Not Guilty

A couple things:

There was an editorial in the Trib this morning describing that after one year with access to cable tv, women in rural India displayed attitudes the equivalent of women with 5.5 years of additional education in the way they saw themselves and their surroundings.

The editorial is here.

And, as is so often the case, people love to apply this stuff to the bottom end of the pyramid/totem pole (because they need our help, right), but fail to do so to themselves.

How much more advanced would we be if we had access to a mass culture that had a larger sense of the world--was ahead of us?

How much would our attitudes here in the West grow after a year of exposure to what for us would be a premium mass culture?

What I love about this is that it's completely voluntary! No clinics, no indoctrination, no visits from social workers or parachuting in white liberals--not even any school--just daily stories about women like themselves who have left the rural attitudes behind and made a way for themselves in the city.

The left has such problems with what it terms the entertainment industry, and has glorified toil so long (remember what the Soviet Union and China did to those fairy artists) that it may be hard for them to turn around, but these are the results we can expect when they do.

It also shows how slow and ineffective rote, standardized, enforced, institutionalized forms of cramming "knowledge" down people's throats is.

But you already know that: that motivation (pushing) hurts and that inspiration you'll chase like the holy grail.

The former is your boss and the second the daydream that takes over every meeting and toward the end of longer vacations. Over time the first will become less effective and enjoyable and the second more appealing--exponentially.

Even if you don't believe in yourself enough to orient your life around what you love.

Which brings up another point..

I just watched Twwelve Angry Men.

Very apt that it was made in 1957--just as we left the surity of our national childhood and entered the confusion of our teen years--the 60s/Vietnam/etc.

I think we're ready for another one--presaging the end of the counterculture and introducing the new non-denominational, universally supportive, interdependent surity that is replacing our current dog-eared relativism.

The most moving part is when the last hold out--the angriest guy of them all--cracks.

For him, the trial was the most personal because he related so strongly to the deceased. (The son was on trial for the father's murder.)

For him to admit that the accused wasn't guilty took forgiving his son for leaving him--and himself for being such an asshole (essentially he tried to beat the "rotten" out of him and make him be a man/toe the line).

When he broke I thought of White Gold--and premium mass culture--and how personal it is. Both for me and everyone else.

Our whole lives we we're taught that life is hard, not fair, etc.

And that growing up means to a significant degree shelving our dreams and getting on with it.

We have accepted this diseased "truth" from our parents as if it were love.

And we've made innumerable, very important decisions taking it entirely on faith.

Did we try painting for ten years and fail? No, we dabbled, met a girl and became graphic designers.

Did we even make the music we wanted for five years and then get angry and bitter and start making angry and bitter music?

No, we arrived at music angry and bitter. Hateful at the whole industry we'd have to negotiate if we were even to have a chance at soul like they routinely knew twenty years ago.

And we turned around and infected our children with the same, well-worn, anti-faith after holding out--and keeping them innocent, happy and free (and taking our meaning in life from their joy and love)--as long as we could.

This is literally teaching them our reality: that life is hard, that there are no free lunches, that genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.

This is our cult. And crushing each other's dreams our initiation.

And it's all complete bullshit.

We do it to protect those we love--because seeing them fail at something they've invested themselves in entirely, a way that would be "hard" would be too much.

Or is it because to succeed at what they love--be it dance, or flamingo cultivation, or singing, or finger painting, or bee keeping--they'd have to invalidate a million of our choices in the process?

In other words, if they don't have to sell out--what the fuck did we do?

If they didn't give up love, money and everything else to be true to themselves--then why did we end up selling copiers?

When what we wanted so much was to draw and write illuminated manuscripts?

And were just a little scared.

For a couple years after college.

Of had a hard time telling our new girlfriend.

Who later became our wife.

Who then became estranged after we could no longer hold it together--could no longer live for nothing inside ourselves.

The path is so well-worn it's cliche.

Ye olde mid-life crisis.

Except it's not cute, short or manageable anymore.

It doesn't even wait until we're mid.

It's constant and everpresent.

Haunts our every day.

Except for those ten minutes after that triple grande. And the hour and a half two hours after our first beer--while the game is on.

The emergence of a premium mass culture is personal for every one of us.

Our most solid and re-occurring myth is that of the starving artist. The shunned heretic, the bonkers visionary.

What if re-making society in our own image and to our own tastes and standards was not only not weird or deviant but par for the course?

And what if we could either go hard or go easy each and every time?

And what if it were up to us to reward those who improved our lot or punish them?

