augmented reality

How do you avoid becoming a corporate drone? Firstly, it helps to accept that if you spend most of your waking hours confined to the office, it will eventually get to you. Anyone starting an office job expecting to escape the politics and petty bureaucracy is in for a shock. You can’t expect to remain dignified in that environment. It’s better to recognise your inevitable deterioration into something contemptible. The only alternative is to join the ranks of the deluded, seek opportunities and aspire to professionalism – but that’s the action plan of the trainee drone…

Your mind, a clear mountain stream running burbling through the rocks. Until Pepsi stands up, unzips its billion-dollar ad budget, and takes a leak, staining it forever brown. Your brain, a verdant old-growth forest, until it dies the death of a thousand swooshes. Your soul, filled with the crystal fresh air of early morning, until Philip Morris blows in a cloud of its seductive smoke…

There’s a tendency, even among those who are trying to buy less stuff, to call everyone “consumers”. The company needs to please its consumers … we consumers need to vote with our dollars … we need watchdogs to protect consumers … consumers are buying less during the recession.

Let’s stop that. We are not consumers.

We’re people.

When we allow ourselves to be branded with these types of corporate terms, we’ve given in to the consumerist mindset. We’ve allowed the debate to be framed around buying: should we buy organic or local? How can we protect consumers? Do consumers have rights? What’s the best way to spend our money on products? How can we be savvy consumers? How can we affect change in society by making ethical or conscious buying choices?

What about the question of whether we should be buying or not? That gets thrown out the window, because it’s already assumed in the term: we’re consumers. Of course we buy. It’s just a matter of how, how much, where, from whom, how often.

But if we stop thinking of ourselves as consumers, and start calling ourselves “people”, then we open up the question. Should we even buy in the first place? Is it possible to live a life without buying?

We talked a bit about that in society, reimagined … that we can grow our own food, make and trade and share everything we need. It’s possible — of course it’s possible! Human beings (not consumers) did it for hundreds of thousands of years, and at least 10,000 years in civilized society: we lived and worked and played and loved, without buying. We did it in tribes, of course, but also in larger societies that weren’t based around the basic unit of corporation -> consumer.

I’m not advocating a return to tribalism. I’m saying we need to change the debate. We need to stop calling ourselves consumers. We need to open up our minds, so that a different way is possible.

March 20, 2010

Dear Friends with Feet,

Since the birth of humanity, people have lived on their feet in order to work, play and survive.

Sadly, many people have developed unfortunate biases against such vital parts of their own bodies. There is now a widespread collective mindset that feet should be encased in rigid, restrictive shoes. This footwear is able to cause terrible and irreparable damage over the course of a person’s life. Active use of non-breathing footwear compels many to negatively stereotype feet as being ugly, sweaty, smelly and gross. What’s more, the thousands of nerve endings in a person’s feet become numb while shod and unable to properly communicate with their minds. Feet are often called “fragile” or “too sensitive.”

Basically, the feet of the world are regularly neglected and rarely ever allowed to be feet.

It is time for the world’s perceptions of feet to change.

The human foot, as it was given to us, is amazing! When free from unnecessary restriction, it is capable of surprising strength and resilience. When it is restored as a vital sensory receptor for our bodies, the world opens up and we experience our surroundings with exponentially greater clarity and definition. What’s more, many of us believe that living on our feet, as nature intended, is a significant gateway to better health.

This is the nature of the primal foot:
Getting back to the basics and letting feet be feet first. It is moving through life free of imprudently restrictive, inflexible, or gait-altering footwear.

The Primalfoot Alliance advocates wholeheartedly for going barefoot. Taking our shoes off allows each of the bones, joints, nerve endings and other biological systems in our feet to function at their highest degree. Therefore, we believe that most people should live most of their lives on bare feet — even when they shop, dine, worship, learn, play and more in public.

The Primalfoot Alliance acknowledges that there are times when going barefoot is not possible for cultural, professional, health or safety reasons. In these times, we believe that minimal footwear can be a prudent option for feet to function primally, moving with flexibility and strength. Primal footwear is what many people have used for centuries and that modern people in developed lands can embrace.

Unfortunately, the efforts of many primalfooters have been rejected in recent generations.

For decades, many business establishments have posted signage stating that customers without shoes are not welcome. Some incorrectly claim that government regulations forbid going unshod. Other times when signage hasn’t been posted, patrons with no shoes have been approached with spontaneous unwritten “policies” and asked to don footwear or leave.

Motorists, even, have been wrongly informed across many areas of the world that driving barefoot is illegal when it often is not.

