunities for good and bad among those who accept the challenge.  The challenge is not a social directive, where more rational people (like Trueman) or more socially unhappy people (like the "Enlightened" characters) decide what is best through more abstractions and government actions.  Rather, the American Dream is fundamentally individual and can only be conceived as motivation. 

De Toqueville's theories have further interesting applications for those who complain about the American Dream today.  He wrote that abolishing all privilege and fortune (let's say chance of birth or circumstance) is essentially impossible and dangerous.  Cloners or social planners beware!  When all jobs are made open to all, total equality would mean all citizens are less able to attain happiness because of "universal competition" where endless struggle overwhelms those individuals willing to use their unique talents to get ahead.

De Toqueville is also correct logically when he states that we will "never establish any equality with which [American] can be contented."  How does everyone enjoy independence and freedom without "anxiety and impatience?"  Critics today worry about the equality of condition, that altering the physical must translate into the mental.  But, De Toqueville contradicts this position when he wrote that a people "will never succeed in reducing all the conditions of society to a perfect level."  Even if they did, "the inequality of minds would still remain, which, coming directly from the hand of God, will forever escape the laws of man."  That's plenty abstract.

Natural law aside, why has the circumstance of my birth, education, and growth rendered me unable to comprehend the vision of happiness that reduces the element of "freedom" and "motivation" and increases the role of the government as a helping hand?  Can I ever understand this view point, to comprehend a powerful safety net at the expense of individual choice?  Is disagreeing with the critic's understanding of happiness simply to be dismissed, relegated to an irrational criticism coming from a privileged elite group?

Clearly, we have an inequality of minds as a people about the truth of the American dream.  But, why destroy my conception of the abstraction to justify your actions in affecting my freedom, namely by taking away more things I believe I own?  While you believe you are helping the needy become "happy" by taking stuff from some, to those who object to your seizure, you are making others less happy by violating their beliefs in working and owning what is theirs.  Both conceptions of happiness cannot then be acted upon by the two groups at the same time, with the same limited resources in contention, while keeping both opposing groups happy.

Is it your right and responsibility to increase the number of happy people in society because creating a social safety net will neccessarily result in that action?  Is that action guaranteed to increase happiness if we are going to alter reality for all to meet your vision?

In my case, I am motivated to achieve my own sense of happiness.  Because I am struggling with a positive attitude, I am not recklessly or even intentionally acting in a way that takes from other people.  Remember, ownership is simply believing that something is yours and not someone else's. Yet, I believe that we all benefit when people of all races, incomes, or creeds are motivated to do things for themselves so we share some useful concept of "America." 

Remember, getting angry about complex abstractions like "the American Dream" and "Happiness" is a waste of our limited time on earth!

 --> Do something yourself first and encourage motivation in those who lack it!  

Then we'll all be better off!

Sources:

Adams, John Truslow . “The Epic of America.”

"Does America Promote Mobility as Well as Other Nations?" Economic Mobility Project, November 2011. www.economicmobility.org

Daley, Suzanne.  "Danes Rethink a Welfare State Ample to a Fault."  The New York Times.  April 20, 2013

Isaacs, Julia B., Sawhill, Isabel V., and Haskins, Rob.  "Getting Ahead of Losing Ground: Economic Mobility In America."  The Brooking Institution
http://www.pewtrusts.org/uploadedFiles/wwwpewtrustsorg/Reports/Economic_Mobility/Economic_Mobility_in_America_Full.pdf

Haybron, Dan, "Happiness", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2011 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2011/entries/happiness/>.

Kamp, David.  "Rethinking the American Dream." Vanity Fair.
http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2009/04/american-dream200904

O'Brein, Matthew.  "RIP, American Dream?  Why It's So Hard for the Poor to Get Ahead Today."  The Atlantic

Traub, Amy and McGhee, Heath C.  "State of the American Dream: Economic Policy and the Future of the Middle Class."
"http://www.demos.org/publication/state-american-dream-economic-policy-and-future-middle-class"

Trueman, Kerry.  "Looking for the American Dream?  Try Denmark."  10/07/2011  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kerry-trueman/looking-for-the-american_b_1000928.html

http://lareviewofbooks.org/essay/here-comes-the-tidal-wave-on-enlightened

A Sarcastic Art Philosophy: "Atomism Aesthetics"

Is "Art is Everywhere?"  Should we have "Art for Art's sake?"

