Hello friends hope you all are well

So, I have a bunch of things on my mind that I want to communicate to you, and that is the first topic actually. That is what I want to talk to you about the most today: this idea of community and communication. It’s such a strange thing to think that virtually no one in the world is unaffected by this pandemic and nobody seems to be clear about how to deal with the problems, so we have this very common situation and that alone is not going to create community. It’s going to take communication for us to be able to understand that our common situation puts us in the position where it is best to build community. But how does that really work? What does it look like? How do we build community in a way that feels good to us. I think that a part of the challenge of community is the fact that we have so many individual differences and that is part of our value system. We tend to reward individualism and we have a strong sense of accountability and you can’t be accountable and you can’t earn rewards if you don’t have a strong sense of individuality, but that can work against building community. In other words, if we have a culture that values individual efforts, then how do we focus on things that affect the larger whole? We have individual efforts but we also have team sports. How do we pay attention to individual contributions while staying focused on the team? These are age old ancient questions about society itself about organization, about families, etc.

The first answer to the question what makes building community difficult is the fact that people get into conflicts and a conflict taken to extremes becomes uncomfortable for everyone and at its extreme conflict eventuates in violence. So, the attempt to build community can actually lead to violence. So, here we are in this unknown window of time where we are prohibited from gathering in groups. We need to keep doing good work even though we can’t get together.

I’ve always tried to imagine myself as part of the human family even though I have a clear idea that I only know a tiny fragment of what that means. I belong to this vast family of humans and I know so little about the majority of them and it is this proximity and lack of knowing that creates the fear and the intrigue. There is the idea that it may be rewarding but the fear that cultural contact could be fatal.

But here we are in this time where getting together is impossible, so maybe getting to know each other is possible from a distance. If we take this challenge, then maybe we can actually work on understanding each other and creating cross cultural bonds. I would guess that if given the opportunity we might find out that we have very similar situations as other people in other parts of the world.

When I am looking to connect with people in other parts of the world I am trying to think about the personality types that exist here and I’m speculating that there are other people in other parts of the world who have more in common with you than with the people who are in your own family and since we can’t come together physically we have an opportunity to learn from each other.

We are going to have a lot of new work to do. A lot of work is going to be based around rebuilding. We are going to have a lot of work of recovery to do.

It’s a strange thing, but we have this fear of other people having power over us and with good reason but when we can take the risk of communicating without the danger of physical violence then maybe we stand a chance of getting to know each other better. In other words, I’m thinking that we might have friends out there we don’t even know exist.

The biggest question we all face right now is how we will continue to do business. How will we pay the bills to continue operations during this economically difficult time? How are we going to create communities where trust is apparent so that we can transact and build networks of exchange?

One thing that is hopeful is that we will be analyzing the basics of human interaction from this new point of view. We will need to break down the fundamentals of human economic activity and we will figure out how to do things in a way that saves lives and keeps people on a healthy path.

Before this pandemic I was already beginning a rugged campaign of sustainable content creation practices. I had been training for very long hikes to get up early and out in the morning light so that I can create content for businesses that is of a very high quality but that doesn’t rely upon fossil fuels for its production. My studio is still on the grid, so I’m not without a footprint, but relying upon my own locomotion, using my power of walking to get me where I need to be has been my practice for the past half year.

I believe that at their highest level, forms tend to merge together and I am hypothesizing that we will have in art something that will merge together with marketing in a kind of art experience that leads to action. For example, in the dialogues of Plato philosophy and literature merge in a high form or art. I believe that we are due for a new form art that works like marketing to convince masses of people to take an action. Philosophy and literature merge at their highest point and the same is true with marketing.

Art history shows us how artistic forms change over time and adapt to meet new needs of humans. So, while artists of the Italian Rennaisance were mainly painting portraits and scenes from the bible, modern artists created so many different artistic movements and the whole idea of art for art’s sake had to do with understanding what art can do when it is not in the service of another discourse. But where we are now as a human race requires of art something that is more similar to marketing. We need art today that will give us the experience of art but will also have the effect of marketing. In other words, our art is going to convert us into certain kinds of action.

Part of that is going to be about building community through artistic communication. While we have this window of time where we have decided to stop all human contact we have an opportunity to learn more about each other and ourselves.