Scalable behaviors are everyday practices and actions that allow billions of people to coexist peacefully and equitably on the same planet. We have an idea of what some of them are, and what they are not. We won’t get into specific behaviors here, since that requires a lot of discussion and will be controversial. Rather, I’d like to focus on the idea of scalable behaviors, how to identify and nurture them, and how they can impact the codified norms of society. Scalable behaviors are really the set of acceptable behaviors from the perspective of globally sustainable living.

Acceptable behaviors have to be defined in the context of meta-models. Most people are religious, and they need a meta-model to buy into, whether it is Christianity, Buddhism, Mormonism or whatever. Historically we’ve seen any single religion cover a lot of different and sometimes conflicting behaviors. Christianity has been used and abused to justify everything from the Conquest of Native Americans, to Hitler’s Reich, to prosperity doctrine to ascetic missionaries. Parallels can be drawn to other religions. A meta-model, it turns out, can be adapted to cover many sets of behaviors. Likewise, a simple behavior like charity is embraced by many religions. Since we don’t expect scalable behaviors to contradict any fundamental premise of a religion, then can we simply be agnostic to religion in our discovery?

It is a bit of a conundrum: it’s best to define universally applicable behaviors outside of a religion (so they can become parcel of any religion). Religion, however, provides a structure to govern the recognition, certification and dissemination of behaviors. So how do we go about this? For now, let’s just call this process ‘The New Sacred’ – we haven’t defined it yet, but I have blogged about the need for it recently. The New Scared also includes structures for the facilitation of myth making. It can be the myth-agency or myth boutique described in another post recently.

Qualifying behaviors as good or bad can’t just be an academic exercise: excellence has to be experienced to be discovered. Behaviors are simply the manifestation of individual decisions to act. It comes down to how we define our choices in a specific context. We have to both define and teach them. What are some of the techniques we can use?

Classification is an obvious start. Defining behaviors in the context of a sustainable lifestyle will obviously have everything to do with a healthy planet. Best practices in farming and permaculture, recycling, conservation, energy self-sufficiency, etc. will naturally come into play. We must have a tolerant attitude towards the behaviors of other communities as well. Behaviors that foster healthy commerce are of course required. We need a new pattern for consumption – we have to generate a new demand. We just identified three classes: food production, energy and commerce. There are many.

Once classified, however, how do we structure them? This will require more research. Behaviors will be judged in relation to outcomes. There are likely to be typical conflicts that force the choice. There might be techniques for forcing the decision, much like evangelicals use the constructs of sin and damnation to force a choice for the Savior. Relevant values can be associated with the decision to be highlighted in any argument or artistic dramatization that drives a character into the right choice.

Eventually we’ll de-construct these behaviors into specific decision patterns that can be assimilated into our shared stories and new cultural myths. Movie making has many tricks that can help us teach the behaviors. Well-crafted movies put characters we empathize with in dramatized scenarios that can be translated to something in our own lives. We follow along his or her decision making process and side (or don’t side) with them. The rules that apply in the character’s mind become patterns in our own minds. We recall these when we face similar circumstances. If the perspective is different from our own, we are educated and may change the way we view the topic or decision. That’s part of the power of great movie making.

A deep knowledge of behaviors and their associated drivers can become a subversive skill used for good. The pathology of sustainable choices could prove quite useful. If people want guidance, why not lead them into a positive cycle. We’ve been in negative cycles too long.

— Roy Zuniga
Shilshole Beach, WA

copyright 2012 roy zuniga – all rights reserved

I’ve been thinking about the collective failures in society that necessitate heroes to save us. Personal computing is an example. Could we have gotten an iPhone without Steve Jobs? I’m thankful that in the tech industry we’re all coming around to making more usable products. We seem to be asking ourselves, What would Steve make? Did getting that compliment kill him? We shouldn’t require someone to go through what he did in order to get great products. We should just expect them; and producers should just know that. What set us to up to require an epic character like him ‘save us’ from bad design? What reductionist worldview put us on the track where we had settled for mediocre, disconnected user experiences that required a savior in the first place?

Perhaps it was the profit motive that made Microsoft separate hardware from software in order to allow more companies to create products on the Windows OS. This created a disjoined clunky user experience. Mac OS was more tightly coupled to the hardware, and the expectation for a Zen-like product essence drove Steve to form a seamless user experience. Motives have their own logic. We see it today with politics as well. Corporations, whose behaviors are driven by the profit motive, seem to run everything these days, from the Supreme Court who rules corporations are people in Citizens United, to the politicians who fast-track approve for environmentally detrimental dirty energy projects. The game of democracy has been changed for the worse by it’s own rules.

