08/06/2013
HYPER REALITY PRODUCTIONS
GUIDING PRINCIPLES DECLARATION
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STATEMENT OF PURPOSE
Hyper Reality Productions aims to create places where the core fire of the individual spirit can come out and play free. It seeks to give a home those who feel unaccepted; for it is a truth all cultures and societies, no matter how purportedly enlightened, have countless numbers of them.
It aims to conjure moments that speak to the core of those who take part in them, so that they leave having felt something in their being healed, enlightened, moved, loved, spoken to, danced with, or affected in whatever way was needed, even if unknowingly. It aims to continually create new expressions to share with others, for life is change, and it is life itself that it ultimately seeks to serve. It aims to create memories that leave those involved with them more at peace with themselves, so they can return to the world and feel empowered to help ignite the same spark in others.
LIST OF PRINCIPLES - INTRODUCTION
Hyper Reality Productions believes that, when pursued properly, work and play become one. An extension of this premise is the most intense play requires the most focused work to create. This work can only be achieved by a set of principles that are soberly and rationally considered, communicated in solid but accessible terms, and remembered and followed with unwavering devotion.
Therefore, we at Hyper Reality Productions declare the following principles that, to all whose paths intersect with ours, we pledge we will always follow to the best of our ability.
1) OUR EXISTENCE IS SERVICE
Hyper Reality Productions does not exist for itself, or for any of the people that take an active role in creating it. It exists for whatever community it is that calls us to be a part of it, and that we freely choose to join with, for whatever time it will have us.
Should it ever come time that our communities inform us that our services are no longer required, Hyper Reality Productions will cease to exist. As long as the opposite is the case, we will continue to serve those who come to us to the best of our abilities.
2) HONOR EACH INDIVIDUAL
Extended from our service to our communities is our service to every individual in them, even, and often especially, those who feel without a home in any community. We respect the freedom of each individual who enters the Hyper Reality world to decide what experience they want to have. Our service to them is to create a safe space where all have the ability to do so.
We recognize that anyone who takes part in a Hyper Reality event does so freely. We respect that choice, and honor it by continually giving them a place where they are shown nothing but the highest respect and appreciation. Done perfectly, every person involved in a Hyper Reality event would walk away feeling, whatever logic might say, that the moment they participated in was created specifically for them.
3) EQUALITY WITH OTHERS
An extension of respect is a conscious recognition of equality. Hyper Reality Productions is not above or below the communities we serve. We are an extension of them. We come to them not as masters or servants, but as brothers.
In all interactions with anyone we work with, either in official or unofficial capacities, we will continually endeavor to make this respect of equality felt and recognized. Although this principle is arguably implied by the aforementioned ones, we feel that a conscious declaration of equality with all around us is a requisite to creating the places and times that is the Hyper Reality mission.
Relatedly, we will always maintain a standard of equality in all with whom we deal. No one in our world is better than anyone else, from the highest billionaire rock star to the broken man wandering in alone for the first time. Our principles apply to everyone, equally, at all times.
4) RESPECTING COMMUNITY STANDARDS
The same as we must recognize the right of each individual to choose their experience, so we must also recognize that all communities have standards that bind them, and that servicing these communities means respecting them at all times, without judgment. We will always endeavor to know these, understand these, and follow them to the best of our capabilities.
Communities are, we recognize, only the collaborative and cooperative extension of those who take part in them. We cannot honor the individual without also honoring the group that the those who come to us have created.
5) OPEN, HONEST COMMUNICATION AT ALL TIMES
We further cannot hold to any of the above standards without maintaining a policy of open, honest communication with all with whom we work. Hyper Reality's goals are sincere. It follows, then, that, barring the reasonable privacy requests of all who work with us, that we cannot ever have anything to hide from anyone who interacts with us, at least if we expect others to believe in the sincerity of our intentions.
Hyper Reality Productions will never knowingly take part in dishonest or dishonorable actions. We will be as open and clearly communicative with all parties who interact with us as we are able to. We will hold ourselves open to the communities we service so that they may judge our actions as they are. We feel that as long as we stay true to our principles, there is nothing to fear from doing so, and only the trust necessary to serve our communities to lose if we don't.
6) HOLDING OTHERS TO THE SAME STANDARDS
Pursuant to the recognition of equality is the recognition that we cannot hold to our principles without demanding the same from all with whom we interact, and as hard as we demand this from ourselves. Thus, as examples, we cannot abide disrespect towards someone we are in creative collaboration with, we cannot take part in dishonesty or lack of communication from those we work with, we cannot be any party to any action that makes one feel unsafe in our creative spaces, and so forth.
