I agree completely. One concept that came out several years ago at a Tuesday@REI (an excellent forum series that was destroyed by the incompetent Northeast Ohio establishment) was that we are all artists. We may not all be like John Jackson, and so many other "professional" artists, who sacrifice all else in life to create and express themselves daily, but we all have the innate capacity to express ourselves in creative ways throughout our lives... writing, gardening, drawing, helping others. While our society does not encourage or nurture these instincts, our human experiences do, if we allow ourselves to openly experience the beauty of life, whether nature or human abilities.

When I started REALNEO it had multiple purposes of creating a new form of collaboration in NEO and creating a better NEO. But, as the form of REALNEO developed, and I allowed myself to step away from pressures to support a society I found unacceptable, I found the combination of open source communications and rich technology provided me a unique creative outlet that offered more ways to be expressive and share my creativity, and the combination of all that keeps me healthy through all hardship.

When I saw the PD attacking and trivializing blogs, as they did in the Sunday PD apologist column defending one instance of their sloppy or divisive journalism, I felt they were attacking the core instinct of creative people (all people) in this community to be creative, and collaborate. That they have also gone on a witch-hunt against urban culture shows how the American corporate establishment has turned authoritarian and autocratic.

It is such industrial corruption by corporate media against individual freedom to think, speak and express oneself in America that is the cause of so many of our our social ills. So do create in all the ways that are healthy for you, and share your creativity any way you see fit, and realize you do so as a countercultural movement against not only your socially-programmed inner fears and restraints but against the ills and pains of our entire industrial-establishment malaise. Create a better society through your pursuit of individual, personal free speech and self expression!

Disrupt IT