The Activist Commandments of the New Millennium

  (The following text was circulated anonymously as a techno-placa on the internet)

1.     Practice responsible hedonism. Revindicate the sacred right to party, and fight Puritanism in all its forms–it is a subtle form of political control.

2.     Avoid simplistic “us/them” binary oppositions. Things have gotten logarithmically more complex. The new conceptual models for understanding and explaining our times must be fluid, open-ended and multidimensional.

3.     Practice intelligent skepticism, o sea, question simplistic formulas, simple answers, one-sided narratives, dogmatic solutions, self-righteous positions. (Question everything, coño, even these commandments.)

4.     Distrust mainstream media. Go out of your way to remain informed. Subscribe to various alternative magazines. Read the foreign press as much as possible. Scan the net regularly. Get other points of view.

5.     Discuss politics and culture daily with friends and colleagues.

6.     Learn other languages, especially those that will help you understand and communicate with your surrounding “others.” We must all be fluent in at least three languages.

7.     Confront the oppressive and narrow-minded tendencies in your own ethnic- or gender-based communities with valor and generosity. The “enemy” is everywhere, even inside ourselves.

8.     Sit at the table with your true enemies (if you can, of course). Talk to them. Be polite but firm with them–it’s painful, but necessary.

9.     Fight self-marginality. Be an “outsider/insider,” a temporary member of multiple communities. We need to be everywhere: in the media, in academia, in the major institutions as well as in the community-based ones.

10.  Go high-tech; we have no other option. If you don’t participate in the net, and expropriate the new digital technologies for humanistic purposes, you will soon be out of the game.

P.S.: And one more thing­­– don’t make the mistake I am making in this text and take yourself too seriously. If you stop laughing, you are dead.

Gomez-Pena, Guillermo. "The Activist Commandments of the New Millennium." Dangerous Border Crossers: The Artist Talks Back. New York: Routledge, 2000. 77-78. Print.