 

The Sarcastic Answer:  Only if it serves a progressive purpose.

Sarcastic Purpose of this Tract:

To create a unified belief system that properly gives voice to both individual creativity and the oppressed masses.  Aesthetic atomization theory plans society and abstraction in an equitable way while combining modern leftist ideologies.  It is the only way to get the public to have confidence in the truly moral re-ordering plan for society because greedy "right-wing ideologies" are already backwards, simplistic, and incapable of future thinking.  Atomization destroys oppression through emotion and thus, a revolutionary society will emerge because of the DNA and the expressionism of the oppressed worker.  The following theories are infinitely better than the horrors and oppression of the Republic thus far. 

With a diverse fellowship craving for aesthetic unity, atomism theory's stated mission is to reconcile individual creativity, aesthetics, Stalinism, socialism, Trotskyism, modern environmentalism, recent sexual identity trends, anti-Zionism, anti-Republic sentiments, and modern Progressivism.   Through art, feeling, and emotion, this way of life will probably change everyone's world.

Sarcastic Definitions and Grammatical Parts of Speech

•  atom= an individual mind (time + emotion), the subject noun.

• emotion=aesthetic= indescribable activity when you connect with art.  A feeling inside of the physical body of a person because perception is connected to a single person's nervous system and time (passive, internal verb)

• expression= creativity physical action corresponding to an individual's emotion (action verb)

• art=an expression of emotion that is detected by something else (object)

• form= all non sense information, oppressive to emotion, and negative emotionally to humans.

• stimuli= all physical evidence as detected by the senses of a person. 

• shared meanings= words and concepts in a language with the same meaning or definition.  They impose and thus are immoral.

• Revolution= state of flux, of perfection where the individual (atom) has the unfettered ability to express, therefore a never-ending freedom of expression.

• Mob= a group of positive expressionists.

• fascist= all negative expressionists.  A creatively expanded term evolved from its 20th Century origins to define all persons who oppress any expression.  An oppressive and immoral person who imposes formalism.
• bourgeoisie- The fascist Middle Class who seek 1950s conformity, discrimination, and false happiness at the expense of the oppressed masses.

Atomization Theory and Abstract Art:  

An idealist, individualistic, subjective theory where art and creativity are supreme.  Art is no longer a simple function of mass human culture, rather it is the only moral tool available to individuals seeking to enlighten the masses about social justice. 

Art is broadly defined as any expression, any detectable evidence of individual emotion.  It is used to break apart any shared meanings of the prevailing oppressive culture and during this process, revolution can indefinitely be sought.  Art is expression and expression is the tool by which the immoralities of the oppressive culture are purged. It is the act of emoting, of doing art that is indicative of the ongoing presence of Revolution.  Without art or aesthetics, there can be no moral, perfect world.

Revolution is an "atomized" idea inherent in all true individuals.  The true "atom" is opposed by a tyrannical force that resists their idealism and individualism. Art philosophy is therefore meant to be related only to individual expressionism and NOT to trends, tastes, or fashions that are in response to the bourgeoisie or their McCarthyism.  Such responses are legitimate and moral because they seek the annihilation of the bourgeoisie so that the individual owns all forms of his own production, including his expression.  In atomization aesthetics, you're supposed to lack understanding to search for a meaning of your own so you can express yourself somehow.

Sarcastic Implications for Gender Indentity: 

The foremost implication is total revolution and the destruction of the formal, traditional, and fascist way of life.  With total atomization of the prevailing culture, there will be no more shared meanings and thus no further oppression of the individual by the conservative and the capitalist. Common shared meanings of "Marriage," "Church," "common man," or "prohibited drug" cannot exist in an atomization system because people know to interpret these concepts negatively and thus reject whatever restrictions are part of them.  Why be a "church-member," a form, if under atomism, it is impossible to identify your sexual identity because time is variant or your alternating preferences for commitment, desire, or promiscuity shift because of emotions?   Why advocate for anything that restrains emotions if it is immoral to impose sexuality on the individual?

Yet such a horrific "Church" requires you to conform so. Why? In this case, your sexual identity is indefinable, yet oppressed because of a form (heterosexuality) imposed by the "Church" and Christianity and its dogmatic, discriminatory shared meanings.  Thus, you have every right to sexual revolution, to atomization including reverse repression against it to break apart its shared meanings and end its intolerance.   

