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13 May 2005 | Draft
Liberating Provocationsuse of negative and paradoxical strategies- / -Promoting "negative" strategies? | Why then engage in such an initiative? | How would this provocative mode work? | Examples? | Precedents? | Theory? | Playing games? | But is it already done? | Possibilities? | Seriously? | Surrealistically? | Provocative dramatisation and médiatisation? | Commercialisation? | Reservations -- when to avoid paradox? | Justice? | Conclusion -- Doing the Unthinkable? | References Prepared with Nadia McLaren. See also a French
translation by Jeanne Gruson Considerable energy is invested in exhorting constructive, positive behaviour in response to social and other problems. This approach has been used for many past decades. It is the basis for many institutional strategies, whether at the level of the United Nations, governments, or local communities. It is fair to say that these strategies have been relatively modest in their success -- in comparison with the challenges. This is as true with respect to health, violence, environment as is it is with respect to discrimination and other issues. Critics point to characteristically tired language and outworn formulae. Without denying the merit of these positive strategies, there is at least a case for reflecting on another strategic approach -- especially in the light of the current disruption of the international framework of law and order and the increasing recognition that the forces undermining positive achievement are more powerful and widespread than was previously assumed. There are increasing appeals for more imaginative approaches and what follows is a modest contribution to this end. Promoting "negative" strategies?Let us suppose that instead of appealing for "positive" solutions in every domain, energy was devoted to encouraging people to engage deliberately and consciously in counter-productive, "negative" responses. Instead of exhorting people to conserve electricity or water, why not encourage them to waste it deliberately? Instead of investing in campaigns to inform people of the dangerous consequences of recreational drugs, why not deliberately encourage them to partake? And so on for: environmental damage, corporate fraud, pornography, domestic violence, discrimination, etc? At first sight, this approach appears to be totally scandalous and irresponsible. It is. That is its purpose -- to "appear" to be irresponsible and scandalous. Why then engage in such an initiative?The argument here is that increasingly many people are weary of messages telling them what to do and how to behave. Those prepared to listen to such messages have already been converted to the more appropriate behaviour. Those who are resistant to such messages are increasingly resistant to them -- in a society that alienates its citizens and effectively encourages them to adopt dysfunctional modes of behavior to compensate for the inadequacies of modern life as they understand it. If the problems are not being reduced by current strategies, a "provocative" mode may address those who have had enough of being told how to behave. In a world of contradictions, people may best be served by enabling them to recognize the extent to which their own identity is itself inherently an expression of contradictions. How would this provocative mode work?This is a two-pronged strategy. By advocating a "negative" approach, those resistant to being told how to behave would reactively consider a "positive" approach. Those scandalised by the "negative" approach, would invest their energy in "positive" campaigns -- where previously they would not have been engaged. We are all familiar, from earliest childhood, with the response to exhortation from those occupying the moral high ground. We either ignore them or consider interesting ways of doing the opposite. If we are told not to do something, then we consider doing it. If we are encouraged to do something, we consider doing the opposite. The point is made by Zoe Williams (Cannabis Comedown, The Guardian, 29 March 2005):
This provocative approach is designed to communicate more effectively with those already acting inappropriately or those who are passive in the face of inappropriate action. Examples?It has taken long decades for the concerns relating to smoking to be taken seriously by legislative bodies. How many people have died as a consequence of such delays? Could it have been more effective to encourage people to smoke heavily? The trick would have been to make it clear to people how much endangering their health, and risking early death, was welcomed by society. Informing a young person that his, or her, early death from lung cancer would be a generous contribution to the health of the planet or overburdened pension funds could be a marvelous stimulus for some to stop smoking -- to avoid providing society with that satisfaction. In this light perhaps multinational tobacco companies, like Philip Morris and BAT, may be considered to have