MetaCulture is gone. "The VILLAGE IDIOT STUDIO!" will battle the follies of the 21st century

WASHINGTON - July 4, 2023 - PRLog -- After twelve years as a (successful) dispute management and dialogue center operating out of Bangalore, India, and six years of working (without success) to influence the destructive democratic culture from within the "swamp" of Washington, DC, Ashok Panikkar, the founder of MetaCulture, is shutting it down.

MetaCulture is now being reborn as the Village Idiot Studio!

The Village Idiot will be emphatically liberated from the world of clients, grant-makers, gatekeepers, and power brokers. They have become complacent and have been hijacked by entrenched (old boys and old girls) networks, leaving democratic nations and societies helpless and unable to respond adequately to our existential crisis. Their intellectually shallow (and partisan) response to the threats posed by authoritarianism, identity politics, and artificial intelligence should serve as a warning to anyone who expects them to save democratic societies.

The Village Idiot will continue to operate out of Washington, DC, USA, and will be thoughtful, deliberate, creative, fearless, and irreverent. It will present original perspectives on diversity, democracy, citizenship, and the follies of the optimistically self-described Homosapiens (wise humans).

For more than 35 years, Ashok has consulted, taught, mediated, and facilitated hundreds of groups and tens of thousands of people on conflict, diversity management, communication, critical thinking, and democratic functioning. The Village Idiot will continue demystifying our complicated and dangerous world by separating imagined problems from real ones, emotionally satisfying solutions from useful ones, and existentially vital issues from minor irritants.

The new website The village idiot https://villageidiot.studio/ seeks to provoke and inspire serious rethinking. It presents an eclectic mixture of significant and original analysis, online courses, graphic posters, videos, and musical arrangements.

A PEEK INTO THE WEBSITE

Since the fall of 2019, the DemoSapiens courses have challenged students to rethink their understanding of (a) the human mind and thinking processes, (b) democracy and the management of pluralistic societies, and (c) the impact of artificial intelligence. The Rights, Slights, and Free Lunches blog is a series of biweekly reflections. Democracy Bites is a buyable collection of powerful and original graphic artwork in the form of posters, coffee mugs, and t-shirts. Flotsam and Jetsam is a creative section of spoken words, musical arrangements, videos, podcasts, and creative snippets that give a colorful take on vital issues of the day.

"The bad news is people's ignorance. The worst news is their determination to remain that way," says Ashok Panikkar despairingly.

Get ready to battle stupidity wherever we find it. And please extend your support to The Village Idiot by subscribing to it, signing up for courses, or purchasing original posters