How you frame the game has everything to do with how we play it. The annual review process in a corporation is another example: the rules of the game dictates someone is going to lose. So the behavior dynamics kick in, and while everyone is playing by the rules, at the same time they are stretching them as necessary to ensure they are not the losers. The loser is the guy who let’s failures stick to him. The company values talk about collaboration and respect. It is all win-win, except for the last person on the stack, for whom it is no-win. If you’re last, by definition you don’t belong, so we tune you out! Otherwise, we continue to stroke each other’s career. This is the zany logic inherent in the corporate performance game.

It comes down to what we measure, because that drives the behavior. Campaign money making such a difference in success indicates we are valuing the wrong things. We are used to listening for sound bites to cue our political choices because we’re so busy consuming stuff and too lazy to get informed. We’re programmed to listen in the wrong way. We don’t know how to look for the right metrics in a politician’s behavior. Is this ignorance our fault or just a function of how the political game is setup? Should we blame ourselves or the game for the need for heroes? If a company had a different performance review game, would people behave less like they are on an episode of Survivor where collaboration is always short term, and each one is ultimately out to cut as many competitors out as necessary to win?

I’ve written a lot about shifting our worldview. Shifting our way of thinking won’t change anything if the underlying rules of the game work against that, however. Revolutions change the rules of the game. Revolutions are driven by pain points and ideas that promise to make those go away. Art and innovation can change our way of thinking, the questions we ask and how we frame solutions. Perhaps there is a slow way to change rules in the right direction without revolution? The fact that democracy has morphed in one direction would give us hope it can be morphed in the other.

In any case, the need for heroes is a symptom of a broken game. The more saviors we need, the more messed up our socio-political structures are, and the more likely we will need a revolution. What does this mean for our worldview shift? One thing is for sure: to impact the game, the world view must be practical. It has to have a pragmatic applicability dimension that applies to behavior. Otherwise our ideas won’t be a foundation for a new game. We can’t be looking to a hero from outer space – whether it’s Jesus coming back or the aliens who communicate through crop circles.

We’re an over-gamed society. Why do we need a game in the first place? Good games should optimize how fit we are to attain a certain benefit, a desirable outcome. They put us on the same plane, with the same rules, and give us vocabulary that all the players understand. They give us cohesion. They also produce losers. The interesting thing about losers, though, is that many of them could be winners in a different game. On the flip side, many of our winners are really quite disgusting soulless predators. It seems our games have failed both winners and losers.

Can we get many of these benefits without a win-lose game? We tend to think of economic growth as good for all. What we mean is that it’s good for the First World, primarily North Americans and Europeans. However, that growth pattern won’t scale – the planet won’t sustain five billion people living a First World lifestyle. In assessing the worthiness of the game, the question of the game’s horizon comes into play. Rules that work well for one scope break down as that scope is increases. We see that in cloud computing, where old assumptions about high availability servers are untenable at web-scale. Availability has to be pushed to the software so data centers can scale with commodity servers with higher failure rates. What works for enterprise IT does not work for the cloud. So what are the new rules that should apply?

Perhaps we can reverse engineer them: what rules foster scalable humane behavior? The issue really comes back to discovering the right behaviors. The game will fall out of that – if we even need a game. Let’s pivot that idea in our minds: you don’t start with a game and define the rules. You start with behaviors that work for everyone at scale, and drive the right rules and games out of that.

You don’t need a game to have all the benefits of games. Social cohesion can come from the culture, the common language fostered by shared stories and the camaraderie comes from collaboration in artistic endeavors. Thus to shift our world view we have to shift our focus to understanding scalable behaviors. Values, while absolutely important, are not strictly personal, or simply a matter of collective preference. They can be judged by the behaviors they foster.

Scalable behaviors with pliable games will save us from the tyranny of bad rules, and mitigate the need for heroes on that dimension. Scalable behaviors won’t save us from mediocrity, bad taste, crassness and perversity. We will still need heroes, but these will be more like the exemplary role models: the artists, engineers, doctors, teachers, craftsmen and others who elevate our humanity. They are idols of example, not revolutionary heroes.

To the extent Steve Jobs elevated our aesthetic sensitivity, he should be idolized. He also provided tools for us to think differently. Unless the pattern for Apple as a company can scale to all companies, he actually failed as a hero of fundamental transformation. He created another mega-corporation, which only validates the current game. There may have been a desire in him to change the game itself, and perhaps the beautiful tools were a first step. But it was not sufficient. The Apple aesthetic hinted at a new game, and loyalists pine for the real thing. Essential products as a tokens of another game. That’s the Apple mystique.