contributed more to constraining population growth than the family planning programmes of the United Nations and other bodies. Governments also may have failed to to recognize the extent to which they have indirectly contributed to "stabilising population" through facilitating substance abuse as a source of fiscal revenue. Similarly, encouraging automobile drivers to engage in more excessive drinking would stimulate much more vigorously the campaigning capacity of those exposed to the risks of dangerous driving. Precedents?There are at least two precedents -- which are however related. A well-explored precedent, discussed below, is known as "paradoxical therapy" or "provocative therapy" and has been developed by family therapists. As advocated by Alfred Adler, essentially this involves "prescribing the symptom" as a basis for evoking a remedial reaction. This has also been used by hypnotherapists such as Milton Erickson. A person who is is anorexic may be encouraged by the therapist to lose even more weight -- or the obese may be encouraged gain even more. It is widely reported that employees in chocolate factories are allowed to eat as much as they want, and lose interest. A related approach introduced by Viktor Frankl is termed "paradoxical intention". This calls upon the person to do the very thing they fear to do. If one is afraid to be in public, it is advised to attend a football game or take up acting. By not providing counterpressure the defenses are disarmed. But there is a better known variant termed "tough love". It derives its name from a contradictory approach to delinquent children in which, as the term suggests, parents are encouraged to restrain obvious manifestations of their love for their child and engage in actions which appear to deny that love -- for the greater good of the child. This approach has long been used for problem children in the USA. As a perversion in its own right, the useful term "tough love" is now widely employed as a politically correct disguise for simply acting tough -- whether or not there is any underlying love. In fact it then becomes a good disguise for the lack of such love or any concern with the well-being of the person to whom it is directed. The theme of "tough love for Africa" was used to label the policies of George Bush in 2003 [more], seemingly echoing themes of President Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal in 2002 [more], Colin Powell [more] and others. Strobe Talbott, President of the Brookings Institution, has written under that theme in relation to Russia in 2005 [more]. Curiously the theme is favoured as a journalistic title but tends to reflect little in the way of alternative strategy -- other than being "tough" as a non-military variant of "thinking the unthinkable". Theory?Both precedents are options in strategic family therapy as a form of "reverse psychology". Under certain circumstances the most effective remedial intervention into an unbalanced or overbalanced situation may be to push the subject further in the dysfunctional direction. The therapist assists the person to engage in that inappropriate way more effectively. The subject's own strengths are then mobilised to resist this pressure, resulting in a move in the desired direction. The focus is therefore on "prescribing the symptom" and often on designing a therapeutic double bind, a more complex version of prescribing the symptom that also includes prescribing the entire family system. These techniques work because they take advantage of so-called "resistance". They also are sensitive to the complex ambivalence within persons and families. Good strategic interventions then work because they address all sides of the "internal" issue. [more] More generally this approach is basic to the work of Gestalt psychotherapist Frederick Perls. Arnold Beisser describes this as The Paradoxical Theory of Change (1970). He defines Perls theory in the following terms. Change occurs when one becomes what one is, not when one tries to become what one is not. Change does not take place through a coercion to change but by taking the time and effort to be what one "is" -- to be fully invested in one's current positions. By rejecting the role of external change agent, meaningful and orderly change is made possible. Beisser argues that this approach is applicable to community organisation, community development and other change processes consistent with the democratic political framework. [more] Beisser makes it clear that the Gestalt therapist rejects the role of "changer" which is so typical of modern institutional social change programmes. Rather, change can occur when the person abandons, at least for the moment, what he (or she) would like to become and attempts to be what he (or she) is. A related approach of Frank Farrelly is called "provocative therapy". This involves humorously playing the devil's advocate with the client, siding with the negative half of their ambivalence towards themselves (and towards change), seeking to show how they bind themselves