A further implication is that there is an infinite listing of gender identity because gender language leads to shared meanings and therefore fascism and oppression.  Gender itself is an oppressive construct that limits creativity, places people into forms, and attempts to separate emotion and the subject from their previously labeled "gender" parts, i.e. penis, vagina, breast, etc.   

Past gender oppression is part of ongoing negative stimuli from sexist, homophobic formalists dominating Republic society.  Men were responsible for imposing all oppressive conceptions of gender (its terminology) on the world of unique subjects.  Furthermore, because of one's uniqueness and subjectivity--no one can be in your mind or experience your emotion at the same time  and place--gender identity can never be defined because that places emotion and expression into form, therefore becoming tyranny and oppression.  In order to counter "gender," creativity is required. 

For example, one such expression, (V), may be used by one person in time to express art while avoiding hateful gender forms.  (V) is used to intermingle all physical/mental expressions through art.  However, no one else can express (V) and have the same meaning, otherwise (V) would become a shared meaning and thus oppress.  And, (V) means something slightly different for every true individual (atom).  So, it's not a shared meaning and it helps to atomize the shared meaning of gender because "man/women etc." are removed and (V) expresses something for just one subject no matter how many people share the same body parts used for reproductive sex.  Therefore, body mutilation, (V), sex changing, cross dressing etc. are expressions of a subject's antigender.  Resistance to this art is also counter-revolutionary therefore prejudiced, fascist, and a hate crime, the only acceptable criminal label. 

Otherwise, the "crime" abstraction itself is an attack on the atom. Such forced conformity to gender and to expressionism leads to what oppressors have always called "crime" because laws are forms, those who fail at following shared meanings like gender are labeled "criminal" under that formal law, and thus people's emotions, their aesthetic capabilities are restrained by the dominant and fundamentally immoral culture.  Any form that restrains emotion and the expression of emotion is fundamentally immoral because it reduces ones' ability to participate in Revolution and destroy society's real immoralities.  Because "crime" doesn't exist under an atomistic system, behavior can never be controlled or discouraged in such a way as to make one way of acting illegal.  Thus, under this system, the only recourse is to allow every behavior that imposes nothing negatively on other individuals. 

Emotion Theory:   

A "normal" emotional state is something that cannot be achieved for people.  There is no possible homeostasis for one's mentality. Therefore, the person's mind is in constant change not least of which is the result of the movement of time and the alteration of the physical chemicals which make up the brain and the nervous system.  It is also dependent on the inter-connectivity with other vital life functions. 

Therefore, no mental balance is possible, nor desirable under this system and emotion and the magnitude of its expression can be heightened or depressed from some undeterminable level to achieve the desired creative, aesthetic effect.  

However, emotion is constantly altered because time cannot be frozen completely.  Thus while "under the influence,"  artists can create things of any sort that express an emotion that is only in their head for one moment in time, a duration and sense achieved only by the physical chemicals in the brain or those additives (drugs) that alter perception. 

In fact, atomism theorists encourage mental alteration to achieve maximum creativity.  This can occur because of voluntary actions, like using mood enhancers (drugs of any sort, especially the most psychoactive) or because of involuntary action that is recognized by viewers as being art.   

Therefore, because thought is considered temporal and equivalent to the indescribable emotion in the mind of a single person's head, any thought expressed to another person whose intent is to reduce one person's creativity to some "form," like the political labels "subversive or "communist," should be considered to be a formal thinker, depriving their argument of time and the direction towards a perfect progress of individuality and Revolution.  This formalism is also considered absurd because no person can enter the mind of another person because of inconstant emotional flux.  That means physical expression never exactly correlates to ones' inner emotions.

 

Proper Interpretation of Art:

Past art criticism reduced emotive expressions to symbols which destroyed the emotive moment.  Art therefore can only be experienced individually and understood in time through experience.  Attempting to "improve" art or achieve a similar mentality to the artist at whatever point in time is impossible.  To do so would be anachronistic, amounting to time travel or something like E.S.P./mind reading.  Therefore, it is impossible to interpret art accurately because to do so would make them constructions, shared meanings that bind artist, representing the past, and viewer, representing the present emotion, in progressive sin.  

