symbiotic realistic optimist i performed a social experiment recently. i called it Therapeutic Thursdays. it was one night of the week when people got together and spoke, and wrote, and painted, and sang, and danced, and created. whatever they could bring themselves to do within a collective of open souls. as they grew more and more comfortable, i changed the rules more and more eventually pushing for more performance and less private art. trying to bring out messages to be shared. i chose not to lead too strongly, but instead to have the group led each week by a different person with a different subject of expertise so that we could lead ourselves and each take responsibility for the direction we took. the reason for this is that i believe we are capable of this type of coleadership as a people. i would like us to take responsibility for ourselves and our place in society and i believe that a dominant power structure is inhibiting and induces complacency. small groups and distributed leadership is my aim. eventually, i hoped we could get on the same page enough to collaborate on projects for our group and eventually projects for our community. unfortunately, the lack of strong leadership was not replaced by personal investment. the group drifted away and my experiment failed. i'd like to say that i didn't go into a depression for several months introverting and staying home being antisocial to the point that i developed a bit of social anxiety. i'd like to say that. what i will say instead is that this is my own way of taking_it_to_the_streets and that the world had better get ready for social experiment ver 2.0 it is the next logical step in our social progression. we as a people, on the whole, are having a hard time finding god in TV, in CHURCH, in SCHOOL, or even on the aolintarwebnet.com we are finding ourselves more and more removed from our creative self our GOD self. more and more removed from the experience of being human. from the experience of our suffering and of our grace and mercy. it is time we nutured ourselves it is time we nutured the GOD in all of us, namaste, thou art god, we are one. and let's sing with a thousand tongues and realize our power in numbers not to save the world, but to save ourselves. see: immediatism 031006 ... mon ..blink blink.. 031006 ... stork daddy i've always wanted to leave a note on someone's door saying "i'm an eccentric billionaire. i want to give away two million dollars. i have chosen you after monitoring the way you live because i think you would spend it interestingly. if you do spend it in a degree i find interesting, you may be hired full time by me. if you want the money, it will be in a black briefcase in the park this midnight. do not involve the police or anybody else. everyone else i have offered this too has not shown up. do you trust in adventure?" and then i'd go and watch the park and see if they actually went. it'd be funny. i might even leave a black briefcase that said..."i changed my mind but here's a free briefcase" in it. 031006 ... mon hahahaha! Oh My Frog stork daddy! that reminded me of some of my own crazy thoughts 031006 ... Isaac Asimov I am not "You reveal the banality of the modern mind and its existential inadequacy and hence depravity." I'd be really interested in burying a hatchet deep into your head, crack it open like a melon and watch its insipid uninspired effluvium flow out." "The world is tired of indulging and enduring you souless preening bastards." 031006 ... realistic optimist hrm perhaps it would also be interesting for them to leave a list for your approval so you can see whta people would spend it on! 031006 ... stork daddy no. i have to make them feel like i'm watching them. 031006 ... misstree and again interesting timing... ran the discordian meetup thingy last night, only one person besides the people i brought showed, but that totaled us at five, and joined two sets of forces that needed to meet... it gave me the fire to really bust some balls on getting word out for next month, especially as, when i was going to the bathroom before we left, there was a guy sitting in a booth by himself, so i made some entertaining quip. he repsonded, and then mentioned heinlein (i'd been ranting on strangers_in_a_strange_land)... we talked for a bit, he was quite knowledgable on the subjects we'd been discussing... i told him several times that he should join us, but he simply smiled and said "remember the dogs in the apartment?" and i couldn't argue. (don't worry if it doesn't make sense, it would take a week to explain). he promised to show up next week, and i was reminded that there are at least dozens of such minds out there, the flotsam drawn in by this livable, beautiful, freak friendly college town, and i'll be damned if i'm not going to try to bring them out of the woodwork, get some brain sharing going on. if we hadn't been arguing heinlein, i would never have met the guy in the bar. if i hadn't been chalking the quad, i would never have met the guy with the holey pants. chaos does not come to those who wait--chaos comes to those who chase butterflies and run into trees. i had a point, but i must have left it in the bathroom. 031007 ... ROFL misstree. My vote is for you. 031009 ... randomly recent RO, that was very interesting, I'd like to find out more about your social experiments. Stork daddy, you sound like one of those people who should never, ever, become stupidly rich. like me. misstree, how did later meetings turn out? ! 040110 ... three words symbiotic art rain_drops_through_me 050321 ... three words symbiotic concepts reality_____vs_______wishful_thinking 060121 what's it to you? who go blather from