Re-writing the game will require us to think differently about the means, not just the ends. As long as we’re empire building in our product plans, we’ll only be validating the current game. That’s one reason there’s an open-source community and open organizations. Personally I would like mythic awareness to be an organic movement of voluntary participation, and not an IP holding company — which is why I publish these ideas freely. Yes have to make a living; but not an empire. We have to change the value network, as my friends at Sensorica like to point out. We need a new village-ethos in the West.

Scalable behaviors have to be our new religion. When the rules of the current game work against them, we have to change those rules at all cost; otherwise keeping the rules will cost us everything. So how do we change the rules? Can we start with understanding those behaviors and making a collective effort? Supposedly we’re still a democracy in America. It must be possible to change the rules if enough of us will it so. The test for democracy is not whether we can change our politicians and lawmakers. The test is whether we can change the rules.

— Roy Zuniga
Ballard, WA

Copyright 2012 roy zuniga – all rights reserved

Last year I prepared a talk for the New Livelihoods Job Fair in Fall City, WA. The gist of my talk was that as we shift what we value, we can also shift our economy. Art can play a key role in that. For example we have to shift from a mode where the individual or an institution is consuming content created by other individuals or institutions, to a mode where a community creates art in concert based on the agenda set by the community. I talked about the virtuous cycle of creating, embellishing and consuming art based on shared story, which I’ve described elsewhere and I won’t recap here. However, I did ask one question which has not been blogged, and which addresses the economic question.

The fact that interesting art can drive commerce is not a new concept. However, so many local arts attractions don’t have a greater purpose. There was talk in Duvall about having a piano drop because years ago that was a defining moment in local lore: a piano was dropped from a helicopter. The concrete Troll under the bridge, along with a rocket lodged in a building, a statue of Lenin and countless other weird stuff brings people to Freemont, WA, and that drives their commerce. Another example is the work of muralists in towns who paint very graphically interesting commercial subject matter. All of these can be interesting if not gimmicky; it is pop culture driving commerce. Can we drive commerce with something more meaningful?

The question then becomes about special content, and adoption of that content. While it’s not hard to get people to gawk at trolls or dropping pianos, driving adoption of a mythology with values requires shifting people’s minds. We have to both overcome the hold of the old mythology and gain adoption of the new. What drives adoption of a meaningful cultural phenomenon?

I had been thinking of the shared Christian story during the Renaissance in Florence, and how the economy around it worked because there was broad adoption. Church, artists, businesses and consumers all contributed to the great rebirth of culture. It was largely driven by the church and government institutions which we don’t necessarily want to recreate, right? So how do we achieve the same effect? Perhaps looking at the perspective of the consumers will help – what was it in their minds that drove them to participate? Regardless of where the message came from, what was the dynamic in the minds and souls of the faithful that made them adopt it? The answer is sacred content. The following two slides from that presentation address topic.

I adopt what I believe in, and if the content is sacred, then it is beyond question. Why do pilgrims line up to shrines of the Virgin, Buddha, dead (divine) kings or even Elvis? An authority has determined these are sacred and therefore worthy. Note that this authority is external to me as a faithful participant or consumer. The Authority establishes a values framework, a ruling hierarchy directs and stewards the sacred content, and a host of intermediaries that carry it out to the faithful consumers. We now have a strong distrust of authority, which has lost all legitimacy:

• We don’t believe in elections because they are controlled by two self-serving political parties that are in the back pocket of corporations.
• We’ve been betrayed by big banks that helped us get into loans we couldn’t afford. They’ve squandered our retirement savings and continue to lose money with risky investments.
• We’re fighting intractable and unwinnable wars for what? Oil? We don’t believe in just wars.
• The understaffed regulators who are supposed to be protecting our environment are asleep while big corporations permanently damage the environment by mining and drilling for non-renewable sources of energy.
• Farmers can’t even save seeds for next year because they have been genetically modified by Monsanto, and the authorities are protecting the patents.
• Politicians change their stories with the winds of election polling and don’t keep their promises.
• Priests are preying on the young boys they should be nurturing into godly men.
• The courts are passing rulings that allow foreign entities to fund candidates without limits.
• and on and on it goes . . .

All around us there’s a collapse of the legitimacy of authorities, with much cynicism from the population. There’s never been a greater need for sacred content that can be trusted and deemed legitimate. How to achieve it without authorities? This is where we have to pivot our minds. We have to replace the dynamics of creation of sacred content within the authority to something else. This slide suggests an alternative:

We can create a values framework using collaborative culture techniques like community mythology projects. Out of these come sacred content that is legitimate because we created it according to shared values and a collective conscience. We have to put in place processes and rituals to establish, enshrine and communicate it.