And what if if we started rewarding them, we got more improvements?

Better songs, movies, answers, ideas, paths, feelings, books, tv shows.

I know you think the quality of our culture is somehow, magically, divorced from how well it pays, or--even worse--that somehow forty rock stars with twenty million each (after thirty years of non-stop grind) is somehow enough of an incentive in a land where the hedge fund losers who simply refrain from killing themselves after they drop out of art school clear a bil and a half annually?

Even though that would make it along among all products on the earth in paying more for lower quality.

What if even those who set out to lose money in the culture war ended up making it? (Witness every punk rocker ever--including The Pixies and a whole score of other bands that were merely influential (read broke and barely recognized) when they were around--who are now making money on sold out re-union tours).

What if there had been a fundamental change in the speed at which culture changes that made another van Gogh (who didn't sell until ten years after he died) virtually impossible?

What if failure--financially--was impossible as long as you were connected to your own truth?

Would you go for it then?

It will mean admitting that your parents don't know.

And maybe even your friends, spouses and aquaintances.

That we didn't know when we shipped ourselves off to straighten the fuck up and get a real job school..

And as our connection to our own soul is, of course, our primary relationship--it will mean forgiving ourselves.

For abandoning ourselves.

Yes, our parents did it first, yes it was expected, yes there was no one telling us it would work and was safe, yes we were scared--but there wasn't anyone in the room but us when push came to shove.

We walked the gangplank freely and unbound--rather than face what wee guessed would be some stormy seas.

For what we have insisted--what we insist every day at the office, in meetings with clients, is that our soul is worthless--and that doing this shit we don't really care about is important.

Valuable.

And we didn't know any better, but that's what we tell ourselves.

And when we tell our kids they can be anything they want--after not having gone for it (or supporting our spouses to go for it) ourselves--they know.

That's why they still go to Hot Topic and buy bondage pants and wear black lipstick.

Because they know there's no way to grow up in our world and have the life they want--and see all around them--doing what they want.

And how they want it.

And we call it love to teach them the error of their ways--to beat out of them the certainty of their naive hearts.

Instead of even admitting we have beyond a reasonable doubt--cause our lives ain't no bed of roses--and just letting them go free.

Or heaven forbid--supporting them in whatever they do.

Trusting that they know everything we know and more--like every other subsequent generation.

Will we remember this once we have tv programs that grow us 5 years every year we watch them?

Will we remember that we insisted that our souls were worthless, and that moving junk mail, bread, seat covers, fertilizer, new clothes and cut rate entertainment was more valuable than what we wanted?

Will we remember that we thought paying more for a song than for a latte was ridiculous?

Blasphemy?

Even though the song always worked and the latte increasingly made us angry, disconnected and not that interested in sex once we got home?

Will we remember that we thought that was normal as well--to become less connected the older we got?

To love each other less the longer we had known each other?

To have less time the more money we made?

Will we remember that this all made perfect sense to us.

So perfect that even when we heard a rationally explained solution we dismissed it as fantasy.

As a pipe dream.

As too la-di-da?

Mass culture will crack--it will break down.

The music industry is already failing.

And tv and film are slated to go digital just as it has.

I know you may not see this as a battle for the soul of the world, but it is.

And the outcome has nothing to do with me, or anyone else.

It's predetermined.

By the nature of the universe:

Which is to grow--and grow increasingly fast and in an increasing number of ways--always.

(Which includes delivering relaxation, calm, leisure time, and peace of mind at increasingly large amounts for those of you who might have some anxiety attaching itself to that last sentence--or who may have just had a cup of coffee.)

And it doens't matter how certain motherfuckers are when we start.

Nor how angry and certain that life is hard and art poor.

Nor how enamored with the way business works and how dismissive of how culture gets made.

(To listen to these business bloggers, you'd think half of them were Rickie Lee Jones--having coke blown up their assholes. They're not, of course, they don't even make decent money--or know anything that a Southeast Asian consultant won't know better in six months. They're simply trying to make a place for themselves at the table by shouting the party line louder and faster than anyone has ever before. --Witness Supercrunchers, or whatever that new book that says our whole life will be by the numbers in just two minutes.)

These will be the motherfuckers who are in the fetal position when they croak their "not-guilty"s.

And I hope I'm as gracious as Peter Fonda--in his white suit--happy just that the battle is over, cause it's personal for me as well.

And I'm not getting paid to sit in a jury room and deliberate.

And I'm paying for the trial on my credit cards.