To pursue this principle in a truly steadfast manner may often require that we be hard to the point of extreme discomfort for those who bear witness our actions. It is our principle that the unpleasantness of whatever course we must choose in order to maintain this principle will always, in the long run, be eclipsed by the unpleasantness that would come from us not doing so; for the latter would undermine and, if left unchecked, ultimately destroy all that we endeavor to do.
7) PRINCIPLES DO NOT GUARANTEE PERFECTION
No matter how hallowed a set of principles we hold or we expect others to hold, we are all human. We cannot ever pursue them perfectly. We therefore state to the communities we serve that if we ever err in the pursuit of these principles, that it was an honest error, and that we will offer apologies and fair restitution to all affected to the best of our abilities once this error is made clear to us.
Concordantly, in reference to principle #5, we expect perfection from no one we work with. Rather, we expect only the same steadfast sincerity of effort, including the same honorable restitution for errors. The freedom to safely err is one of the most important extensions of the freedom to be oneself. Those a part of the Hyper Reality mission work under the safety this freedom guarantees.
Principles, no matter how deeply held, do not guarantee perfection. Rather, the continual pursuit of perfection, however impossible the ideal, is arguably the highest principle. It might come some day in pursuit of our goals that we are presented with a situation that shows us that there was a principle that was missing, or that one of the ones we held is imperfectly realized or understood, maybe even wrong. We at Hyper Reality Productions don't pretend to have access to any deeper truths than anyone around us. To the extent that we might say we "know" anything, it is only what we have learned in pursuit of what is most important to us.
And what is most important to us is to raise up the communities that allow us into their lives, so that when our communal work is complete, we are all better for it. We feel that, as long as we pursue this goal with a clear heart, an utter lack of any malice towards anyone, and a steadfastness of honor, that the long arc of the universe will always bend us towards the right courses of action.
8) NO EASY ROAD
We are aware that the Hyper Reality mission is, in many ways, counter to the tendencies of our world to make all in it feel ugly, impotent and irrelevant. We are aware this means that the harder we pursue our mission, the more that the world will push back, purposely or not, consciously or not.
While Hyper Reality Productions cannot guarantee perfection from either itself as an organization or any of its members, what we can guarantee is that we will not simply turn away from this mission because it gets too difficult. We accept that we will always have to fight battles, large and small, to create what we envision. We do not wish them or invite them, but we will never cower from them. Our service to our communities would be worthless if we ever so gave up. We would be telling them that they aren't worth it.
They are. Anyone who honors us by opening the arms of their community to us earns nothing less than the most we are humanly capable of. Therefore, to create what we aim to in order to show the most reverent service to the communities that so honor us, we at Hyper Reality Productions pledge our resoluteness, no matter the difficulty it ever presents to the organization or the members in it, to always stand tall, stand firm, and stand with.
9) NEW CREATIONS, AND THEIR ASSOCIATED PRINCIPLES
Finally, we recognize that the correct pursuit of the Hyper Reality mission holds the potential for new life of all forms. We hold this up as one of the most desirable goals of our mission, recognizing that this goal itself has its own associated principles.
What others choose to do ultimately from any experience with Hyper Reality Productions is up to them. We cannot interfere with this rule without forgoing the aforepromised respect to the individual. However, we must, and will, instruct ourselves at all times from the experiences of those we come into contact with, to make sure that our aim to bring out the best in them is always as true as we are capable of.
This rule goes further for any new groups that are birthed within Hyper Reality auspices. We will always desire that our actions lead to such new creations, and we recognize further that done perfectly, what is created by Hyper Reality Productions holds the potential to itself be called a new community. However one wishes to label it, we recognize the simultaneous obligations to let all, individual or group, develop in their own free way, and to use the information cleaned from their experiences to instruct us on whether or not what we are doing is leading to ends that ultimately support the Hyper Reality mission.
10) SUMMARY
We at Hyper Reality Productions recognize the relationship to those we engage as eternally synergistic, working to create together what we have been hitherto unable to create apart. We accept that this requires nothing less than the most steadfast effort we can bring out in ourselves, and that if we are successful at doing so, that we can create places where all feel capable of being a part of something that is eternally new, yet simultaneously something they can always call home. We recognize that the opportunity to do so is one of the greatest honors we could be allowed to have, and that the only valid response to honor this opportunity is to do everything in our power to bring out the best we are all capable of producing together.
We at Hyper Reality Productions pledge to all communities that would have us, for as long as they would have us, that we will always do nothing less than precisely that.
