The crucial arts is about not only (re)discovering ourselves in an open-ended process of creative thought and imagination, but is also about creative nonviolent interaction and intervention in situations of varying intensities. It is a method (not an ideology) of care taken up foremostly by people whom have been forced to wake up to reality (i.e. the "radicalized"), yet at the same time are sick almost to death of the stupidity and insanity of wars and war society as we have too long known such.
The idea that we are *all* descendants of tribes figures importantly into the crucial arts. To be able to see ourselves as more autonomous than we have been "programmed" to think of ourselves as, --as individuals independent of "taken for granted" Givens (i.e. "citizenship", subordinates to various formal authorities, soldiers of the wizards of Oz) is a crucial value in this art-form.
While anyone may claim to engage in the crucial arts, the reality is similar to the martial arts in that depth is not proven by claims alone. It is our actions, and how successful we are in making connections and "bridges" with the angry, violent, or severely alienated behavior of others (and ourselves!) that makes or breaks the truth here.
Any dominating group can "make a bridge" with another, yet anyone can see just how deep that so-called "bridge" is by the reflections that come with the action. Various forms of tyranny can compell and force people to smile (as when the Red Cross visited nazi concentration camps during WWII), yet we can *feel* a radical difference when people's eyes sparkle, when they *are inspired* by others, and how they "art themselves" in response.
The problem with the martial arts is that these arts, though deep in their own way, are not only problematic in often being utilized as subordinates (or tools) to formal states, but as well, a tool of *perpetuating alienation*. The crucial arts on the other hand, are about "messing with" various levels of alienation, seeing the *heart* of the matter (re: FEAR), and laying a meaningful basis for radically excellent community and radically beautiful humanity.
The word "radical" here is significant. The word allows for *a very broad definition to play with*. That is, this is not so-called "perfect peace" on the face of it. This is about *being real*, where fighting (usually alienation-stuck challenge) *evolves* to "phighting" (love-seeking challenge). Where "total self-defense-only" deflection fighting techniques turn into possibly hysterical laughter, tickling, and other forms of radicalized care up to each "interactor", "orrior" (not 'war-rior'), or "team" of interacting orriors. (interactors or orriors are the autonomous equivalent to the soldier-ized mentality of the martial artist.)
So, the crucial arts is about inspiring and perpetuating people's intuitive and inherent (original) desire for forms of radical imagination, radical communication, and forms of meaningful community. For meaning. For living in spaces and times where people--consistently escaping from their colonizations, from their conditioning-- *finally* see the value of getting along. And of escaping the confined beliefs and imaginations which states and their actual owners have for too long perpetuated.
In creating our own ways of being and becoming in the various levels of intensities which make up our daily lives in the existing (or "normal") paradigm/model (which we've been taught to take for granted as the only one "possible"), practitioners of the crucial arts have a way of radically evolving not only activity, but as well *conceptions* of life and living. When we *permit ourselves* to think things through and be our own leaders (etc.) of our lives, we begin to explore "outside the box" and see how confining many many perceptions we've accepted on their surfaces are. Take the diplomacy war known as "peace", or "war" itself, or even that which is called "sanity".
All of these situations have been taught to us in a way that corralls us and our imaginations, and thus we are led to believe that there is no "realistic" alternative to them. Surrounded by a consistent repetition of such limitations, it becomes quite "natural" for the colonized to accept and *internalize* such values and beliefs. There is nothing "noteworthy" or "reputable" beyond, we are led to believe.
Further reading:
Crucial Arts in action
