Serendipity (or the universe) strikes again.
I’ve often said that these articles appear without conscious effort on my part and originate from unlikely places or conversations. Last weekend, I was lucky to be invited to the Cheltenham International Film Festival which had a rich, varied and engaging programme of screenings and events.
This is neither the time nor place to comment on the events I attended but may do so elsewhere. I met many interesting men and women at the festival including those involved in panel discussion and Q&A sessions.
However, this article came out of discoveries following a deep and interesting discussion with Stewart (who was a supporter and attendee at the Festival) about the music and entertainment industry which is controlled by the same structure that controls everything else. Stewart told me of Ren, someone I’d not heard of but who has established his own identity independent of the music companies. Ren has to negotiate the vagaries of intellectual property rights like anyone looking to generate revenue to live by creating music.
I won’t say too much about Ren and his journey through serious illness and deep psychological trauma because he articulates this through his music and livestreams. This is the piece that Stewart recommended:
In my exploration of other music and youtube content put out by Ren, I came across Ren explaining the detail of, and his desire to resolve, a copyright dispute.
In this recent stream below, Ren spends time with some of his fanbase/”family” where again he touches on the dispute with KujoBeats and explains how he’d like to move on and create as many positives out of this situation as possible.
In this last stream, Ren says that this dispute wouldn’t have occurred without the success of Sick Boi in generating money, i.e. money is the means by which we organise ourselves at scale and most everyone needs money to access the means to life.
Somewhere, in one of the streams, Ren says he regards Greed as the most pernicious or worst of the seven deadly sins. Greed is a product of money and the attendant flaws in the way we organise ourselves outside families and small groups.
As Alex and I have been discovering in our work over recent years, we are in the midst of a paradigm shift that has yet to benefit or enter the consciousness of the majority, particularly those who are heavily dependent on the money system in order to survive and thrive.
The purpose of this article is to broaden this conversation beyond activists and the financial community, where much of our efforts have been focused of late. I’ve not done any analysis of Ren’s followers but guess that the majority are young (although from comments to the videos, he evidently appeals to young and old alike).
The young are going to see the fruits of the current paradigm shift for a much greater proportion of their lives and are key to helping to accelerate the transition. Conscious energy is rising and there is growing evidence of this seeping into the nooks and crannies of our cultures/societies.
In retrospect, the 1960s have been seen by many as a false dawn as art, music and the counterculture were very quickly colonised, tamed and controlled by the structure. But, the 1960s musical and cultural revolution was an essential, evolutionary, stepping stone and signpost on our journey of rising human consciousness
Finally, intellectual property rights are a trap that we’ve fallen into because money is the way we organise ourselves. I’m not in any way critical of Ren or anyone else who monetises their creative work but what comes through Ren’s work and conversation is a deep desire for something better. His and his followers’ recognition, that something better is already here and growing in influence, can only help smooth and accelerate the transition.