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 Wednesday, December 03, 2008

Walking Cultural Activism: Of The World

By Greg Perkins @ 3:08 PM

Tammy and I thought it would be great to produce a series of T-shirt designs for those occasions when it is appropriate to wear our ideas on our sleeves. Bonus points if they aren't just provocative but actually spark some good engagement!

This design speaks to the phenomenon of Christians who are taught to be in the world but not of the world and revel in being aliens here in reality. There is even a company named NOTW ("Not Of This World") that sells them a staggering array of hip decals and clothing.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but that's just messed up. The world is the source of every one of our values -- that's why we are in it, and why we should love being in it!

Yes, that is a reference to Leonardo da Vinci's renowned Vitruvian Man drawing. "This image exemplifies the blend of art and science during the Renaissance and ... represents a cornerstone of Da Vinci's attempts to relate man to nature." Here's a closer look:





(Just click through to BoltOfReason.Com to check out all the available styles and colors. We of course love suggestions and requests -- we're already working on a lot of fun ideas, and if you are the first to hit us with a new one that we use in a future shirt design, you'll get one for free!)

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 Comments

Wednesday, December 3, 2008 at 15:39:32 mst
Comment ID: #1
Name: Matt F.
E-mail: glamghoul(at)yahoo.com
URL: http://www.sleepisthebrotherofdeath.blogspot.com/

Okay, I'm getting that one.

And speaking of NOTW, my brother and I went into one or their stores in California and it was horrifying. I bought a sticker that said "A mind is a terrible thing" (as opposed to "...a terrible thing *to waste*"). I showed it to all the "Jesus Freaks" I knew and even they were weirded-out by it. Horrendous.

Wednesday, December 3, 2008 at 16:35:06 mst
Comment ID: #2
Name: Rational Jenn
E-mail: rationaljenn(at)gmail.com
URL: http://rationaljenn.blogspot.com

Do you have these in kid's sizes? :o)

Reminds me of a slogan I see on homeschooling shirts from time to time "The World Is My Classroom"--a sentiment which I really like. Although maybe "Reality Is My Classroom" would be better.

I think you have very clever designs--what's the Xmas deadline for ordering?

Wednesday, December 3, 2008 at 21:29:53 mst
Comment ID: #3
Name: Greg Perkins
E-mail: greg(at)eCosmos.com
URL: http://dianahsieh.com/blog

Hey, Jenn -- thanks for the suggestion! I went and added some for kids. (We've been generally avoiding these sorts of products for them since they aren't developed enough to have their own ideological fingers to poke in peoples' eyes, but this design seems fine for them. The other one for kids is the "got reason?" one. :^)

As for the Christmas ordering deadline, Printfection says this on their website (at http://www.printfection.com/helpbox.php?box=5 ):

Shipping Method Order by:
Super Saver Tuesday Dec. 9 11:59 PM MST
Standard Ground Sunday Dec. 14 11:59 PM MST
Two-day Thursday Dec. 18 11:59 PM MST
One-day Sunday Dec. 21 11:59 PM MST

"The ordering cutoffs outlined above include time for processing, production, and transit for delivery by Wednesday, December 24 (the last delivery day before Christmas)."

Wednesday, December 3, 2008 at 21:31:58 mst
Comment ID: #4
Name: Greg Perkins
E-mail: greg(at)eCosmos.com
URL: http://dianahsieh.com/blog

Hey, Jenn -- thanks for the suggestion! I went and added some for kids. (We've been generally avoiding these sorts of products for them since they aren't developed enough to have their own ideological fingers to poke in peoples' eyes, but this design seems fine for them. The other one for kids is the "got reason?" one. :^)

As for the Christmas ordering deadline, Printfection says this on their website (at http://www.printfection.com/helpbox.php?box=5 ):

Shipping Method Order by:
Super Saver Tuesday Dec. 9 11:59 PM MST
Standard Ground Sunday Dec. 14 11:59 PM MST
Two-day Thursday Dec. 18 11:59 PM MST
One-day Sunday Dec. 21 11:59 PM MST

"The ordering cutoffs outlined above include time for processing, production, and transit for delivery by Wednesday, December 24 (the last delivery day before Christmas)."

Wednesday, December 3, 2008 at 22:01:01 mst
Comment ID: #5
Name: pjs

I'm glad I saw this - was just on a plane the other day, and the woman sitting next to me had a book in a cloth cover with a "NOTW" sticker on it. I had no idea what "NOTW" was, but it sure did look like a bible, so I figured it was something weird. Guess I was right!

