indie thought: April 2010 Archives

I have to post this now because it underlines a situation that comes up in everything I do. 

I'm talking about collaboration and situations where by you help someone simply because you find it interesting or natural. People then feel inclined to help you back - but you are not motivated by the hope of reciprocation and have no guarantee of it, nor any idea of comparative values of the actions. 

I find this kind of social behavior to be normal. 

On the other hand, modern society is dominated by an ideology of competition. Like the idea of game theory.These ideas stem from a concept that social life revolves around competition with payoffs.

This idea is so dissonant with actual behavior that people who live by it seem like automatons driven by aliens. The best example of this are networkers.

The difference between the theory and the practice is that in the real world society has a structure, a hierarchy which is imposed by people who value power. Networkers try to base their social interactions on climbing the ladder of society, seeing it as beneficial. They quickly become immersed in it and are unable to see how it eventually consumes all their interactions. 

Indie is a shortened version of independent and in this case is used to refer to the arts. 

The arts are various modes of expressing the human endowments of freewill, self-awareness and creativity. They are extensions of our state of being.

They include thought, written and spoken words, music, painting and pictures, community and play. 

It is meaningless to talk of choosing to realize these independently as we always realize them independently, it's our natural state. The problem is with action that impedes this. Action that sometimes works even at a subconscious level. 

Indie (or Indy) is currently used in the world of arts to describe differing things. Indie music can be talking about a genre or sound. Plenty of indie bands work on major labels. Indy movies are made by huge studios that are called Indy simply because they work outside of certain established systems.

Most other sites on this subject go that way. They start with a D.I.Y ethic and then you build up to be able to break through into the mainstream, on your own terms, or to make the money by yourself. The goal seems the same.

At this blog we are interested only in the notion that we have an idea or an impulse and then we want to bring it in to being and see it externalized in some form. This may require some form of help or collaboration but there will be no controlling factor on your idea except yourself. You will be independent.