Self-validation

The process that we go through before production happens, as an intrinsic part of being is what we called self-validation. Words like acceptance and notions of making peace with oneself do not fully capture this process with respect to its mechanics for production, so we make this choice of words. We choose to talk about this process as self-validation.

If you free yourself from looking at yourself in ways which internalised the impedance of allowing the noise of sociality to enter your mind; if you cannot visualise yourself to be alone in the world; If you always feel the glare at the back of your neck - then there is still some work to be done.

Content production happens in your self-contextualisation when you identify a rationale for looking at your production brief as the most optimal way of contributing to the world. There are many ways to produce content but only one way of engaging with production in a way that the median state of the field gets altered. The state of the field gets arrived at after accommodating and acknowledging the presences of all the actors involved. As our flow of content gets realised only on our surrendering to a way of being, the content can alter the median state of a field where the latter has already acknowledged us, and this surrender is only possible by understanding and assigning a value to our content which oversteps the stupor of the field. To assume the potency of altering the state of the field is to validate a certain concentration of intensity and a certain unshakeable presence. This assignment might not embody an absolute veracity of truth (which has been conspicuously absent from the scene for too long) but the risk of bearing a hollow claim must be taken. Only after this claim of self-validation has been performed is it possible to produce content which disassociates itself from the processes of consumption. Only after production has happened and a kind of self-propelled consumption has taken place, does the thick skin of opacity develop. This opacity is important for the surface of content to be prepared for mass consumption. For, some eyes hidden in the crowd are uncaring and some eyes are exhausted and some minds are flippant about the act of consumption. Only after our content is thick-skinned does it become ready for publishing and distribution.

Being thick-skinned is essential in this whole process. Wearing a naked heart is too dangerous; it is no way to live in the world.

Self-validation produces a thick skin.

We implore upon the world to disengage with the hunger and desperation for external validation. We demand the development of an attitude that does not play with casual disregard for views and perspectives that validate themselves on the basis of external parameters. This operation can be performed only in certain conditions and these set of conditions will never be textualised and rendered as a rule-based game. Some surfaces claiming to be self-validated will always be fraudulent and these will have to be dealt with in the same way as the filtration of presence is performed at the time of social interaction aiming to seek cohesion. Self-validated content is only a parameter of quality and not a descriptor of a category. The nature of the surface of knowledge that is being consumed in a specific moment still has to be engaged with as a body of content and should not be perceived as a container of noise that can be blindly trusted.

As we stated earlier, the definition of our problem statement is done in the context of achieving a smooth and uninterrupted flow of content. We are not tackling the problems of content aggregation and filtration here. As far as we are concerned, it is not a sufficiently mature problem to be considered.

We would rather model the world as a space swarming with agents who actively produce content than one as a space with similarity to the current state of an abundance of consumers and a scarcity of commercially-viable producers who need to be enveloped in a gloss of validation data offered by the media to be considered worth consuming at all. Today we have a competitive marketplace of market validated content which on consumption makes a consumption profile for us that is then further utilised for marking us as valid marketing fodder.

The current state of the world has many different sources of validation to offer us but does not have a space for the self-validated. If we choose to be blind to the sociality of the content we see then we have nothing at all. Every package of content is socialised, everything is floating in mediated space. The isolated, untouched (by mind or hand) content has no place in the world. We are surrounded by content which has no fidelity, coils through minds at will, and yields their message to anyone who enquires. There is no knowledge personally reserved for you in this pool of content. Supposedly reading leads to synthesis and this synthesis culminates into a development of personal perspectives and opinions. But, this never happens. In a pool of commonly read content there is room only for the development of cliques and clouds of common belief. Some get hit more directly by some threads of content and identify the hit as a personal facet of discovery.

To hit upon a personal facet of content, a flow of production has to be initiated and self-validated. Entire knowledge-systems need be constructed without any building blocks but matters generated from the knowledge of the moment. The granular pool of insights gleaned from here and there come together as a content that is personal, special and, hitherto, unseen in our context. A unique association between body and message gets formed. And, this association is entirely unscrupulous and unfamiliar in ways, because it doesn't belong to the frameworks of the world, the so-called tree of knowledge. This weird fiction gets rejected and misunderstood forever and thereby remains safe from being intrusion or being misconstrued. The obscure and hidden breeds the mysteries that in turn populate all the stories with a core that can be chased from different angles.

On being chased and questioned, does a surface of knowledge disintegrate or does it reflect the questions back in the same form in which they were proposed? Do they bear scrutiny or do they refuse examination? Self-validated entities never agree to be examined. Neither do they feel the need to be accepted nor do they have the desire to fit in; they are in perfect balance within themselves and do not fall into the traps and offers laid out for them. In every contest that they are placed into, they wriggle out of it claiming disinterest.

A dry and difficult persona is difficult to construct. It can only be constructed with an utter disregard for the validator, the filter or the gatekeeper. Not out of angst but because they do not exist in the first place. Inside the plane of opacity, inside its thick skin, the self-validated entity refuses to acknowledge any out-of-frame meta-operator. In the world in which a diagnostic frame in pathogenic sciences studies the human mind, such a persona is regarded as a schizoid.

A schizoid self-validates. And, we are all schizoid, and, we need to accept that. The Surfatial University considers this one of its pillars.