Oh, Seascape Artists of Tomorrow!
Morning Thoughts #66
In theory, there is nothing wrong with fantasy, but there's also nothing more important than reality. If we lose touch with the world for long enough, eventually we will believe it to be intangible. We learn from experience, and when we live a life that lacks experience, what we're really lacking is education. Though we are too often tempted to forget it these days, even great fiction is great because it deals with questions universally applicable to lived human experience. When it doesn't, we're dealing with mere entertainment.
Can you feel what we're losing? Of course you can't, and neither can I! That's precisely the problem: we are not grounded; we are weightless, soaring above our own cultural and personal histories, being enticed into fantasy universes! And for a time (and possibly right now), we will happily convince ourselves that our incipient superhero status has put us in this position, that it is a cape (surely of our own making!) that allows us to take to the air. But friends, trust me, this illusion will wear off, and soon we will realize that we are floating only because we are in deep space, long detached from any meaningful orbit. We are lost from ourselves, lost from our history, and lost from any realistic perception of who we are, where we come from, and where it is worth going.
For this reason, I implore you to embrace realism! Do not lose yourself to fantasy genres! If you must, you can dabble in them, but make sure to wear a space suit that keeps you connected to the oxygen of real life. How many young men of this generation are lost in the deep space of virtual video game reality, never to return? How many young women lost to the outer galaxies of Instagram? Ah! You can not "learn from experience" via your screens! Do not let tech companies or Hollywood be the middleman in charge of delivering reality to you! You cannot disregard the real without discarding yourself.
The disseminators of propaganda are would-be creators of false worlds. Your tie to the self-experienced world, your body as actual flesh and blood, is your first line of defense against your own potential gullibility. Those who have no use for your personal sovereignty know this. They understand that by severing your meaningful ties to reality, you become more vulnerable to believing their self-serving absurdities and lies. The same process plays out in 30-second television ads or state media networks in totalitarian states. In today's popular usage, a narrative is really just a lie with a good haircut. And yes, bad movies can serve as useful tools for prospective tyrants. Good art, on the other hand, engages with reality (even if only abstractly or metaphorically). Make good art, friends, so that we can all live better, not escape life better!
Not escape artists, but seascape artists are what are needed today! May the tide carry such artists to our dire shores! Oh, oceans, great givers of life, let us look to you and not away any longer!