That sacred content, together with excellence in art, can have an impact beyond commerce. Many communities have institutions dictating sacred content that don’t achieve an economy of culture. There no substitute for high quality production: excellence has its own logic (more on that later). When paired with sacred content, adoption is all but guaranteed.

— Roy Zuniga
Carillon Point, WA

copyright 2012 roy zuniga – all rights reserved

In the face of a somewhat dysfunctional civilization, the biggest challenge facing us individually and collectively is figuring out how to think differently. The good news is that we know that the way we currently think is screwed up. We also know that people can change the way they think. Here we’ll explore a practice that leverages art (of course): learning to do a mental pivot.

As we express ourselves in art we are making decisions and manifesting our personalities, our emotions and our skill level. Art is inherently expressive and subjective. When we do art, we are not thinking ‘this is Truth’, as a theologian would when writing or interpreting the inspired word of God. There is no such pretention. When we look at what we’ve made, we expect it to tell us about our individual state of mind. The subject matter may tell us we like fantasy, or we take things very literally. The line quality can be clear – which speaks of precision – or fuzzy and poetic. The colors tell us if we’re subdued or loud, whether we like harmony or clashes. The choice of medium says something about our personality – do we want to be done quickly with water colors or do we have the patience for oils? Art gives us a picture of our state of mind in the most powerful way. It’s hard to get as much out of an essay, although poetry can tell us a lot.

Looking at my own art work recently, for example, I’m seeing muted colors and bad drawing. It takes an act of the will to pump up the chroma and get the perspective and proportions correct. Some of that is just refreshing skills – I know how to draw; I’m just a bit out of practice. Other aspects require digging a little deeper into an artistic vision – the colors are muted because I want subtle color harmonies, or because I’m not mixing them well? If the colors are muddy, applying good mixing practices will clear that up. Muted color harmonies may be my intention. Or I might be interested in a stronger impact, in which case I can invoke my artistic license to amp up colors more intensely than they appear in nature.

Both solid skills and artistic license are standard practices for artists. They help us gain control of our works and make them say what we intend – to manifest our world view. While this is valuable in and of itself, what if we need to shift that world view?  Let me give you an example: as an artist I believe in the moment, and I express what I see – the boats in the harbor, the country roads, the flowers, the humor in a person as I paint their smiling eyes in a portrait. I’m using my skill and will as an artist to create great paintings. In my world view representing the moment, that completing a painting, expressing myself in color are good things to do. Someone else’s world view might lead them to create angry abstract art, or just combine objects in jarring ways. A socialist artist may want to create murals to educate an ignorant population about the evils of capitalism.

In each of these examples, the artist is living their world view. If you asked me to create angry abstract art, I would say I don’t do that anymore – I don’t see the world that way; I’m not an angry young man. If you encouraged me to paint ideological murals, I would not be interested. That’s just not my vision, not my world view. Should it be? I can see alternates, and yet not agree. That’s nothing unusual. We all do that. We also can come to realization that how we think is somehow messed up. For example, creating art for individual consumption will never fundamentally change the world, although a changing world may change the content of such art. Instead of painting boats in a placid harbor, we may end up painting boats on top of buildings after another natural disaster.

We’re also accustomed to going to galleries and art shows and having our world view rattled by other artists. Good artists will do that. However, often there’s not much of a point beyond the rattling itself. When was the last time shock art left you with a better alternative? What I’d like to learn to do is use art to shift my view of the world, and that is not something that is very common. I want to rattle myself – and you – into a better state. This may feel a bit like what a chiropractor does – applies measured violence to leave you sorely well adjusted!

The exercise I have in mind I haven’t quite conceived of yet. Maybe we’ll discover it together. It has to do first and foremost with becoming aware of why we make certain artistic decisions, like the format of the art work, to the medium chosen, the subject matter, expressive language, and so on. We have to get to the underlying drivers for those decisions, our assumptions about the world and our role in it. We have to pinpoint the values that are good, and those that are not so good. Once we find something to change, we have to get an objective look at it, ‘pick it up with tweezers’ so to speak and put it in a jar for observation. We have to look at objectively to consider the alternative ‘healthy’ counterpoint. We have to train our minds to pivot.

Even if we don’t yet know what to pivot to – learning how to pivot has value in and of itself. I do this my my abstractscape paintings. I’ll be representing a tree and also allude to a cloud. Actually artists do a subtle form of this all the time. We find rhythms in forms, patterns that repeat and echo in things that are. Pivoting is taking this to the next level and jamming something that is into something that it is not. The negative spaces between branches in a tree become the animated extremities of an unseen spirit.  The rounded facets on a peach become the stage for tension between colors that set each other off. The regular intervals of palm trees on a coastal boulevard allude to the bars in cage that keeps tourists locked in. These are mental pivots, albeit not very transformative. They are useful exercises that get us mentally in shape to pivot to new values in a new view of the world. So next time you are painting, let your subconscious nudge you into pivoting into another world. Learn to think otherwise. Until we all do, we won’t have a successful transition.  

