Age of the Avatar vs Age of The natural Builder
avatar - noun
Hindu Mythology.the descent of a deity to the earth in an incarnate form or some manifest shape; the incarnation of a god.
an embodiment or personification, as of a principle, attitude, or view of life.
The machine has been built so that our very expression now turn the gears of commerce. Like, our actual facial expressions can be posted now, co-opted by a piece of tech and then used to sell glow-in-the-dark tennis rackets. This has been normalized, and we don’t think twice. Now we are all selling things, whether intentionally or not.
For ourselves maybe we are selling our values. It has been made easy enough for anyone to beautifully package, present and push anything. Our images. Philosophies, ideas and ventures. Our travels. We are selling wellness and activism. We are selling nostalgia and art. We are selling our different levels of awareness, political stances, spiritual takes and enlightenment. We create the avatars that represent our best ideas or versions, we post and we hope. That our tribe, the universe, a client or a loved one will respond…or recognize…or stream it. At the very least, there will be a shrine to each of our ideas left behind sending signals into The Great X that we were here. Even if you don’t engage, there is likely a footprint that represents what you believe in, and it has helped turn the gears of commerce on your search for wholeness.
The machine has sold us connectivity and “culture”. The agents of the machine beautify and glorify these concepts, to make money. It’s simple to do, easy to commodify and everyone can relate to some aspect of “culture”. It’s attractive. We buy into it, break off the piece we feel represents us and add it to our avatar. Then we sell.
This is something I’ve observed ever since I got pulled into the netherworld of market research In the early 2000s and saw how the Wizard made Oz pop behind the curtain. But I begrudgingly took part in because survival. My epiphanies have come out in different ways in the past decade. What I tried to do was dedicate my creativity to spiritual warfare as a counter. My music has reflected that. My effort to build the Digital Action Committee was a direct response to the commodification and pop-culturizing of Black pain. The Milky Way was built to energize higher spiritual ideals in an electrifying (and milky) way.
But there was always an internal resistance…there has been a turmoil in me. I’m not built to sell. For us artists, the prevailing wisdom the last decade has been that if you are a creative of any sort, you have to build an avatar that sells you...or sells for you. That avatar could be your social media presence. It could be the mythological and ever-elusive “team”. You know, the TEAM... that circle of people around you who are of singular mind and ready to pull a tooth out a live lion’s gums for you (the visionary) and the DREAM. The dream is usually to ....sell. Something. Successfully. The idea has become that you have to get past your inability or fear or anxiety around selling… become a salesperson and....”make shit happen” so that you (or your avatar) can “prosper”.
So we comply. It’s so engrained in me, I’ve been selling my shit throughout this post, and I will push some more before it’s over.
This has been the gospel in what I will call the Age of the Avatar (2000-2019)... and I get it now. Fully. It was useful for the time, and I believe it was fertile ground to learn a lot. But we can now move past that with our new understanding. We all know what’s going on here.
I’m not sure how to exactly do this, but I have some ideas. As usual, I will make myself a living human experiment, test things out and report my findings through my creativity. If you want to understand my findings from the last two decades, there’s a few worlds of music and other projects back that way that will let you into my head (see, I’m selling).
I imagine that what you will see from me in the next decade is less selling through an avatar, and more building and constructing things that promote life..things that don’t need me after I’m done building them, because they will be living.
For me this means entering the Age of the Builder.
It’s possible that soon we will see a surge in artificial intelligence(s). The usefulness could be profound. I’m not fearful, or suspicious. This artificial intelligence could and should be balanced by natural wisdom and understanding. It stands to reason that the proper thing to balance artificial intelligence is natural creativity. Building things that can take root, where goodness and love can grow - and there is no space for anything unnecessary. Now we will have an opportunity to work in harmony with nature and build alongside it. With no fear of time passing, or death approaching. Brick by brick.
If you’ve made it this far, thank you. We’ll see you in 2020. And here’s part of where I’m going next.