The excuses for rejecting bare feet have been widespread and mostly without merit. They are typically based on unfounded concerns over safety, health, liability or social appropriateness. Barefooters, however, often share that modern sidewalks, streets, grassy areas and other surfaces rarely contain dangerous sharp objects and are highly unlikely to infect a person with viruses or germs. They are usually more than willing to take on any liability for injuries sustained as a result of going barefoot. Questions of social appropriateness are more of a matter of unfortunate personal bias and a lack of critical reflection.

Discrimination against primal feet has not been limited to only those who go barefoot. As one popular style of primal footwear with toe pockets now makes its way onto the feet of athletes around the world, many fitness facilities have unnecessarily disallowed their patrons from wearing these shoes on the grounds that they are unsafe. Employers have rejected the leather styles as inappropriate or unprofessional.

It is time for the world’s perceptions of feet to change.

The Primalfoot Alliance has been formed to:

• Educate and/or dialogue with the public, media, government officials, businesspeople and many others on the benefits of going primalfoot.
• Encourage those who wish to live primalfoot and advocate for them in the face of discrimination.
• Raise worldwide awareness of people who prefer to live primalfoot.
• Become partners with those who design, manufacture, promote, purchase and/or use primal footwear.
• Assist with sponsoring and/or coordinating activities that bring primalfooters together.

The intent is to combine the talents and support of those who see the benefits of primal feet. We will act as a unified network of supporters for sharing and disseminating information. In time, we will develop memberships for those who casually support the cause of primal feet and also for those who are deeply involved with promoting the various facets of barefooting, primalfoot running, primal footwear and more.

To be clear, the Primalfoot Alliance is NOT about foot fetishes or clearly dangerous activities. Our intent is not to encourage sexual or flirtatious acts. We also do not agree with people doing harmful things to their feet or putting their feet at significant risk. For example, we fully understand that many diabetics should avoid going barefoot in order to prevent undetectable injuries that could threaten life or limb.

Our “soft launch” is the first day of Spring, March 20, 2010. What better day to represent this movement? Over the next couple of months, we hope to develop partnerships, a full Web site and online presence, membership levels and other programs. The “hard launch” will come prior to June 1, 2010, National “Go Barefoot” Day in the United States. More information about all of these elements will be added as time goes on.

Here’s where you come in:

If you believe that feet are amazing and deserve greater respect and health without restrictive footwear, please join us. If you are a barefooter, primalfoot runner, blogger, Facebooker, Twitter user, podiatrist, shoe manufacturer and/or anybody else who advocates for living on feet as nature intended them, we need for you to be a part of The Primalfoot Alliance. Keep doing the great things you’re doing, but please also connect with us at the links below (if we don’t connect with you first). Promote us on your Website, blog, Twitter, Facebook, Buzz, whatever. The Primalfoot Alliance will never reach its full potential without your help. Together we will make a big difference in changing the world’s perceptions of feet. Thank you so much for your support.

Encouraged,

Barefoot Michael, Founder
www.barefootandgrounded.com
Twitter: @BarefootMichael

mnmal:

I have been shocked, horrified and appalled by a new campaign to promote Microsoft’s email service, Hotmail. The creative team has created an aspirational model for us to aim at, a new category of happy, hard-working superbeings called “the new busy”. In common with the “superhuman” Blackberry advertising campaign of a couple of years ago, this brainwashing campaign suggests that just by using Hotmail, you will be transformed into something more efficient than the average human being. The “old busy” were stressed out and tired, but the new busy are fresh-faced, full of upbeat energy and relentlessly cheerful. It is positive psychology gone bananas. The campaign, which is global, is peppered with sentences such as the following (I don’t think it is grammatically correct to begin a sentence with “because”, but anyway). And it’s a lie, anyway:

“Because we know that having a full calendar means having a full life.”

This is presumably all excellent news for the corporations. If Hotmail can somehow make it cool to be busy, then management – ie, the art of extracting the maximum amount of money from each employee – is made a hell of a lot easier. The campaign also provides the self-improving new busy with some ideas about how to fill up that calendar in their quest for a “full life”. These range from the insane—”Would be open to taking a class in their sleep,” to the horribly twee and patronising—”Make pancakes into exotic shapes.” The new busy, we understand, “make beavers look lazy” and are schooled in the arts of aggressive optimism: “Have 100 good reasons why it will work.” As ever with such conditioning campaigns, we do not hear any mention of beauty or truth.

I am stressed just by reading about it…

“having a full calendar means having a full life.” What? Oh… i think I’ll go climb a mountain. Thank you very much

I can’t keep up with my grandfather. Whenever I see him, he’s rushing off to the gym, going on a fishing trip…

The Vancouver Transit Adspace Re-appropriation Project, or V-TARP, intends to reclaim the highly sought after mindspace used by corporations to communicate with the public, by collecting artworks from across the globe and installing them in the transit adspace.

All I have is a voice to undo the folded lie…