— Roy Zuniga
Carillon Point, WA

Copyright 2012 Roy Zuniga – All Rights Reserved  

Before we look to future exercises in mythic awareness, let’s look back at what was done last year in the Duvall Community Mythology Project (see Duvallcmp.net). The purpose of a CMP is to take organize the myth making process into a six month effort. I don’t know of anyone who’s tried this before. As I mentioned in a previous post, we ran into issues, which I won’t recount here. We did actually accomplish a few things, from which we can learn:

–          The concept resonated – there are segments of society that agree we need to change our myths and who are eager to participate, or at least explore. The Duvall CMP has about a dozen active participants at one point. The Facebook page has about a hundred ‘likes’. While not a lot, it does validate the concept.

–          Mythic awareness exercises helped people become aware of how myths are working in our lives. We dissected the story arch from a couple of movies (The Wizard of Oz and Avatar), identified themes and values and rated them.

–          The shared framework exercise led to the creation of themes to guide the next stages of custom myth making.

–          We selected a theme, called Primal Satisfactions, as the basis for the first shared story, and drilled into more detail on the conflicts, morals and values that we wanted to foster.

–          People got creative and wrote stories.

–          The endeavor also helped me flush out more concepts, such as the notion of ‘sacred content’ which I will elaborate more in a future post.

–          The project brought people together in person for creative fellowship around a shared purpose.

So even if we didn’t actually get to the point of creating a new myth and embellishing it with art, we did make a great start. I felt that people understood, at least intuitively, what we were after.

— Roy Zuniga
Kirkland, WA 

Last year I attempted to run a Community Mythology Project (CMP) in Duvall, WA. The premise was recognizing that myth making is fundamentally a human driven process – that seems obvious right? If it is, we can take control of the process. The Duvall CMP fizzled. Why?

I have a few possible explanations, and a theory for what to try next.

• The community was not interested in thinking too deeply about culture
• Other priorities conflicted
• People didn’t understand it
• Artists were more interested in their personal art that in creating art as a group
• I did a lousy job
• etc., etc.

I’m sure all of these, and more, played a role. On factor, however, that I’m fairly certain had a strong role in keeping people away is quite simple: people aren’t used to creating myths for their own consumption. We believe myths come from an authority. Actually, we don’t even think about them as myths. They are our religion, our national ethos, our consumer rights, the media addiction and so on. We also don’t think of ourselves as choosing a myth. Because we need it to be authoritative, we would rather believe it found us. When the time was right, God revealed it to us, we think.

The fact is we had choice. We may have abdicated the decision by accepting what our parents, or neighbors or pastor said. Abdication is still a choice. So we deceive ourselves on many levels. We think our faith is not a myth, we believe we didn’t choose it, and so on. So the biggest paradigm shift is to simply accept this fact: we pick our myths. The next level beyond that is to say we create our myths; but that might be too much for most.

So let’s start with picking our shared story. Where do we go shopping? Is there a local outlet? A myth boutique? Perhaps Amazon has a myth department?

Catering to that consumer mindset might not be a bad first step. If it is too hard for people to make up their own myths, perhaps they can just order one up? How would that work?

1. First of all, we need to define the dimensions of their choice.
2. Second, we need myth-creatives, the guys and gals who can bring one to life.
3. Third, we need a group purchase order – shared story is by definition adopted by a community.

• I was going to add shared locale as a constraint, meaning that people should be close to each other. With the internet and social media, however, that doesn’t seem to be a defining characteristic, even though people will meet up sooner or later.

That’s enough to start with. So let me recap: the first baby step in making community mythology more acceptable is to introduce the myth boutique. Think of it as an agency, a proxy authority that prepares myth for consumption. This introduces a layer of indirection that may be enough for us to make the leap. Someday we may mature to participating, and indeed the boutique system will allow creative to participate, and won’t stop them from consuming their own product. How exactly this work? Let me narrate a little scenario. Let me know how it resonates.

