DIY Ethic: The Cultural Renaissance of the Information Age

[amor_fati]

I'm curious to know what your thoughts are on Do-It-Yourself ethics.

We live in a curious age, consumer exploitation is rapidly becoming the only path to fortune. The rift between innovation/creativity and capital gains is rapidly widening. This was once and perhaps still is thought to spell doom for culture, but instead, we are seeing higher culture transcending the bounds of commodity while the consumer market has become violently ill. At the heart of this is an advancing rate of information exchange, supplemented by a relatively extraordinary amount of leisure-time. A growing number of our most creative minds are as such at their own leisure, since there is no money to be made in some of the most worthwhile disciplines. Our best software is free, our best musicians are unsigned, perhaps even our best art is right under our noses. Many tasks in these area's that once required skilled technicians or engineers can be accomplished by anyone in the home, and information once held by the elite among scholars and researchers is now accessible almost at will.

I find it interesting how strongly psychedelic culture has now bound itself to this ethic. Psychonauts are perhaps the DIY ethic applied to mysticism, religion and psychology; not to mention biochemistry!

 

[gigaschatten]

We live in a curious age, consumer exploitation is rapidly becoming the only path to fortune. The rift between innovation/creativity and capital gains is rapidly widening. This was once and perhaps still is thought to spell doom for culture, but instead, we are seeing higher culture transcending the bounds of commodity while the consumer market has become violently ill. At the heart of this is an advancing rate of information exchange, supplemented by a relatively extraordinary amount of leisure-time. A growing number of our most creative minds are as such at their own leisure, since there is no money to be made in some of the most worthwhile disciplines. Our best software is free, our best musicians are unsigned, perhaps even our best art is right under our noses. Many tasks in these area's that once required skilled technicians or engineers can be accomplished by anyone in the home, and information once held by the elite among scholars and researchers is now accessible almost at will.

You know, that actually sounds like an opinion, an individual perception, which again shows how mind controls matter that is meaningless and lacks causality anyway. One can agree on your view or not. Doesn't change the matter in most cases but everything that's important about it.

My opinion is that nothing really has changed. Human culture has a long history of exploitation. Most of us could be easily compared to roman slaves, which had a lot of liberties but weren't free after all. That is still valid. Only the means of control may have changed a little, that's all. On another day I might think different about it. Our view of the world can change rapidly. There have always been unrecognized artists that lived in poverty and became famous after their death. Van Gogh, Picasso, Mozart... extend the list as you please.

I find it interesting how strongly psychedelic culture has now bound itself to this ethic. Psychonauts are perhaps the DIY ethic applied to mysticism, religion and psychology; not to mention biochemistry!

What ethics do you refer to?

The use of "psychedelic" substances is probably as old as humanity itself and I consider it a tool, one among various methods to access insight. Some can disable what is in the way of understanding: Rationality, ego, matter... that's just distraction. You go beyond it and you realize how all things held high lose meaning and you see light where there were dark spots in your perception before.

Just my 2 cents.

 

[burnt]

I'm curious to know what your thoughts are on Do-It-Yourself ethics.

im not totally sure what you mean by do it yourself ethics, but if you mean determining what you think is right and wrong in this age of high technology and information i have some opinions. people think religion or their government is what gives them ethics and for some people it is true (and pretty sad if thats the case). but over that is societal ethics we do things we help each other we care for one other because it works society works we all get food when we work together. its evolutionary to work together not just fight and kill all the time. we don't need religion or governments to know this. free access to information is teaching many people this fact and that i find important and liberating.

 

[amor_fati]

I suppose I was a little presumptive, but this is well known in most of the circles I involve myself in.

DIY

DIY Ethic

DIY Culture

Think along the lines of something like "Fight Club." I suppose that was probably my earliest exposure to the concept.

 

[Infundibulum]

Hahahaha, where I reside people cook less and less and less, in most of the occasions its either take-away food or pre-cooked from supermarkets.

