On Art & Disobedience

          The creative spirit of an artist draws people together like a moth is drawn to a flame. The moth seems to lose all ability to reason as it succumbs to the light and returns back to the dark side of nature towards death. Meanwhile the lives of the artists are phenomenal, they spend their days using tools to assemble and organize people together. Artists have been assembling and organizing people together since the beginning of our time, inside of caves, temples, cathedrals and churches. Today artists continue to organize large crowds of people together within museums, opera houses and theaters all over the world. In the twenty-first century, artists are using some of the most advanced technological tools available to once again assemble and organize people together. One such artist leading the way in Internet Freedom is an American named Jeremy Hammond.
          Hammond is twenty-eight and he has an IQ of one hundred and sixty eight. He excels in math, science and music. He is also a skilled computer programmer and he believes “hacking” is a form of civil disobedience that can be an effective tool to disrupt abusive corporations. Described as a “cyber vigilante,” Hammond is using the internet and real-time media to galvanize the American people around the idea of Internet Freedom. Internet Freedom would allow anyone and everyone that uses the internet to have access to information and technology. It would also create online transparency and accountability over governments and international corporations. Currently, the American people do not have internet privacy. Internet Freedom would allow the American people to have internet privacy by protecting them from invasive surveillance networks. One example of a corporation that uses invasive surveillance techniques is Strategic Forecasting Incorporated, also called Stratfor; a private intelligence contractor that focuses on the world of private intelligence. They monitor developments in political hot spots around the world and then supply their analysis to the United States Security Department. They have conducted a wide array of nefarious activities with the United States government monitoring activists movements and compiling data about Occupy, PETA, WikiLeaks, Anonymous and other grass roots activist movements.
          Currently, Hammond is in the Manhattan Correctional Center in New York State. He is pending trial for his alleged involvement of extracting or “hacking” data from Stratfor and publishing this information onto the anti-secrecy website, WikiLeaks.org, as the 'Global Intelligence Files!' The computer breach that Stratfor experienced cost the corporation millions of dollars and it focused worldwide attention onto the dark world of private intelligence. Hammond denies hacking Stratfor and he is currently fighting the corporation in court. So far Hammond's court hearings have been widely attended and they have been accompanied by public rallies and press conferences. All of which have been live streamed onto the internet for the world to see in real time. If found guilty of this “hacking”crime Hammond could spend up to forty-two years in prison. He has sent out a warning call to the American people, “be aware of the sheer number of everyday users who could be considered criminals under these broad and ambiguous definitions which enables the politically motivated prosecution of anyone that voices dissent.” Hammond is using technological tools to champion an alternative way of communicating on the internet and he is not alone in his belief in Internet Freedom. The cyber space of the internet is a place where people have already created alternative forms of organization and interaction. Jeremy Hammond is at the very forefront of internet evolution, which will impact the way we communicate on the internet on a global scale. In fact, many artists have been at the forefront of many social movements for change, within societies throughout the world, over the course of time, because artists are the most capable of adaptation.
          Leonardo Da Vinci is another artist that had many ideas about how to create better ways of life for people during his time. In Italy during the fourteenth century diseases oppressed the people. The Black Death also known as the Bubonic Plague had begun to spread itself across the globe beginning in 1313. When the majority of the people on the planet were attempting to escape from this plague, the artist was running towards the disease. He set about applying his great intellectual mind to adapting the city of Milan to this plague. Da Vinci drafted plans that called for the engineering of mechanical tools: windmills, pulley's and levers, which he depicted located throughout the city to circulate fresh air and water to the residents. He believed that by providing the citizens of Milan with fresh drinking water andsanitation diseases could be prevented. However, instead of implementing Leonardo Da Vinci's plans the Duke of Milan simply laughed and fled from the city, taking his court and the artist with him.
          History is full of this kind of evidence that shows us that sense-based intelligence fluctuates among humans and some humans are better at reasoning then others. Artists excel at reasoning and their methods resemble natures method of assembling and organizing. Humans have had to learn to do by reason what microorganisms can do instinctively. Assembling and organizing has been happening since the Earth was covered with water. Within this water organic molecules floated around for millions of years assembling and organizing themselves into microorganisms. Microorganisms were among some of the first living things on planet Earth. When the Earth's crust began to buckle into mountains lands rose from the sea exposing these microorganisms to the Earth's atmosphere, the microorganisms were forced to adapt or die. Only a few microorganisms survived along the warm shore lines. Favored by the more gradual transition and low competition, microorganisms adapted to there new environment on Earth. The result was large algae like plants which began to sprawl over the shore lines. This is when the plants began their invasion onto the land. Artists are like the few microorganisms that were able to adapt to their new environment. Artists are highly intelligent, acutely aware individuals that adapt by finding the paths of least resistance. To be an artist is to be adaptable, this guarantees that new ways of life can still be created by humans. One important aspect of adaptation is that it often requires individuals to reject the current model or systematic ways of life. Adaptation requires creative disobedience to activate new ways of life.
          When the Earth was still covered with water, organic molecules adapted by assembling and organizing themselves together into microorganisms. From microorganisms evolved all of the plants, fungi and bacteria. The insects came onto the world stage next with flies, bees and ants. They have all adopted this same model of adapting by assembling and organizing together into colonies. Honey bees are masters of organization to ensure that their colonies as a whole survive. Each worker honey bee performs a specific task and they adjust to perform whatever roles need to be performed for the survival of the colony. Every spring every species of honey bee gorges on honey one last time and then descends from their hive, never to return again. They leave behind all of their food to the next generation of honey bees, which will promptly rise up and take over the hive. Just as the reproduction of the individual honey bee is essential to the colony so to is the continued existence and reproduction of entire colonies. Like honey bees humans assemble and organize themselves together to adapt and ensure self-preservation on this dangerous organism we call Earth.
          The Earth has undergone mighty revolutions performed in vast cycles: earthquakes, hurricanes, volcanoes and meteors that have endangered all life. Droughts, floods, plagues, famines, poisonous odors, insects swarms and land pestilence's have visited this world. These great phenomena of nature have modified not only the surface of the Earth but also the human mind. Such a state of excitement brings about change, annihilation's awaken new life; and when the tumult above and below the Earth is past, nature is renovated, and the human mind awakens to the consciousness of an intellectual existence. This intellectual existence permits us to continually adapt to our environment and it also allows us to dream. Imagine a more ethical age when Internet Freedom is a reality. When information frees the people from the control of international corporations and governments that are working to genetically engineer us to become their slaves. A time and place in the future when human progress works collaboratively with nature's progress because the creative spirits of artists are free to thrive and throw sparks of knowledge all around the universe.

 Indoor Honey Bee Hive for Carniolan Honey Bees. They have built a lot of comb and they seem to be doing well.