When questioned about art, the atomistic self-created artist  may say nothing because his emotional moment has ceased.  Or, if this person chooses to speak, they must be creating.  It's not a form ("artist"), it's something a person chooses to create even though it shares some characteristics with other people.  It cannot be the same expression, an immoral form, because humans haven't yet achieved time travel to another person's mind and body (mind reading).  Therefore, separate emotions lead to separate expressions and therefore real art, with its moral effects on other people.  While appearing similar, two pieces of real art are actually different because no two atoms can be the same or in the same place/time and therefore can never create the same exact things.

For example, splattering feces on Christian symbols can be considered art because of the emotion that was involved in defiling those formal symbols.  In this case, the formal symbols of Christian culture are viciously attacked.  This wording alone shows that emotion leads to expression, which then leads to art that serves a moral purpose.  However, defiling Islamic symbols or any other non-Judeo-Christian religion would constitute a hatecrime and thus be worthy of street protests and revolutionary violence in response.  Judeo-Christian sects are responsible for all global religious intolerance because of their oppressive imperialist past.  Therefore, the artist appreciator understands the moral message of attacking Judeo-Christianity and knows by the mere act of symbolic destruction that art has been created.  It is action like this feces defilement that progress the globe towards perfection. 

Likewise, when looking at "traditional" and therefore "oppressive" pieces of what was once called "art," the atomist should throw away any past conceptions of what a physical object means.  For example, the painting "The Garden of Earthly Delights" by the imperialist-supporter Hieronymus Bosch should be attacked as immoral non-art because of its Christian symbology and because of the repression that the Catholic Church has consistently used to silence progressive critics.  Accepting such a painting as a "masterpiece of art" would take the viewer out of their brains and attempt to place them into the emotional state of Bosch during the slavery and repression of the Renaissance.  Without progressive context to educate about the repression of homosexuals, women, other non-Dutch, non-Europeans by the society of that day, a viewer accepting the painting as emotionally pleasing would accept and support Dutch imperial slavery because Dutch art cannot be separated from the immoral Dutch capitalism because of the illogic of time and mind travel.  Failing to act, failing to criticize the immoralities of the art age of Bosch is just as bad and immoral as accepting the atrocities of the age.

Therefore, because of the shared meanings behind such a painting, its value is negative and its impact fundamentally immoral.  Rather, acceptable art would take the right path, the path of individual equality and the emphasis on emotion above all else.  It is the duty of art critics to attack the oppressive culture of formalists like Bosch and deconstruct what they must have meant as their oppressive paint strokes hindered progress then and now.

Liberation Literature Theology (LLT)

For most of human history, trees and papyrus have been butchered to make paper.  Now, computers have alleviated this stress on Mother Nature and allowed the Blog to ascend as the right format for the conveyance of truth and knowledge.  But, let us look at a sample of how literature can be almost anything under atomism theory, how literature is universal and has itself declared its independence from even the alphabet, with all of its vile Western Civilization influences.

Look at the previous format of literature: the printed book on carbon paper.  In the old, backward way, ideas were conveyed on these pieces of paper.  Though important ideas spread in spite of this rustic format, the impact on nature was atrocious. So, what do we do with the remaining carbon paper that sits on this planet?

Well, use the remaining paper reserves for art and art that fits with the morality of the atomism theory. Take for example the average "novel."  571 pieces of carbon paper of an 8+_ by ₉^^& to a 4 $%^ size are the pallet for a self-described pamphleteer or novelist to use as an art canvas.  The altered page dimensions are meant to destroy the imperial form of paper dictated to the people by their overlords.  That form limits the creativity of literature within the bounds of a standardized, and thus non-aesthetic physical object.  

It is unjust and immoral to bound our emotions in oppressive formats or to conform to imperialist culture.

Furthermore, handwritten or spray-painted literature should be comprised of symbols unknown as yet to anyone and so that each copy must be individually hand-made because no corporation-produced printer can achieve true handmade unique symbols.  However, in order to spread the innate morality of atomism aesthetics, we'll suffice with non-formal page measurements in typed courier font on a standardized page for the purposes of conveying a progressive message.

