Saturday, February 17, 2007

Mindfarting Blog Sites

Mind Farting blogs (like this one) are primarily about creating strange links between ideas with an occasinal weblink to real information sources. I think that there is some value in this process. Linking ideas together is the way that we learn.

The greater portion of mind fart links really are nothing more than white space, and many are squarely off base. For example, Natalie Collins was thinking about the new Mountain Meadows Massacre movie when the Trolley Square shooting hit the news. She links the two in a post. This post really failed for me.

I suspect that Natalie was also responding to all of the people who were trying to find a faith promoting angle to the senseless killings at Trolley Square.

I have no thoughts on the killing spree, other than thankfulness for the office duty officer who brought the event to a quick end.

While the act was senseless. I think there is merit in examining the way that we react to such events.

Violence throws all sorts of raw emotions into the air and we start linking to them and feel an overwhelming desire to act.

We shouldn't stop feeling emotions, but we need to be wary of letting violence drag us into action.

For those unfamiliar with revolutionary theory, a praxis is the realization of theory into practice: Standing in a mall and killing people is a revolutionary praxis, Burning the American flag is a praxis, Throwing an impeachment party is a praxis. These are all activities that pull out emotions and have the effect of putting revolutionary theory into practice.

The goal of a revolutionary praxis is to throw society into a state of mindless action/reaction. During the process of action/reaction, the revolutionary party is to rise to the fore.

The theory works remarkably well. Both the radical left and the reactionary right have used the theory to gain power.

When an event like the Trolley Square Shootings occur, we need to keep from responding in ways that the revolutionary theorists desire.

Our minds immediately try linking the event to the things going on in our own personal lives, or political activities. All of the links we build in this emotional state are suspect.

I am neither distraught about people who try to find something faith promoting in the killings, nor am I distraught by those trying to find something faith demoting in the killings. This is the way that we humans work by nature.

However, since these links are suspect, we need to train ourselves to avoid falling into the action/reaction mode.

As people write out their thoughts and examine the links that they made in the aftermath of the event, I hope they take the time to go back, re-examine their thoughts to make sure they are not just falling into the mode of reaction, as the killer had desired.


Speaking of Trolly Square, I've gotten a ton of hits on the pictures I took of the Trolley Square Trax station pictures I took some months ago. The gallery includes only a couple of outside shots of the mall. I thought about driving to Trolley Square to take more pictures. I am just not into capitalizing on suffering.

Trolley Square is a happy place filled with ecletic art shops in a fun upper end environment. Our jobs as living people is to keeping the haters of the world from taking these things away.

3 comments:

Charles D said...

I don't really disagree with your point about avoiding falling into the action/reaction mode. Of course, as a frequent traveler, I am reminded of the mindless action/reaction of banning gels and liquids aboard airplanes because some group in the
UK talked about trying to use them to build a bomb. That's a praxis too.

It seems to me, however, that the blog entry on "Trapped by the Mormons" that you linked to has much less to do with revolutionary praxis than with one person's distaste for the Mormon religion.

y-intercept said...

I linked to Natalie's page because I agree with a good amount of what she says, and disagree with other parts.

As for the fact that parts of my post really don't relate to other parts ... This is the whole point of the post. Our minds are always making connections between this, that and the next thing. The majority of links are tenuous.

I suspect that when Natalie first heard about the shootings it was in the context of the superiority of the Mormon culture. Her mind jumped to the best known atrocity of the Mormon culture.

Other than the fact that both events were manifestations of the ideas held by the perpetrator of the events, there is no real link between the two things.

On hearing of the shooting, my mind links to the piles and piles of revolutionary literature I read as a youth.

As you have probably guessed, I really seriously and truly dislike Marxism and revolutionary. After both 9/11 and the Trolley Square shootings, my mind falls into a mode of trying to keep the praxis from having the desired effect of ruling our lives. I find myself wanting to break all links we make with the events.

The whole point of a mind fart style blog is to test links between ideas. Yeah, most of the links we make in our minds are loose. I am not too worried about that since the point of this blog is about loose connections.

Scott Hinrichs said...

"Our jobs as living people is to keeping the haters of the world from taking these things away."

Powerful words. And a big, but worthwhile job.