I wouldn't be surprised if we start finding cooking and food materials in DIY stores along with other beloved products!

But this silly-not-so-silly food example highlights how our culture is structured and working. Paying other people to do things for you works on the premises that 1) you cannot do everything yourself and 2) it is very often easier, more effective and in the end of the day more economical to buy your stuff than go DIY.

And unfortunately it is easily seen that by the standard way you lose some of the sweetness of end product. My bookshelves do not really tells me much and I would guess they look similar to amor_fati's bookshelves.

This society is becoming more and more complex, which means that DIY's place is mostly for hobbyists
(compare with other societies e.g. Bushmen where everyone can more-or-less do everything and each one of them can be considered self-sufficient).

DIY ethic is romantic though, I personally tend to lean towards it!

 

[amor_fati]

I'm not so sure that self-sufficiency is necessarily the the end but the means.

Most accepted means of producing a coherent audio and/or visual piece of electronically mediated artwork are expensive and time-consuming, but in DIY culture, the preferred manner of production is by alternative, cheap, efficient, and often low-tech methods. Information about these methods and the equipment utilized therein has been made extraordinarily available in recent years. The resulting aesthetic of works produced in this manner takes on a highly expressive quality, inalienable to the artist's unique disposition; this is commonly referred to as outsider art.

Certainly this isn't merely an ideal with moralistic imperative, but a last bastion for non-commodified self-expression and creativity. It is the consideration that salability is no grounds for determining the success or value of an artist.

Consider also that DIY-ethic can occur in a communal setting or even in global collaboration, so that it is in no way simply synonymous with self-sufficiency. It tends to occur in a simultaneously autonomous and egalitarian context. This can easily be likened to everything from guerrilla warfare to clandestine drug manufacturing to personal spirituality to pirate radio to train-hopping.

Cooking is definitely an excellent example, Ronue. For some it can be more efficient to eat out, but in the grand scheme so much potential is lost. Home-cooking is an art-form in that it is difficult to find a balance between finance, nutrition, and satisfaction, but with the availability of info and the vast selection of food products available, it has become far more feasible for far more people.

I will say that I fully agree that DIY is best suited for only a handful of individuals and will likely remain an ethic held by a particular class of hobbyists and the like, but it is also likely that this class will expand, sustain and flourish in the face of recession and decadence. I am hopeful that history will eventually recognize DIY-Ethic as the earmark of an era.

 

[polytrip]

Never in history, there where so many opportunity's for so many human beings, to lead a meaningfull life. So the fact that so many people choose to whipe their asses with what's given to them could fuel some culture-pessimism. But the fact that so many people like to put themself in a zombie state of mind is something that has always existed, while all those great opportunity's are quiet new.
The fact that music is 'for free' on the internet is not such a positve development though, since it takes money to make music. For musicians it's getting harder, but the music industry itself has caused this crisis. They where too keen on making lot's of money, when they still could.
On DIY ethics i would say that it's a good thing when people start to think for themselves, but less so when morality becomes something you can bend all the ways you want.
One of the big moral issues of this time IS the cheapness of everything we use. Things often cost just so little, because the people who make those things for us are being exploited. The fact that the world is more and more becoming one big free-trade zone brings manufacturers in countries that do not accept human rights to compete with manufacturers in countries that do. This is unsustainable situation, since slavery is always the cheapest way of producing something. So it put's a strain on labour rights as wel as on free trade itself.
If we would be willing to pay just a little bit more for all the stuff we use, so the labourers in vietnam, indonesia, etc. would have better life, then free trade indeed would lead to less poverty. But governments will have to enforce this. The myth of the so called 'invissible hand', that will fix everything has become a cancer growth, an almost satanic religion. Governments can now sitback and do nothing while saying that this is part of a policy that will make everything better by allowing this invissible hand to mysteriously solve every problem, from pollution, to child labour, to poverty. In the meantime the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, we're running out of oil while the world is becoming a chemical dump.