With all copies handwritten, thus the new age creative author achieves a different copy each time art is attempted or so it is suggested to those who'd create as this theory requires.  It is implied that the reader must interpret the work and have their own artistic moment while trying to avoid creating a shared meaning.  Therefore, one should strive to create some new thought because time already dictates that everything a person does will be different (no mind travel).  

 

The moral reader can never recreate the art creation experience, so one can never explain what they created because that would amount to time travel, imperialism, and systematizing emotion.  Instead, art in literature can only be experienced by finding progressive ideals in the art and the magnitude of the non-comforming expression of the artist.  When reader and writer connect ideals, progress is served.

Revolutionary verus History Theory

The purpose of this theory is to connect atomization with social justice, because rather than being some indefinable term of idealists, it is in fact an innate part of every person as they seek to protect their ability to express.  

The act of doing revolution is equal to social justice and therefore the protective response against negative stimuli of the mind in time.  Therefore, revolution is inconstant, nonrestrictive, never-ending, and non-conformist. As with art atomization, you must express toleration, revolutionary expression, and a desire to change society and all of its wrong and oppressive forms.  You must support individualistic expression if you really want to bring about the inconstant state of social justice.

Because history places people and their ideas in a time that atomist theorists think is mentally impossible, traditional historians are expressed against as bourgeoisie formalists.  Marx's theories of historical inevitability still apply because the bourgeoisie class is the group with the shared meanings whereas all other individuals emote in time and follow atomization theory.  

Thus, the bourgeoisie class has the most shared meanings, which it imposes on the creativity of the individuals who choose to artfully entitle themselves as the "proletariat."  
True individuals will only choose liberation like that which emerges from working class people.  The proletariat are also often the most silent of an oppressed, formal society, requiring certain people to speak for them and encourage their creativity during the right moments in time.  Elections are the most opportune time for action because the masses need to be mobilized for a short period of time until responsible progressive leaders gain power and thereafter make the proper decisions for them.

Therefore, individuals (workers) express their outrage individually in a different way than their horrid bosses, who themselves disconnected from time because they dominate.  They act as terrorist factory managers because they won't pay more than the smallest agreed upon wage between worker and boss.  Work is not to be a contract between supplier and demander.  Instead, work is an expression of the individual's emotions and thus cannot be limited.  No price is too small for the art of one's individual labor. 

Bosses limit that price, they restrain the capabilities of the artist by constraining expression within time and pay limits.  But there is recourse for the proletarian.  Maybe the staff supervisor will be decapitated by a rebelling work staff who are really artists expressing themselves against low pay and non-ergonomically correct keyboards?  

However, a violent response is neither a violation of ones' pacifist oaths nor a crime, because "crimes" are constructions.  To violate laws made by the bourgeoisie is the epitome of this system.  The factory owners and capitalists seek to suppress the common man who is paid only minimum wage whilst being given some meager and inadequate state assistance to live a less than completely perfect life.  Overturning this great labor injustice is exactly the goal of atomists and it is something completely attainable for non-oppressors.

Thus with horrible bosses, oftentimes the only response is worker revolt and violent protest.  Mob reaction is a form of group expressionism and thus art.  All persons, through time and circumstance, react against some authoritative criticism of the individual and come to similar emotional moments and express through revolution, mob chaos, and possibly violence.  If violence results because of conflicting expressions, then that should be viewed as art so long as the individuals in the mob are reacting against authority and formality.

A Closing Sarcastic Note on Art Education Theory

How do we move forward with the message of atomization aesthetics?  The answer is educational indoctrination.  Formal culture stifles our message time and again.  But, our theory has an answer for the blocking action of the current terrible educational culture.

Atomization theorists think that there is no reason for organized education in the traditional sense.  In order to overcome the contradictory need to destroy forms while still celebrating everything progressive teachers and universities do, atomism theorists came up with the idea that rather than education imposed as formality, instead, the faculties and their labor unions are mob expressions. A teacher uses their presence in class as an emotional expression, creating art for the required duration of the class period (which is the emotional moment).  The emotional response (expression) is due to the authoritarian university and its limitation of creativity by imposing who, what, where, when, and how creativity can take place (classroom, campus). 
  

Thus the teacher's performance on the classroom stage is the aesthetic moment.  Most emotive revolutionary expressionist teachers sit in class in some place (depends on emotion and time) and may stay silent to not impose authority on the students.  Students for their part are allowed to emote however they wish as long as they feel creation.  