in the situation, and doing all this in a way that promotes the client's self-knowledge and capacity for change. The humorous provocations or contradictory challenges are used to provoke the person against their own self-defeating behaviour. In questioning why this works, it also might be argued that in cybernetic terms a positive campaign has a proportion of positive effects, but engenders a negative backlash that may be counter-productive or inhibit the strategy after a time. Whereas a negative campaign has a proportion of negative effects but engenders a positive backlash, which may be of greater significance. This is based on the assumption that there are hidden feedback loops that maintain the dysfunctional state "X" -- restoring "X" after any remedial intervention. This is true in organisations and individuals -- and why not for countries or the world? Negative feedback, in the cybernetic sense, maintains the situation. Positive feedback, in the sense of "prescribing the symptom" and accelerating the tendency, can destroy the feedback loop, thus enabling the individual or organisation to escape a vicious circle or spiral. The approach also gives the person or the group a sense of control over the problem. Basically the approach advocated here is a response to the paradox of denial: How can one accept oneself as one is, if the truth is too painful? Yet how does one effectively change without accepting oneself as one is, and working from that? Is humanity itself in a dangerous state of denial with respect to energy resources, endangered species, overpopulation, global warming, substance abuse, etc? Playing games?It might be thought that "liberating provovations" were merely a cynical form of game. But, from a game-playing perspective, the strategies envisaged here may also be understood as "counterintuitive strategies". These feature in higher levels of game-playing expertise, martial arts and those inspired by their principles (cf Aikido Activism: changing the world one corporation at a time, 2004) [more]. Corporate strategy is often counterintuitive -- "counterintuitive marketing" is a valued approach. As noted by Steve Brotman, few entrepreneurs can intuitively grasp and then communicate a counterintuitive strategy, especially if the strategy is based on rapidly flipping back and forth between different directions [more]. Such approaches call to mind the skills of confidence tricksters and the vigilance required to avoid their trap. In response to recent research (Graeme S. Halford, et al. How Many Variables Can Humans Process?, 2005), one blogger remarks:
As argued elsewhere (Participative Democracy vs. Participative Drama -- lessons on social transformation for international organizations from Gorbachev, 1991):
Neural networks are now being used to detect such unusual strategies, as discussed by David E. Moriarty and Risto Miikkulainen (Discovering Complex Othello Strategies through Evolutionary Neural Networks, 2000) who argue that their approach could also be used to find new strategies and heuristics in other domains including planning. Hendrik Moraal (Counterintuitive behaviour in games based on spin models, 2000) has shown that mixing of two losing strategies may lead to a winning one, but also that the mixing of two winning ones may lead to a loss. Mixing of a losing and a winning strategy may give unexpected results. Even more relevant insights are provided by engaging in "infinite games" as explored by James P. Carse (Finite and Infinite Games: a vision of life as play and possibility, 1986) [ review | review | review | review | review ]. He argues, for example:
Curiously an effort has been made to apply the approach to "winning" higher order games in business ("meta-winning") by Charles Hampden-Turner and Fons Trompenaars (Mastering the Infinite Game, 1997) in contrast with framing education itself as an infinite game (Michael Umphrey. A Sense of Time Education as the Infinite Game, 1999). In the light of Carse's framework it is worth asking the question whether the "war against terrorism" is being played as a finite game (cf James Carse. Religious War in the Light of the Infinite Game, 2005) -- when the "terrorists" may understand it as an "infinite game" in accordance with Carse's insight that:
The possibility is reinforced by arguments of Mary Brace (In the Death of an Infinite Player: the horizon has been defeated, 2005) with regard to the American presidency. The same might be said of other strategic games "against hunger", "against disease", "against drugs" -- and possibly all conventional social change processes. The future may see present democratic processes as solely concerned with finite games -- and winning them for a particular faction. From such a perspective, given Carse's background as a professor of religion, it might be usefully asked of him whether the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are playing a finite game or an infinite game? Or should the terrorists, rather than those acting against them, be understood as finite players in terms of Carse's other insight:
