FAQ stands for the “Frequently Asked Questions” which was simplified to MRQ when some said, “This isn’t punk rebellion; it’s just
Media Raising Questions (MRQ)
MRQ drives critical thinking, sparks action.
1) Crowdsourcing discovers. As singers Harry Belafonte and Paul Robeson said, “Artists are the gatekeepers of truth.” With many reporters, thought leaders, and artists sharing their perspectives, we can, as Wikipedia has shown, co-discover our shared truths. NPR CEO Katherine Maher’s tweet on Dec. 23, 2024, rapidly reached 50+ Million views. The late Professor Irving Janis (Yale, later UC Berkeley) gathered evidence that supports Maher’s tweet: Janis defined “groupthink” as how teams sink to lowest common denominator outcomes in authoritarian regimes where the public is required to agree with those in power (what George Orwell called the Ministry of Truth). Access to diverse views is required for critical thinking, which is blocked when people are afraid to debate, afraid to ask questions.
2) Mission connects. Medium and style agnostic, MRQ is an emerging network of independent thinkers, from journalists to innovators to artists in a range of media, all raising questions about climate change, ending war, racism, sexism, and saving democracy by encouraging civil debate about topics that many fear to touch when free speech is in jeopardy. Nobel laureate (physics) Saul Perlmutter argues for critical thinking as lead author of the 2024 book, Third Millennium Thinking: Creating Sense in a World of Nonsense. Art, media, and story-telling can stimulate critical thinking by raising questions. Forget Shorter Showers (Youtube video below) brilliantly reflects on the manipulation of public opinion to delude us.
3) Questions spark action. The measure of art impact lies in the action it sparks. Charlie Chaplin’s film The Great Dictator (1940, before the U.S. had entered World War II) was Chaplin’s most commercially successful film, effectively satirizing Adolf Hitler. McCarthyism, during the Second Red Scare and mass hysteria of the early 1950s, attacked two popular comedians, Lucille Ball and Charlie Chaplin, whose influence Red Scare attackers sought to break, despite lack of evidence. But Charlie Chaplin was “recognized as the greatest comic actor in motion picture history” (Variety Dec. 27, 1977 Obituary) and his film inspired MRQ questions about how we can resist democracy sinking into dictatorship. When more than 50 NPR accounts left X, Elon Musk retaliated, “Defund NPR!” fueling debate about how a kleptocracy could forcibly use government control to serve the business interests of its power-holding elite at the expense of democracy. The crowd cheering Musk has energy like the crowd in Triumph of the Will, a 1935 Nazi propaganda film, directed by Leni Riefenstahl, which documents the 1934 Nazi Party Congress in Nuremberg, Germany.
Forget Shorter Showers is a brilliant example of MRQ – media raising questions, e.g. the LA Fires are an urgent call for global action on Climate Change, not solely as an L.A. problem, a California problem, or a U.S. problem, but as a global problem. The film makes two significant points, then draws a false conclusion:
- The fossil fuels industry has manipulated public opinion to convince us that if we individually take shorter showers, carpool, recycle, donate to help fire victims etc. we can rest in peace, feeling that we’ve done our share. This film’s message is that we’ve been brainwashed by the fossil fuels industry to take individual action and NOT to do the one thing we must do to save this planet – collective action to stop the fossil fuels industry from exacerbating climate change and to force restitution from fossil fuels industry.
- Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth supports this brainwashing by focusing on individual actions, not collective action vs the fossil fuels industry agenda.
- The first two significant points are followed by the film’s false conclusion that all industry and technology is destroying the planet. On the contrary, a people-centered internet, and other breakthrough technology, can contribute to saving this planet. In any case, this film is an outstanding example of Media Raising Questions (MRQ) to stimulate critical thinking.
Filmmaker Jordan Brown brings superb artistry to his media, raising questions that spark action – the power of MRQ.
The contrasting styles of comedian Charlie Chaplin and solo independent journalist Johnny Harris, who traveled in 2022 to Korea to observe the aftermath today of the Korean War, highlight why Katherine Maher’s tweet attracted millions of views and shares. Critical thinking demands not “just one authoritarian truth.” Media enables diverse voices to be heard, crowdsourcing many views of truth and raising diverse questions.