Thus, as the atomist teacher expresses their progressive beliefs to the classroom, morality is served and the individual lives of students who connect with the message are improved.  And atomization aesthetics is spread to another person and the world inches forward one step closer to total perfection.

A Required Imperialist Disclosure: this form of education might lead to a mass breakdown in communication to people with no skills because there can be no formal process of any kind, let alone training, which itself acknowledges authority of experience.  Food would be scarce, starvation rampant.  Also, garbage collection is fascist because no one's creativity seems to want to clean up that which smells and because waste implies that you are exploiting natural resources which violates environmental practice espoused by these theorists.  Most atomist theorists think the individual creator can overcome such conservative oppressions.

   

Let's get Atomization Aesthetics moving today!  (or not)

End Sarcasm.

The Surrealism of the “Building That” Debate

Why Must We Thank the Abstract First?  It Can't Say "You're Welcome," but its Employees Can Demand More in Its Name!

 

I waited until after the 2012 Presidential election to write this.  Because he's the victor, I'll focus primarily on Obama's so-called "Building That" speech in Roanoke, VA on 7/13/12:

 

Surrealism:  "having the disorienting, hallucinatory quality of a dream; unreal; fantastic" dictionary.com

I can declare with a great amount of certainty that yes, people are not the only builders of things.  We “live” with the results of past action and that includes the physical landscape and the debris left behind by humans and other natural causes.  Natural forces, like sedimentation, shape the landscape in ways that we can use, that we’re unaware of, or in a way that is a barrier to our physical bodies.  Animals also alter the landscape.  For example, termites construct giant structures with their vomit, beavers dam rivers, or herds of elephants knock down forests providing habitats for smaller creatures.  And maybe a robot society inhabits planets in other universes and individual robots out there build things too.  But, we cannot mind-warp our human selves into termites, beavers, or sedimentary streams.  At least I can't.  And I don't feel the need to credit sedimentation or natural disasters either.

Thus, in 2012 USA, governments and businesses are abstract creations of the human mind, people acting somewhat collectively according to their flawed individual perception of laws, "society," and "tradition." "Governments" or "businesses" can’t really build anything either, it's the people who believe they are part of those abstractions.  I know this is quite surreal, but this is a waste of time debate.

Why do we have the government abstraction? Philosophically, it is so individuals can imperfectly conform their lives to a series of imperfect rules thus making difficult individual lives hopefully just a little better in some geographical area.  We (probably) give the government employees our resources (now mostly currency) to do things for us and they give us imperfect results.  The purpose of government is to do things we've paid it and instructed it to do, though this is not an ideal world, so no abstraction's human-made purposes can ever be entirely met.

Why do we pay taxes?  If you pay, that is because laws have been written to "protect" us and do things for us collectively with pooled money, so we give up some of our limited resources so other people perform these duties/services for us.  If taxpayers are giving their limited resources to government employees to do things like building bridges for us to use, why do we have to give credit to government for planning the construction projects we've paid individuals to complete?  Ridiculous.

OBAMA: “......You didn’t get there on your own.  I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart.  There are a lot of smart people out there.  It must be because I worked harder than everybody else.  Let me tell you something -- there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there....... If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help.  There was a great teacher somewhere in your life.  Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive.  Somebody invested in roads and bridges.  If you’ve got a business -- you didn’t build that.  Somebody else made that happen.  The Internet didn’t get invented on its own.  Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.”

 

My main problem with Obama's argument is one of credit.  Why credit the abstract first over individual success, the rough and tumble hard-work needed to succeed with "business" relationships?  That question can probably be answered first by defining success, something subjective yes, but would you rather credit yourself on what you've accomplished or some word on a page?  Or credit someone who believes they're the "government" because they get a paycheck that,  however small your individual taxpayer contribution, comes from your limited resources?  

Also, Obama fails to separate the public versus private abstractions and then accurately explain the relationship of U.S. citizens to THEIR government.  His criticism is that government programs directly build things, whether physical as in roads and bridges, or metaphorical as in "educated" minds.  Accordingly, he feels what's built  is necessary for citizens to "succeed" and something citizens should appreciate.  Therefore, because of this systems' necessity, more taxpayer money is required for roads, bridges, firemen, and teachers' pay to continue success.