The challenge, as framed by Flemming Funch, is:
Inspired by Carse's perspective, Marianne Bojer (Changing the Game, 2004), co-founder of Pioneers of Change, asks the provocative self-reflexive question: "In what ways does the very same game that is causing our problems also play itself out at the World Social Forum? At Pioneers of Change gatherings? In our office? " Liberating provocations could perhaps be understood as the strategic wormholes twisting between the different realms of infinite game space. But is it already done?Of course traditionally a form of "tough love" has been practiced through "austerity measures" by authorities, whether parental, communal, tribal, or national -- for the "long-term benefit" of the person or the group. The World Bank and IMF’s “Structural Adjustment Programs" for developing countries were supposedly a form of "tough love" -- although it took UNICEF to establish the need for "structural adjustment with a human face". Christian churches and communities have practiced a more extreme form of "tough love" -- in the form of painful punishment, even burning at the stake -- to ensure that the person's soul was saved for the hereafter. Widespread modern use of torture could perhaps be seen in this light? Many would say that certain forms of advertising are already an encouragement towards copycat dysfunctional behaviour: cigarettes, automobiles with excessive gas consumption, violence in movies, obscenity in movies, recreational drugs, binge drinking, lewdness, for example. Celebrities are promoted through exhibiting behaviour that some find shocking, thus attracting attention, and causing others to imitate them. It might be argued that those with anti-social intentions make the most subtle and effective use of "negative" strategies -- which paradoxically they would then frame as "positive". Corporations, when seeking to conceal their problematic strategies, use techniques such as: denying the existence of a problem, emphasizing benefits and minimizing risks, stressing the importance of other issues, calling for more research to ensure delay, rationalizing a problem by emphasizing the necessary risk in life, suppressing relevant information, blaming the victim or the whistleblower, commissioning research to prove the contrary and undermining new initiatives [more]. Activists and lobbyists use aspects of these techniques to exaggerate the importance of problems in order to evoke appropriate solutions. But usually this does not involve recommending problematic solutions -- except perhaps in humouristic demonstrations (as with Greenpeace). Another technique is to make a mockery of problematic democratic electoral processes -- notably by electing animals to public office. For example in the city of Hartlepool in the UK, a cartoon monkey mascot of the local football team was elected to mayor in 2002 -- increasing his majority ten-fold in 2005 (Poll swing suits monkey man, 2005). In France the dog "Saucisse" was placed on the ballot in opposition to President Jacques Chirac and chief rival Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin -- but lost. A rhinoceros was elected as a member of São Paulo's city council in the 1950s. In the UK the Monster Raving Loony Party has put up candidates for elections since 1983. Led by Cornelius the First, a rhinoceros in the Montreal zoo, the Rhinoceros Party was a registered political party in Canada from 1963 to the 1990s -- matched from the 1980s to 1999 by the McGillicuddy Serious Party, a satirical political party in New Zealand. Paradox may also be evident in certain forms of deceptive strategic encounter, whether of a political or a military nature -- purportedly in the interests of society as a whole. It may be a characteristic of the "psychological operations" of information warfare, and the use of so-called "false flag" covert operations. As in certain games, the emphasis is then placed on deception -- and is definitely not undertaken in the interest of the deceived party. For example, during the World War II, a radio station was established to "neutralize" Japanese propaganda. All it did was rebroadcast an exaggerated version of Japanese news programmes -- but pretending to be a Japanese station. By "exaggerating the symptom", the fake station would therefore develop any news story beyond the limits of credibility, thus countering the credibility not only of what it was broadcasting but also of what was broadcast by the genuine Japanese stations. Such precedents might be a fruitful basis for understanding the American strategic approach to the "war against terrorism" -- as suggested in a study (Promoting a Singular Global Threat -- Terrorism: Strategy of choice for world governance, 2002). With respect to counter-intuitive strategy, writing anonymously a US State Department source (Welfare Reform, Dependence Theory and U.S.-E.U Relations, 2005) argues provocatively:
