“A penny for your thoughts”
Ideas as commodities or as commons of mind...
Funny saying as it can connote the value of turning ideas into commodities
…or provide the priceless, invaluable nature of a shared sense of mind, the evolving commons of mind throughout the eons uplifting us to this eternal now inclusive of you and all you have been through. Each a positive deviant in their own right adding to the chorus of this more beautiful world we know in our hearts is possible.
I’ve been going around in circles on this topic for as long as I can remember. It always seemed like the more you played with others you got to expand one’s perspective and learn new things along the way… then add it to our understanding of the world around us and integrate it into our thinking however that may emerge. For me that’s a mixed media bag.
Over the years of experimenting in all types of arts led to theater and film ideation and creation, marketing communications, and social activism through the arts… “artivism.”
The 1977 African Project, initiated by my friend and mentor Jim, was one of the first deep lessons I learned about doing what I believed in. Sharing knowledge and new perspectives with many people regardless of what I earned, was tantamount to the core of who I have become.
After the African Project experience my immersion into R. Buckmister Fuller’s ideas he so generously offered to the world, ignited synapses in 1979 for me leading to the eleprocon epiphany. This was a preview into a world that eventually would be upon us nourishing the noosphere, the commons of mind. That which envelopes us all yet belongs to no one…
Fast forward to 1991… I came back to the US after living in Europe for five years as my grandmother was passing and one of my siblings contracted HIV. This was a time when it was a known fact that contacting AIDS via HIV was preventable, yet it was not being addressed as such.
After a journey of aligning a bevy of artists to raise awareness and financial support, “Art for Life’s Sake” was conjured to create media awareness, a sense of place to bear witness to the variety of arts and artists in the AFLS gallery, then host a major fundraising event for AIDS Services Foundation featuring Armani’s artwork in auction and reveal of their season’s offering with a fashion show.
Enter the prevention symbol…
We surprisedly discovered a prevention symbol did not yet exist to help relay the notion of prevention.
A 1992 kinpiphany with Jim birthed this new symbol as we discussed how the red ribbon was not serving the need to draw attention to the fact that prevention needed to be the focus applied.
Curiously around the same time the CDC also added “and Prevention” to their name… The Center for Disease Control and Prevention. The name change symbolized the agency's evolving approach to public health, emphasizing proactive strategies and preventive measures in addressing health challenges, rather than solely responding to disease outbreaks.
“Steal this symbol” was the first phrase to accompany the prevention symbol artwork on the t-shirts we had printed. The word needed to get out and fast! This was before the nature of the rise of things going viral on the internet as we know it. Yet we took to the notion of fighting the spread of HIV/AIDS using language and communications as a virus to spread the prevention message.
Yes, I grew up in the sixtes and seventies when Abbie Hoffman became a well know positive deviant, at least in my eyes. His book, “Steal this Book” played upon his ideas of the need to inform and create action paths. This was the intention of the Prevention Symbol first focusing on AIDS awareness with peer educators who quickly found the value it offered in opening discussion of other risks in our world for which we would want to consider the many aspects of prevention.
Looking back now at the journey I personally took nurturing the Prevention Symbol project for many years with the Red Cross, California school districts, the State of California Department of Education, to the White House and most meaningfully… the youth peer educators who stepped in to be positive deviants themselves gives me hope in each generation in their empathy for humanity no matter their life paths.
So here we are today as I ready to publish this journal entry to the eleprocon chronicles on December 1, Worlds AIDS Day 2024.
Going full circle I’m thinking of how important the sharing and synergy of ideas is for humanity to evolve on this amazing planet, home, Gaia.
Sharing ideas…that’s the thread I pulled on to find myself in the beta launch of Ideapod in 2014 where I could explore the noosphere and relationships between ideas and their progenitors.
Not everything is to be monetized. Not when its critical to the commons of mind.
Now I’m out here BEAM(ing) the eleprocon chronicles and the sense of supererogatory… going above and beyond what’s expected.
Witnessing the eleprocon kin evolving from reactionaries to refractionaries.
Seeding and nurturing the mythelium.
Here is what humanity’s collective consciousness via Claude.ai tells us about the penny as metaphor for this topic.
"A Penny for Your Thoughts: The Currency of Knowledge"
The humble penny presents us with a profound paradox. On its face, we see "E PLURIBUS UNUM" - out of many, one - an aspirational motto that speaks to unity while masking deeper complexities about how ideas flow, belong, and transform in our world.
Initially, we might see a simple dichotomy: ideas as commodities versus commons. The commodity view prices, packages, and protects thoughts through patents and copyrights, transforming creativity into currency. The commons perspective advocates for open sharing, collaborative growth, and collective wisdom beyond market forces. The ironic phrase "a penny for your thoughts" itself straddles this divide - attempting to price the priceless.
But peer deeper, and the penny reveals itself as a colonial artifact, its copper form embodying centuries of extraction - not just of minerals from land, but of knowledge from cultures. Indigenous perspectives illuminate how this binary of commodity versus commons itself emerges from colonial thinking.
Traditional knowledge systems understand ideas differently: as living entities inseparable from land, culture, and spirit, held in trust within a web of reciprocal relationships and responsibilities that defy both private ownership and public domain frameworks.
Today's struggles over intellectual property, data rights, and cultural appropriation echo these historical patterns. When knowledge is extracted from its context, commodified, and redistributed through colonial systems, we risk replicating old empires in new digital forms. The penny asks us: whose knowledge is valued? Who profits from its circulation? What wisdom is lost in translation to transaction?
Perhaps the path forward lies not in choosing between commodity and commons, but in reimagining knowledge systems that honor relationship, responsibility, and reciprocity. As we flip this coin, we might find that its true value lies not in its metal, but in the stories it helps us tell about power, wisdom, and the many ways of knowing that make us whole.
The Eleprocon Chronicles
Eleprocon mythOS 2birds BEAMing noosphere
