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About the individual and the social Cyberspace has been for some time a place where the notion of actual physical boundaries and-or any other elements of objective, material reality is often ignored, to the point of disrespect or even contempt. Indeed, this is touted as one of the major attractions of the freedom of virtual reality: a place where the individual can be or do anything.
In this respect cyberspace is supposed to represent some kind of liberation from the constraints that society apparently imposes on the individual. Yet in the surrounding social reality far beyond cyberspace and just as passionately in the name of this vaunted "freedom", we see something else.Much that would normally serve to hitch context to anything objectively observable and recordable by the usual five senses (sight, hearing, taste, touch, smell) is increasingly put aside or dismissed as "uncool" - apparently a fatal condition to be avoided at all costs.
To strip away context in this manner, on this basis, in the name of an invented, asserted, idealized freedom is to maim the truth. It is often just another way of attaching some sort of validation and credibility to that which can never be valid or credible, like pre-emptive war on Iraq or genocide against the Palestinians. It is in fact another form of arbitrary and anti-social diktat masked as freedom from constraints on the individual.
Meanwhile, 1001 events from daily life repeatedly conspire to demonstrate that the recognition of necessity is the beginning of freedom. Things exist objectively in the world, and not merely as our thought or reflection. As individuals, we each possess and use our five senses to navigate daily life within this material reality from its beginning to its end. The individual, however, always expresses to either a greater or lesser degree the social, while the social is not conceivable without the participation of the individual. The social cannot be reduced to some arithmetic multiplicity of individuals, as in the deadly liberal formula of "the greatest good for the greatest number."
Not only is this not new. It was apparently being elaborated as early as 431 BCE, according to Thucydides' description of Pericles' funeral oration at the start of the Peloponnesian War: "We do not say that a man who takes no interest in politics is a man who minds his own business", Pericles declaims. "We say he has no business here at all" (in the general assembly of the Athenian democracy).
However, can that which is truly creative ultimately be located in the chaotic and fragmentary experience of this or that individual? In our view, either it truly lifts, elevates, enlightens the collective, or the collective need pay it no further attention. Humanity is defined by its collective effort. Certain individual contributions stand out when they open new and important pathways for that effort. No individual contribution is worth more or less to the collective: all have their value.
About noidrocca
We call this site "noidrocca". That is the word "accordion", spelled backwards. The accordion is widely popular across scores of cultures, but listen as the tape of an accordion performance is being rewound. It will sound like something that belongs to no known culture anywhere on this planet. Indeed, it will sound quite "other-worldly".
This becomes metaphor for re-investigating the apparently well-known and the allegedly already understood for what may be unique or unexpected still lurking within. And that is what we propose to publish at this site: work that is (or proposes) something unique and-or unexpected, but always in the service of, or coming from, the collective.
Links
Near the foot of this screen (in the blue box on the right) are links to
1. a recent article that updates certain themes from the Dossier on Palestine regarding the Palestinian right of return and the latest peace process charade known as the "road map", and
2. the text of a talk delivered at the Halifax Symposium on Palestine (March 15, 2003) exploring the falsification of "Jewish national identity" by the Zionist movement and its sympathisers - and the attendant consequences for the conflict in Palestine.
We welcome feedback and thoughtful argument. For more about noidrocca's recent preoccupations, go to ...
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