In the UK counter-intuitive plans are announced in 2005 to remove all traditional signals and barriers used to separate the carriageway and pavement, deliberately leaving the question of who has priority open -- in the light European research showing that traffic lights and road signs deter road-users from taking responsibility for their actions [more]. Possibilities?Assumptions are readily made with respect to the desirability of leaders as exemplars of "positive" change. It is assumed, for example, that highly ethical leadership encourages emulation of such qualities by the population as a whole, and by those reporting to the leadership. However there is a strong case for ensuring that leaders of extremely dubious ethical quality are elected to the highest institutional positions in society on the grounds that "positive" qualities are evoked in the population to counter-balance such "negative" influences. From a systemic perspective, it is possible that unconsciously a population may evoke "negative" leaders in situations where the health of society can only be effectively ensured by the "positive" impact they have on the population as a whole. This would be a reassuring perspective at a time when the leadership in most modern national and international institutions, even at the highest level, is characterised by extremely suspect ethical standards [more]. It would certainly be a creative way of explaining the election of a former Nazi to the position of Secretary-General of the United Nations from 1972 to 1981 -- and subsequently to the presidency of Austria from 1986 to 1992. It would also be helpful to understanding the value of raising a person who advocates perverse legal policies on torture to head the US justice system in 2004 and appointment of the key architect of the Iraq war as president of what is supposed to be the world's largest development agency in 2005 [more]. In this light, given the admiration of George Bush for the Roman Empire, is there any possibility that he may follow the initiative of Emperor Gaius Caligula (37-41 A.D) in nominating his horse, Incitatus, as consul -- perhaps as ambassador to the United Nations, or even as Secretary-General? The Texan town of Lajitas, has repeatedly elected as mayor Clay Henry III -- a goat, thus adding to the pioneering efforts of Saucisse another precedent for animal leadership in human affairs. With the subtle insights of the movie Being There (Peter Sellers, 1979) concerning the ambiguity of intelligence in those elected to public office, the World Social Forum could campaign for a gorilla or an owl as a more suitable candidate for high office in these times. Perhaps more should be understood from the statement of Pope Benedict XII on his unanimous election: "You have elected a jackass!" On the other hand, members of Damanhur, an intentional community, now adopt the names of endangered species -- including gorillas -- to engage in their community conceived as an ecosystem [more]. This echoes the practice of tribes in which individuals associate themselves with particular totemic animals. Perhaps George Bush's favourite cat, Cowboy, now dead, could have made history in this regard, surpassing Bill Clinton's "First Cat" Socks, who had its own well-used White House email address [more | more]. In the light of Caligula's relation to Incitatus, in seeking office perhaps cowboy presidential candidates should have a horse as a vice-presidential running mate -- Zorro and Toronado, Roy Rogers and Trigger, Don Quixote and Rocinante -- given the proven public appeal of such a team. For the voting population of the future from whom "new thinking" will be required, the "Harry Potter" stories are a reminder of alternative sources of wisdom through characterisation of such "familiars" -- and owls such as Hedwig. In this regard it is curious that although Incitatus was also nominated for the priesthood, the closest that animals in the west get to being treated as sacred is when they become endangered national symbols (as with the American Bald Eagle). Whereas Asian cultures, for example, not only treat some animals as sacred (eg the Hindu cow), but even accept blessings from them (eg from elephants as an incarnation of Ganesh) A form of "perverse strategy", articulated as Freudian twist by Josep-Anton Fernández (Another Country: Sexuality and National Identity in Catalan Gay Fiction, 2000) describes Terenci Moix's subjection of himself to the discipline of canon constitution in an attempt to subvert the Catalan institution from within. For those who question the insight of the professionally trained, there is a case for including in such training a period of experience as the object of such services. Physicians scheduled for responsibility for mental institutions could profitably be signed in (incognito) as "involuntary" patients. Members of the legal profession, and those responsible for penal institutions, could similarly benift from temporary incarceration. Through Art in Defence of Humanism, the Danish sculptor Jens Galschiot specializes in donating large-scale, provocative "Pillar of Shame" statues to countries