Here's some AI art created from the prompt, 'System disruption and nonviolence.' I think the result is interesting. It looks like a sign for a protest on an alien planet.
Today I've been thinking about system disruption as an activism strategy. In general, I favor disrupting harmful systems by combining creativity with technology to make the systems less important. For example, crypto disrupts the economic system, in part by disintermediating it. The disruption is a side-effect of constructive collaborations.
I tend not to favor forms of system disruption with destructive intent and unclear objectives. At the same time, I can't blame anyone for protesting our dumpster fire of a system. When protesters throw soup or block traffic, I cannot fault the sentiment behind it, however foolish and ineffectual the action may be.
One of the main systems in need of disruption in our society is the collective unconscious. I feel like activism never focuses on this, or if it does, I haven't noticed. There are of course organizations working in the information space to further their causes. Many of their efforts are laudable. But these efforts are usually designed to convince rational individuals to take a prescribed action.
I'd like to see an art movement that disrupted the collective unconscious. There are signs that something like this might be starting to occur with explosion of digital art and AI. More than once recently, I've seen digital art that blew my mind. And the tech is still in its infancy.
I suspect that there are patterns of symbols in our collective unconscious that predispose us to adversarial thinking and behavior. These patterns seem like the kind of thing we shouldn't tinker with, if we even had the power to. Simple nonviolence prevents violence from arising from these patterns in individuals. But what about at the level of the collective?
Our culture is a war culture. Our systems are domination systems. Imposing nonviolence upon them may be impossible. But there may be constructive ways to move in that direction.
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