Media is complemented by music as another avenue to raise questions. In the post war era of the ’50s and ’60s, mathematician and musical comedian Tom Lehrer sang, “We’ll All Go Together When We Go,” raising questions about the threat of nuclear war that rears its ugly head again today.
You Don’t Know Jack, starring Al Pacino and Susan Sarandon (Director, Barry Levinson), raises questions about ethics in law, medicine, and the rights of us all, showing how hard it is for a small group to shift vested interests. Though the theme may sound depressing, this film is such a masterpiece of story-telling and great acting that it uplifts.
Nick Bostrom’s Fable of the Dragon Tyrant, published in the Journal of Medical Ethics, raised ethical questions about the cost of conventional medical practice failing to focus on healthy aging.
But this fable could also raise questions about a range of grand challenges, from climate change to our dying ocean, where costs rise from delay.
CBS featured Don’t Choose Extinction, a collaboration of the United Nations, UNDP, Jack Black, and Climate Action that attracted several million views – not enough to shift the onslaught of climate change – but it inspired the MRQ movement, making us wonder if Margaret Mead was right or not “that a small group of thoughtful, committed individuals can change the world. In fact, it’s the only thing that ever has.” If she was right, what will those of us who want to make a difference do next?
The music of Dinos Unite! picked up the thread, asking the big question, “How can we human dinos unite before we drive ourselves extinct?” Recent “Banksy stalks social media” images of Knowunzy (below) and his song STOP! speak to our disillusionment. MRQ games use question prompts to seed action quests, in contrast to the dystopian social commentary of cyberpunk and utopian social commentary of solar punk.
The book ALICE in Cinderland, a surreal, MRQ allusion to Alice in Wonderland, raises questions about today’s world of climate change, fires, and violence, where ALICE has become an acronym for Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, Evacuate. The MRQ experimental rock opera Yello World and its counterpart Hello World, won the Prix de l’Age d’Or and other awards.
MRQ also draws into its orbit media, music, visuals, and writing that doesn’t necessarily call itself “art.” The PSYOPS film below, made to recruit youth into the PsyOps military program, does not claim to be art, except perhaps the art of persuasion, but it raises questions.
Propaganda
If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, . . . we’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.
Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
Thinking for Oneself
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last,
and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
Mary Oliver, The Summer Day
Zann Gill, speaking at UC Berkeley on the Centenary of the Noosphere, describes the MRQ agenda to seed human – A.I. collaborative intelligence as “an antidote to X”, where X represents many domains in which centralized control is exploiting the global commons and disabling distributed autonomy and innovation. One of those domains is FOOD SECURITY.
Novelist Chad Kultgen and comedian Will Sasso created “Dudesy’s A.I.” of George Carlin, which is too shit-obsessed, too long, too uneven. But that’s just bad human judgment. Some of its “facts” are blatantly wrong: humans have been on Earth for a few hundred thousand years, not 6 million. George Carlin’s heirs are suing over the release of “George Carlin: I’m Glad I’m Dead,” which uses generative AI to mimic the late comedian’s voice and style. The legal action is among the first taken by the estate of a deceased celebrity for unlicensed use of his work and likeness. (What about prompting?) Two key points:
- This is a misrepresentation of the quality we associate with George Carlin; the point of the suit is well taken.
- BUT. . . there are a few good clips in this overlong, badly designed project. Those clips (below) show how cartoons and comedy, sci fi and A.I., can raise questions that humans hesitate to ask “in person.” A.I. hallucinations can force us to improve our critical thinking skills, make us check multiple sources rather than believing the first fake news “fact” we hear.
This Carlin A.I. raises some serious questions that should be on the table:
1) If we want to get along, why are there so many mass shootings in the U.S.? [3:30 – 4:45]
2) Do elections give us real choice and real democracy? [15:11 – 16:25]
3) What’s the advantage of a two party system? [21:45 – 22:15]
4) Who wants us addicted to an online metaverse? [19:46 – 20:08]
5) What would change if the U.S. military budget were spent less on killing people, more on helping people? [58:33 – 59:51] President Biden proudly gave $600 M. to build a railroad in Africa that will ship minerals that U.S. manufacturers need, but the Chinese have spent nearly a trillion dollars on the infrastructure that Africa needs. Military spending could shift to infrastructure spending, both in the U.S. and abroad.