complicit in human rights abuses to provoke recognition of that complicity; also "Survival of the Fattest" statutes to highlight the imbalanced distribution of the world’s resources. Several have been accepted and place prominently in public places. War museums and memorials of atrocities also serve the purpose of "painful reminders", though their messages may be multiple and the paradoxical benefits diluted. The Cannibal Flesh Donor Program has none of these ambiguities. When you become a flesh donor, you agree to donate your body, in the event of your death, for human consumption. This has direct benefits for sustainable agriculture and food availability for the 6.4 billion humans on this planet. "The real beauty of the Cannibal Flesh Donor Program is that it doesn’t require the citizens of the industrialized first world nations to relinquish flesh from their diets". This follows the notorious suggestion of Jonathan Swift (A Modest Proposal -- for preventing the children of poor people in Ireland from being a burden to their parents or country, and for making them beneficial to the public, 1729). Rather than tolerate the present levels of mass slaughter and genocide, why not encourage, through international competitions, the design of even more efficient forms of "gas chamber" to facilitate the next Holocaust? But, of course, this is already done (as with the thermobaric weapons currently used in Iraq), thanks to the military-industrial complex and its complicit community of scientists and technologists -- who mistakenly keep their achievements secret for fear of disapproval. Should they not be duly honoured for their contribution to human civilisation ? A new category of Nobel Prize -- for "population reduction" to ensure the spread of democracy and survival of humanity -- consistent with the activities from which the Nobel prize funds originally derived? Seriously?Perhaps the most interesting way in which perverse strategies are implemented is through humour. Some family therapy strategies notably stress humour. Political humour and satire have notably been used to attempt to change society and its institutions [more]. Commenting on the humourless British elections of 2005, Ukrainian novelist Andrey Kurkov (Is it time for a British revolution? Guardian, 26 April 2005) argues:
Is it possible that the regime change for the most disliked regimes could simply be achieved by such laughter -- "laughter revolutions"? A former Deputy Director-General of UNESCO co-founded the Association for the Promotion of Humour in International Affairs (APHIA), which has presented an annual "Noble Prize". The Aachen's Carnival Celebration Club has awarded, since 1950, a Medal for Combating Deadly Seriousness (Orden wider den tierischen Ernst) officially designated as 'humour in office'. In practice this means the relaxed, jovial absence of ponderous gravity, a quality that is capable of even bringing out the human traits in the most inveterate bureaucrat. Most of the more than 40 award bearers are politicians, diplomats and lawyers. A variety of provocative prizes and awards are given to challenge complacency. There are many "wooden spoon" awards for failure in competitions -- a "booby prize" dating back to failure in mathematics examinations [more], adapted by six national rugby unions into a Wooden Spoon Society to provide charitable support to children and young people who are physically, mentally or socially disadvantaged [more]. The annual Ig Nobel Prize is for scientific research "achievements that cannot or should not be reproduced". The Stella Award, named after a woman who received $2.9 million in damages for burning herself with a cup of McDonald's coffee, acknowledges any wild, outrageous, or ridiculous lawsuits. "Brickbat Awards" are conferred by various industries for incompetence -- for example, by the Committee for the Prevention of Sequential Mediocrity in comic design. The Prix Déméritas is awarded for sexist journalism. The Darwin Awards salute the improvement of the human genome by honouring those who accidentally kill themselves in really stupid ways -- of necessity, this honour is generally bestowed posthumously. Various other awards for stupidity have been proposed, including a Stupidity Nobel Prize to honour stupid politicians. The Kevorkian Prize for Racial Suicide is awarded to those working against the interests of ethnic and racial identity. The NoBul Prize has been proposed for exceptional contributions to truth in the deadly non-stop guerilla "War of Resistance" against lies and ignorance. On the occasion of the World Economic Forum in Davos, a Public Eye on Davos Award is now conferred annually by a group of NGOs on companies who have excelled in socially and environmentally irresponsible behaviour [more]. In the USA, the Family Research Council awarded annually from 1997 a range of "Court Jester" awards for various forms of questionable judging in courts of justice [more]. A form of perverse humour may also be the basis of religious teaching stories -- as with the