Wednesday, December 3, 2008 at 22:23:42 mst
Comment ID: #6
Name: William H Stoddard
E-mail: whswhs(at)mindspring.com
URL: http://whswhs.livejournal.com/profile

Purely as a linguistic and stylistic comment, the point being made by "of the world" is not necessarily going to be clear to everyone who sees the phrase. It sounds just like a common English prepositional phrase and may cause some people to wonder what the rest of the sentence is. Perhaps religious people will be more likely to make the connection, but people without much religious exposure may just be puzzled.

Thinking about it, I can suggest two alternate, very closely related phrasings: "of this world" or "worldly." Both have the advantage that they are slightly unusual in everyday English, and used primarily in a religious context; therefore they're more likely to make people realize that you're affirming what Christianity rejects.

Thursday, December 4, 2008 at 7:07:38 mst
Comment ID: #7
Name: TW
E-mail: v7anto(at)yahoo.com

It is interesting to see the extent to which evangelical Christianity influences everything in America right down to the methods Objectivists think would be cool ways to get their ideas across. Why not just dress tastefully, as Ayn Rand always did, and write books?

Thursday, December 4, 2008 at 9:04:41 mst
Comment ID: #8
Name: Greg Perkins
E-mail: greg(at)ecosmos.com
URL: http://ecosmos.com

Hi, William. Thanks -- I agree with it being a harder connection than some of the others. And we actually considered the "of this world" variant, but set it aside because I didn't want the implied premise of there being more than one possibility. We didn't think of WORLDLY, though -- I like it!

Thursday, December 4, 2008 at 9:38:28 mst
Comment ID: #9
Name: Greg Perkins
E-mail: greg(at)ecosmos.com
URL: http://ecosmos.com

Hi, TW. First, I think the fact that Christianity so dominates our culture bears on how to affect it for the better. The ideas we need to express (i.e., those which contrast to the insanity of Christianity) and how we can best express them (i.e., in ways that will be identifiable as such a contrast) will often be shaped by that.

Of course, there are *many* methods of affecting a culture for the better, and they aren't all mutually exclusive. Try as many as you like. Obviously I enjoy writing as *my* primary tool for cultural activism, and that's orthogonal to my wearing a T-shirt on "those occasions when it is appropriate to wear our ideas on our sleeves." But not all methods are equally open to everyone: some people don't have the time, training, or temperament for the writing thing -- but they might have the temperament for the little cultural nudge of wearing an ideological T-shirt at the right place and time.

Or they might try conspicuously wearing a gold dollar-sign broach.

Thursday, December 4, 2008 at 11:58:42 mst
Comment ID: #10
Name: William H Stoddard
E-mail: whswhs(at)mindspring.com
URL: http://whswhs.livejournal.com/profile

Greg,

Admittedly the formulation "of this world" does concede the idea that there could be multiple other worlds, including the "higher" worlds imagined by religions, and that could be a problem. There are hazards in citing an idea in order to refute it.

My favorite of William Empson's poems, "This Last Pain," is interesting because it explicitly treats religion as the construction of an imaginary world:

All those large dreams by which men long live well
Are magic-lanterned on the smoke of Hell.
This, then, is real, let me confide:
A painted, small, translucent slide.

These the ingenious might hand-paint at leisure,
Or most emporia would stock or measure,
And feasting in their dappled shade
We should forget how they were made.

Thursday, December 4, 2008 at 13:37:29 mst
Comment ID: #11
Name: Mike Hardy
E-mail: (my last name) (at) math.umn.edu

"OF THE WORLD" will get construed as (1) an environmentalist slogan, and (2) a "world citizen"-type thing.

Go for it!

Thursday, December 4, 2008 at 16:29:13 mst
Comment ID: #12
Name: Kyle Haight
E-mail: khaight(at)alumni.ucsd.edu
URL: http://www.leftist.org/haightspeech/

Greg writes "Or they might try conspicuously wearing a gold dollar-sign broach." Those who own an XBox 360 game console will know that Microsoft just rolled out a software update that includes a new feature called "Avatars". An avatar is basically a little customizable animated 'virtual you' that gets deployed in various user interfaces and programs. One of the things you do to customize your avatar is pick clothing for it to wear. I was pleased and amused to note that one of the clothing options is a black t-shirt with a golden dollar sign necklace.

Guess what my avatar is wearing? B-)

Wednesday, January 14, 2009 at 20:06:47 mst
Comment ID: #13
Name: Jeff

If I did know the intent from reading it here, the meaning of the phrase "of the world" would go right over my head.

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