Yet, Federal programs are just creations of the human mind, put into physical action only by human beings.  A program can't build a bridge.  And we can't mind-warp into some concept like "government" to receive the credit Obama wants to take on its behalf!  What Obama misses is that the PUBLIC pays for or already paid for those services and human-built structures! So, why must we credit the success of US citizenry to those public EMPLOYEES we're already paying to complete their jobs?  Ridiculous.  We go into debt as communities.  We sacrifice what we have to pay experts to do this.  Because Obama believes he represents all positive aspects of "government," why does he deserve credit for individual efforts?  Nonsense.


Mitt Romney ran a "corporation," Bain Capital, where a group of people legally agreed to engage in the "corporate rescue business."  Failing "businesses" agreed to pay or give up resources (they're failing because individuals were unable to adapt and out-compete etc.).  Mitt Romney's "corporation" performed its services and received its payments.  Some of these collective groups acting legally were able to sell more "built" things, like staplers at "Staples."  Other businesspeople were incapable of competing and they failed.  With most private "enterprises," you can pay for a service or not, you can seek out a competitive legal relationship, say "Office Max" instead of Staples, or stick with what your businespersons are providing you.  With PUBLIC abstractions, like "government," there are no other LEGAL options.  The only way to seek better results LEGALLY is to vote for people to imperfectly represent your ideas, and as one citizen of millions of others.  And people living in the "USA" have layers of representation where people thousands of miles away may make decisions that affect your resources, and you might disagree with the decision, yet you might have no way to vote or not vote to influence the outcome.

What is the exact "help" a bridge in Washington state provides to someone starting a business relationship in NY to sell staplers?  And if we can't precisely locate that credit without writing a dissertation in economics, why does it make more sense to credit the PUBLIC "abstraction" and not our time-consuming and back-breaking efforts first?

Obama “The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together.  There are some things, just like fighting fires, we don’t do on our own.  I mean, imagine if everybody had their own fire service.  That would be a hard way to organize fighting fires.”

 

ME: "Thank us and maybe pay us more or see how you like it without us!"  An important reason we're a separate nation in 2012 from 18th-century Great Britain is that from then until today, people living in the "USA" debate the role of "government," their representation, the amount of resources they provide to "government employees," whether as kings then or public employees now.  We do this as individuals because there are limited resources and we guard ourselves and what we think we possess against others' unwarranted seizure.  Rather than having a Crown telling us what's important, today, we elect or select government employees through a complicated system, and pay them to do things imperfectly, but in a way that I'm assuming most US citizens seem to like better than the way the18th-century British parliamentary monarchy did things.

Today, Obama is an elected President and employee of a "democratic-Republic" and he is quite wrong about who deserves credit for the firefighting service, the difference between the public and private abstractions, and this whole debate in general.  Why do we pay firefighters if we're going to have to fight fires as individuals as he says?  Of course that would "be a hard way to fight a fire," although if you can put a small fire out with a fire extinguisher you'd save scarce local resources. Others argue that if taxpayers don't like the actions of a fire department or think their teachers aren't doing a good enough job, then why don't the questioning taxpayers see how they like it when their house is on fire and no one responds.  Or maybe, how would they like to let their children remain stupid if they don't support higher teacher pay?  Can I have my money back if complaining got my house burned down?  Can I have my child's mind back and the money I've sunk into it?

I also believe that any public employee who does not perform their job deserves termination.  They are OUR PUBLIC employees and we as taxpayers (their bosses) have NO CHOICE to take our services elsewhere because of the Constitution and other laws.  We can't try to contract with the government of China to put a fire out in a municipal district in the USA and to do so, we would have to pay taxes, fulfill the obligations--and certainly get more benefits of Chinese citizenship--to get full Chinese government services.  So, in country with a completely opposite "tradition," why should we be forced to pay for US services  no matter the result, and suffer threats from our employees that we'll have to fight fires on our own? Ridiculous.  Obama has no business suggesting to his employers that services are going to have to be individually managed if he doesn't get what he wants.  He shouldn't be able to fire my house!  Such employees do deserved to be fired themselves!

Credit for "building that" goes to the "taxpayer" before the government abstraction.

Source: 

 

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/07/13/remarks-president-campaign-event-roanoke-virginia