tragi-comic Sufi tales of the Mullah Nasruddin. Paradox may be used in other spiritual teaching devices such as the Zen koan. This is a puzzling, often paradoxical statement or contrarian story, used in Zen Buddhism as an aid to meditation and a means of gaining spiritual awakening. The vama-marga ('left-path') tantric practice of overcoming conditioning by satiating the subject with the practice of what conditions him/her. "Crazy wisdom" and "spiritual foolishness" are promoted by Taoists as paradoxical "ways of knowing". There have been many times in the history of divine and human affairs when folly has been the cause of deliverance and salvation. A sudden paradoxical turn is frequently the Holy Spirit’s preferred way of liberating God’s people from spiritual and political impasses alike [more]. Humour may also be built into a form of "perverse advertising" as in the classic bush tourism advertisement in Australia: "We take you to such isolated places that if you break a leg we have to shoot you. Then we cover you with rocks and turn you into a sacred site."! The UK movie Babe (1995), starring a sympathetic piglet, was followed by a billboard from the meat industry: "You have seen the movie, now eat the star". Much better known -- and criticised -- are the startling, sometimes funny, advertising campaigns for clothes used internationally by Benetton for 17 years, focusing controversially on war, racism, AIDs and child labour [more | more]. The question is whether such techniques could in any way be used globally for social rather than commercial purposes? For example, to raise money for leukemia research, the middle-aged women of the Rylstone Women's Institute (UK) posed naked for an alternative calendar in 1999 which sold worldwide beyond all expectations -- a movie (Calendar Girls, 2003) was subsequently made of their initiative. Imitations have followed. Surrealistically?Critics have noted the extraordinary discrepancy between the benefits that accrue to those who develop "development strategies" in contrast with the actual benefits to those for whom they are supposedly conceived. It has become increasingly surrreal that social change projects often fail disastrously -- but those in the institutions that design them never fail to benefit to a totally disproportionate degree. Perhaps surrealism should be deliberately designed into social change strategies? For example, given the problematic track record of "development strategies" and "developers", perhaps there is a case for exploring the possibility of "velopment strategies" and "velopers" (cf Veloping: the art of sustaining significance, 1997). On the other hand, an early initiative by French visionary Alfred Jarry (1873-1907) resulted in the development of 'pataphysics, namely the "the science of imaginary solutions, which symbolically attributes the properties of objects, described by their virtuality, to their lineaments" -- or "the science of exceptions". This has a similar inspiration to the still-active Journal of Irreproducible Results, founded in 1955 by virologist Alexander Kohn and physicist Harry J. Lipkin. An unusual emerging trend is flash mobbing (Dadaist lunacy or the future of protest? An introduction to the world of flash-mobbing, 2003). This is a process whereby a large group of people (usually completely unknown to each other) gather in a predetermined location and perform some brief action (as orchestrated anonymously through the internet), then quickly disperse. Although exponents emphasize the deliberately apolitical nature of the trend, some commentators see it as a potential new form of political or even anti-authoritarian statement. A related phenomenon is the smart mob as introduced by Howard Rheingold (Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution). This is a recently established form of social coordination and collective intelligence made possible by using modern technology, such as the internet and wireless devices. Contrary to the usual connotations of a mob, a smart mob behaves intelligently or efficiently because of its exponentially-increasing network links. As protesting groups, it is such mobs that have been of considerable concern to security services on the occasion of international events. An original form of "action humour" has been developed by an international pie-throwing network (the "International Patisserie Brigade") in opposition to pomposity in all its forms. Centred on social-philosopher / guerilla-artist Noël Godin ("Georges le Gloupier", "entarteur", "encaker"), those who have been successfully "encaked" by the network include Bernard-Henri Levy and Bill Gates and other multinational CEOs. Godin is one of the activists honoured in the Raptorial Hall of Fame [more]. He notes: "There are a thousand forms of subversion; all of them are interesting, but few, in my opinion, equal the convenience and immediacy of the cream pie". He aims to "assassinate through ridicule all world celebrities who take themselves spectacularly seriously". A branch movement, the B |