John is 21 and fed up with his parents trying to ram their religion down his throat. It seems archaic to him, and just doesn’t resonate. However, they take it extremely personal and he hates to disillusion them. ‘Why can’t they be more rational?’ he wonders. As much as he loves them, he wishes the topic wouldn’t always come up, and he feels it gets in the way of a truly reciprocal relationship. Why can’t things be more direct and simple? He is also tweaked a bit by the questions of origin and purpose. Where did we come from? Where are we going? What should we strive for in life? Is there a redemptive purpose, or is living for experience all there is? Should he just enjoy his youth, or should he sacrifice his own pleasures for the sake a God or country?

Vexed, he decides to Bing on the Internet to see what other options are out there. He knows about other religions – Buddhism, Judaism, Mormonism, etc. However, these seem just as archaic and outdated as the stolid belief system of his parents. New Age stuff seems a bit out there, with irrational believers who use pop science to justify all kinds of stories. The worst part is they actually believe in galactic alignments dictating Earth history, astrology and messages from aliens in crop circles. That’s too far out for him. He’s a rational man.

He thinks he might as well make one up! For grins, he types ‘how to create a mythology’ into the Search input and hits enter. Many results come up, including references to books about mythology, personal myth counselors, psychologists and, to his surprise, a link to a myth creation wizard. What strikes him about the description is that it is both rational and creative. The language resonates with him – it assumes that the myth making process is human process, which is what he has always known in his heart.

Elated, he goes to the site, which explains a number of things, including the background, assumptions and choices. As a consumer, he really likes the idea of imputing some parameters and getting a relevant mythology as an output. The best part about it is that the mythology comes with a community of like-minded people. ‘Genial!’ he exclaims, catching himself. He’s alone in his room. But the walls just ‘fell off’. Suddenly he feels like the universe just opened up, and the moon and stars are within his grasp.

Eager to get started, he begins with the profile. A guided set of questions help him identify with a worldview tendency. It makes him think about his assumptions, and then his values. In the end, he gets a summary, which he doesn’t like, not because it’s inaccurate, but because it shows a side of him he’s not too content with. He’s delighted he can see what other options there are, and then aligns with a set of values he wants to have.

After completing the Value Profile, he goes into an aesthetic profile – he selects movies and music he likes, picks from various images and statements until the system presents him another summary, this time of his aesthetic direction. He validates that as well, also tweaking it towards the direction he would like to go. He does have a conscience after all, and if he’s going to have a hand in creating his own belief system, he applies high standards.

After a few more quick profiling questions, including social preferences (he’s more of an introvert that thrives with small groups), he’s finally done. The whole process took about an hour of concentrated effort, and he feels like the system has a good handle on what he wants. All that is needed is the myth and corresponding community. This is where his expectations get realigned – not so fast!

It turns out he’s part of a longer running process, and while there are others who are potential cohorts in his myth community, it turns out the myth has not been created yet. This is actually not a bad thing, since he now has the chance to influence its development. He’s strongly encouraged to participate in the validation process, which is systematic and straight forward. He is also asked to pick a sponsorship level. Creating myths costs money, of course. There are creative people, editors and publishers to pay. Since this is more exciting than church, he signs up as a Sponsor and pays his dues.

Once there is critical mass for the myth creation to start (there are enough participants and sponsors), the myth requirements and timeline are published. John monitors progress as writers and artists respond to the call. They get their creative brief which includes the values and aesthetic direction, and they start work. Over a three month process, they go through brainstorming sessions, establish a myth framework (which has been put to a vote to the sponsors), go through a creative process to write the story arch, characters and embellish them artistically. This involves poets, playrights, dancers, photographers, painters and many more who mostly volunteer their time out of passion for the process. They get some compensation, and sponsors have the option of rewarding stellar output.

Once the myth reaches a critical mass, the community site is launched and everyone receives a brief in email so they can study up on the story. A big kickoff event brings everyone together. Participants meet in person and online, including the artists, to participate in a rich presentation that includes poetry, performance and art exhibitions. The goal is complete immersion. This is not unlike a Star Trek or Star Wars convention, except in this case, the consumers were directing the content, and the individual artists were free to express themselves as they saw fit, based on the creative brief. There is some creative direction, but it is not coercive; the artists are encouraged to express themselves in their own artistic voice. This brings out a plethora of interpretations around a shared story, which is a crucial practice in community-driven mythology. It teaches people to think for themselves, fosters tolerance and a richer artistic experience for all.

John is delighted with his new found ‘religion.’ It pre-occupies his mind in a good way, he has community, feels a sense of purpose and collaboration. After a while he is willingly consumed by the new ‘cult’. In the back of his mind he knows it’s partly his own concoction. He relaxes about that and plays along because his imagination has been ignited with creative meaning. His soul is in play with creative imagination, and it satisfies the non-rational side, which he now recognizes. Because he knows he had a level of control in its inception, he believes in it in a healthy way. He’s not deceiving himself into thinking it was handed down by God. The community validation and the fact that it agrees with his own conscience makes it even more cogent than the ‘revealed’ religions in his mind. He uses the shared story and rich artistic artifacts surrounding it to deeply internalize the values and lessons, and this guides his behavior. Finally, he thinks, he has a ‘religion’ he can believe in, and live out its values in his daily life.

