interesting. my sense is that conscious (and yes, unconscious) manipulation of words can create movement towards progressive levels of understanding and even, changes in being. interconnected streams of tranformational, living symbols, if you will.

and the practice of arranging and re-arranging can be a form of sacred practice - well, manipulation of almost any available media could amount to sacred practice, but arrangement of word symbols has high potential for enabling cognitive synthesis.

some would say that particular information(s) are holy in and of themselves. if that is so, then my feeling is that that type of holiness is operative primarily in specific, localized applications .. that is, as delivered as words that can connect with a particular locality or constituency.

the negative application of such a manipulative process could be labelled propaganda, disinformation: potentially, an anti-sacrament (can disinfo be a sacrament?)

on most days, i would prefer to think of this process in terms of laboratory - mixing ingredients to see what explodes .. or creates new compounds, to be used in further experiments. in the lab, conducting the experiment can become, in itself, a sacrament - regardless of results.

in the information age, the manipulation of word symbols can amount to our own particular form of alchemy: self-sustaining, interactive, viral word play. a potentially beneficent informational organism.

there’s something else going on here, also, and it has to do with individual (and possibly even group) intent. some of the “new bloggers” are relatively fearless, in terms of crossing traditional category boundaries: from politics to parapolitics to aesthetics to information technology to art to poetry to the occult to religious practice and back again. but beyond that, there’s intent (need?) get to the bottom of things, relate things … and to shed light on _all_ related topics along the way. there’s a sincere exploration of integration of possibilities .. and this is done with a degree of discipline in the use of available faculties (i.e., reason, creativity, and compassion).

the preceding description is all pretty much abstract bullshit. words.

but it does attempt to point to one type of intelligent manipulation of the tools of the information age: a particular use of wordcraft providing us what we need (food). a living interface of information and the human psyche.

i would consider this particular use of the blogosphere a sacrament … whatever the life span of particular phenomena related to such might be. experiments come and go.

I find this to be fairly pertinent to the idea of information and this post:

Some of this may seem familiar, some of it may not… but all of it will require your undivided attention… and not just any kind of undivided attention… but the kind that carries you away from the World: the kind that displaces you.

I will begin with a few questions, such as these:

What would you say if I suggested to you the notion that the only Universal Reality you can know and experience doesn’t resemble anything even remotely close to what you would normally think of when you hear the term “Reality,” but rather something more along the lines of Chaos… and that the only ordered reality you will ever know and experience depends entirely upon the boundary of perception that gives rise to your “uniqueness” as an individual?

And if I drew your attention to those countless moments in which you lost yourself for the love of some Art, would you recognize the Chaos of which I speak? would you recognize the reality outside of your own?

In this thread, I intend to reveal the politics of reality, the politics of perception, of knowledge and experience. I will uncover that frightening, absurd, unavoidable five letter word “Chaos”…

…and I will do something with it….

First, I would like to remind you that, right now, you sit at a computer. I would like to remind you that a street runs nearby, that it runs through a town or a city, and that it runs toward (or away from) some place you like to visit. I would like to remind you that the street doesn’t stop there: it keeps going. And along that street, outside the place where you sit and read, a landscape expands outward to the horizon (or maybe some other place you also forgot about while reading these words).

I would like to remind you that, right now, you sit at a computer. I would like to remind you that these words “are” words. And I would like to remind you that you needed a reminder… for, as you continue reading these words, you can’t help but succumb to the Chaos: you can’t help but grow closer to the End of the World as you (yes, you) know it and experience it.

As you read on, the Order around you, your Order, dissipates. You forget about the street outside, about the places you like to visit, the landscape dwindling off into some realm you never see, the computer where you sit and read… so I keep reminding you because you will forget. (You can’t help not to.)

Reading breeds Chaos.

Reading implodes consciousness to a single point, such as the book in your lap, the text on the screen, or the billboard that catches your eye… every time… without fail.

Reading makes you forget about the Reality you created in “order” to imbue the world around you with Order. Reading disorders your Order. Reading creates a NEW universe–one that contains only two things: YOU and the TEXT. Everything else “is” beside the POINT. Everything else “becomes” Chaos… (especially that nearby street).

But, one thing remains constant while you read these words:

The potential for order increases.

As you read, you reduce (you sublimate) that nearby street into the Chaos from whence it came: you increase the potential for that street to RE-order into something completely different.

And when you RE-order that street (if you choose to do so by some sort of “magical” means), the dissipated potential (the “entropy”) will reach a maximum:

The NEW will replace the OLD.

So, go now. Read. And when you reach the End of the World as you know it, give it NEW order…

…give it RE-order.