Is this the scenario we have to build to get Community Mythology to take off? Let me know your thoughts. Also, contact me if you’d like to help implement this story!

— Roy Zuniga
Ballard, WA

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Copyright Roy Zuniga 2012 – all rights reserved

‘Another normal’ – this simple phrase captures what I’m after through abstractscapes. These paintings are inspired by nature; realizing them draws upon experience painting in the open air, aka ‘en Plein Air’ in French. My painting style was developed doing ‘traditional’ impressionistic works on a portable easel outdoors. Their abstract metaphysical bent comes from me ruminating about the need for a world view shift. Our civilization needs fundamental change because consumerist culture is leading to an unhappy population and a depleted planet. Shifting a ‘normal’ impressionistic landscape into the realm of abstraction within a canvass is analogous to the paradigm shift we need even as we go about our daily lives. How do we reprogram ourselves into living new values? How do we think ‘otherwise’? Start by shifting your paradigm – it is possible!

The process is teaching me a lot about how the mind works – or maybe it’s just my twisted brain. Writing about this process will – to the extent that my journey is analogous to yours – help us discover how to shift our own thinking. I mean not just what we think, but how we think about belief. Ultimately, a new worldview requires a new mythology, which is not typically something we invent for ourselves. We’d rather have an authority tell us. So any exercise in self mind shifting is useful. I encourage you to try it.

The dance the artist does with his canvass is between action and observation. You paint and then step back. For it to ‘make sense’ (to the artist in the first place, art consumer later), there has to be an explanation for what you put on there. As I created I found that forms that just appeared on the canvass could not be accepted without explanation.  ‘They were put there for a reason’, thinks the private critic. During the creative process the art conscience is driving and you’re just creating as an artist (when you learn to let go and quit worrying about being analytical). You step back to be an observer, and what you just created strikes you. It needs an explanation.

For example, looking at the shapes in the sky, it turns out that what were strokes carried over from painting lilies looked like a little creature in the orange cloud/tree on the left. I know where the shape came from, but why were the strokes combined as a pair? Evidently my mind has an affinity for two shapes in proximity. Even abstractions need their own rules, or at least a vocabulary. We need a mental model. What can we map them to? What is the metaphor? The gremlin angel in a morphing tree.

This is all very subjective, and involves a shift in the mid of the artist. For example, as you approach the landscape, you create an idealized composite. When I introduced the color abstractions in the clouds, I found some shapes were acceptable, while others weren’t. One of the reasons, it seems is that even though the colors were not natural, the ‘behavior’ of the forms were cloud-like and could be mapped mentally to cloud phenomena. At this point I realized I was dealing with forms that seemed meaningful because of their allusion, not their representation.

‘Symbols’ is too strong a word. As the shapes wanted to resolve themselves into objects or transitions between objects, I was reminded of our compulsive need for explanation. I rationalized art theory. Instead of giving the names, thinking of them as allusive preserves ambiguity of interpretation and therefore the right of the viewer to participate in the interpretation. Those two dots in a head shape are an unknowable ghost peering at us, perhaps?

Cloudscapes are powerful in that we are used to seeing all kinds of strange formations and contrasts in the sky. We are very forgiving with clouds and often see shapes. You can create a grounded landscape and a very dreamy cloudscape with surreal colors and it delights the viewer, as in the example below which has generally resonated very well.

It’s a tension between the existing and the disruption. Un-conventional shapes need a meaning before they can be accepted and the assessment of the work’s integrity can continue. How was the success of the first cubist painting assessed if the language did not previously exist? Did Picasso and Braque have a rational model ahead of time that allowed them to even talk about the success of the works? Or did they intuitively know it before there was rationalized. Did philosophy or brush break space into cubes? Or did a hunch spawn both?

In the case of the hard lines in the clouds, we can easily interpret them as a type of ‘silver lining’, and so they are arbitrary or out of place. Something’s going on, no matter how beautiful or strange, there’s an explanation. We need it. We create little stories – and abstractions draw us into the work inviting us to create them. Personally satisfying as that can be – and I don’t want to minimize positive aesthetic experience – they are still highly personal moments. We live them and move on to catch another vignette, a reflection or sunset, to add to the satisfaction of the day. Healthy as a home cooked meal or the sunshine on newly blossomed rhodies.

With our emphasis on the epic shared stories, we’re tempted to denigrate private aesthetic moments. That would be a mistake. Think about it: how often do you get to introduce a new vocabulary and have it become part of ordinary life, like smelling the flowers, enjoying supper and watching the sunset? Isn’t culture about a shared vocabulary that is normal? New art pushes the edge of normalcy, like traditional clouds morphing into abstractions. If you can live at peace with it, perhaps others will too. That’s why it’s so important to get past the semantic hurdle with disruptive elements in art – if they are taking us in the right direction. When the disruptive becomes normal, you have shifted a worldview a notch.

The language of normalcy is programmed into our brains. After a while, we just think in the language. I have a hunch this maps to how we assimilate the semantics of value decisions, and hence can be an entry point into shifting worldviews. Not that these abstractscapes themselves represent an ideal future state – they are more an omen of disruption. However, moving the mind from the status quo (analogous to traditional impressionism) and into the conversation about change (the abstractscape) is a useful step. They soften our minds for change as we relax semantic clutches and let them be. We intuitively know it is coming . . . the question is who defines ‘it’.

— Roy Zuniga
Ballard, WA

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copyright 2012 Roy Zuniga – all rights reserved

The American dream is fundamentally about growth, about hard work paying off in expansion of personal and aggregate affluence, i.e. more and newer stuff that makes us look and feel good. Growth is fueled by demand and sustained through cash liquidity, often as debt to banks. Debt continues to crush countries like Greece, and its burden threatens to undo the American dream. Growth is driving a rush for more cheap dirty energy, like hydraulic fracking and tar sands oil. Growth, which is the direct result of consumerism, sacrifices the difficult-to-restore ecosystem in the interest of short term gain. It only takes a few days of bull dozing ‘useless’ dirt while mining for gold to destroy an ecosystem that took centuries to build. Permaculture enthusiasts seek to raise awareness and bring health to our planet, which is already a certain percentage dead.

Reversing the symptoms and manifestations of the consumer illness is important. It doesn’t, however, undo the root cause. What drives the destructive behaviors are deeply ingrained worldview assumptions about our entitlements as communities, and what we value as individuals (or what we believe gives us value). For some, gold or diamonds are a differentiator and it imputes value to them, so they pay a high price for it. If no one valued gold or diamonds, they would be cheap. If no one liked football, we wouldn’t have a billion dollar industry. If we valued old cars over new, the yearly release cycle might not be there. What drives all this consumerism is obviously what we covet, which is driven by our values. As long as we compare each other, there will always be a need for differentiation between us. One tactic is to shift the dimensions of comparison so that so we can covet what’s good for us.

If our values are not compatible with sustaining our habitat and indeed our race, can we change them? If so, how do we change them and what values should we have? The short answer is yes, there are value systems that are synergistic with a healthy environment and personal satisfaction, and we can discover and adopt them. At some point we can compare them. To start, however, I’m more interested in the dynamics: how does the mythical mind work? And how do we become proactive in creating myths.

I will argue that we re-program ourselves by shifting our worldview, using the dynamics of myth. (Note the ‘Dynamics of Myth’ is the title of a book I wrote with early thinking on the topic and published on Amazon Kindle). We shift our worldview by changing the myths we buy into – this is fundamentally a cultural endeavor with the value-import of religion. That means art with a shared purpose.

We have to first discover what we should believe – exercises in mythic awareness can help here. Once we know where we want to go, it comes down to the mechanism of our reprograming, which I argue is actually art created locally around a shared story. This is not unlike the dynamics of the Renaissance, where locally minted doctrine changed the shared story, and local art infused the lessons and values into the psyche of the faithful.

However, recreating a hierarchical religious order patterned after a Renaissance religion is not what I have in mind. A mechanism to dictate myth ex-cathedra would be handy, I must admit, since getting people to adopt an ‘objective theology’ is much easier than getting them to immerse themselves in a subjective mythology of their own invention (even though we do it all the time, whether by believing in Santa or by suspending reality during a super hero movie). Somehow acknowledging a belief system came from a prophet makes it easier to suspend disbelief.

So, you might ask, saving the planet has everything to do with getting people to make up stories, enchanting them into believing the tales long enough to create rich art, and use that program new default behaviors of the next generation? Simply put, yes.

Simple is rarely easy.

This blog will explore themes around these assumptions, weaving purposive art into culture and exploring what is worthy to value an economy. It’s an ambitious endeavor that cannot, by definition, be completed by an individual. I therefore will consider it a success if you also engage with me constructively on these topics.

— Roy Zuniga
Ballard, WA

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copyright 2012 Roy Zuniga – All Rights Reserved