SUBLIME FORM/ MEANINGFUL TRUTH
telling the stores of those who remain outside of history
A SORRY WORLD OF BUSINESS
Within this (Neoliberal) world of business and corporations which surrounds us, I, as many, suffer from a dreaming irresolution about the human condition. This irresolution is contradictory to common knowledge and to the overwhelming and oppressive conservatism resulting from social and cultural conventions of most people. To be clear in my thinking, I need to separately consider the neoliberal political apparatus from the power of the huge corporations from those social conventions.
The conventions are a consequence of what people are born into, taught in schools and subject to every day by their education, the news media and the broader bombardment of day-by-day repetition of the same themes: consumerism is the new religion; greed is good; we are the best race/religion/nation in the world; there is no alternative, this is the only possibility; be obedient, keep your head down; don’t think but do blame yourself for your perceived failures while ignoring the terrible exploitation of most people by the economic system.
LUST
Neoliberalism has within its single-minded lust for profits a clear-sited rationality that shows it for what it is: a series of linked ideas in which humane beliefs and care for others are crushed under the propaganda of their corporate popular culture productions.
With the neoliberals in control of all the avenues of distribution and mostly of production, intellectuals and artists possessing outlier sensibilities and causes will quickly recognise that they are at odds with the unintellectual and in the Anglo-American world, the anti-intellectual business class who are the puppet-masters of the neoliberal politicians and political parties. As Tom Joad, the hero of GRAPES OF WRATH said, “You’re bound to get ideas in your head if you go thinkin’ about stuff”.
But the business class and their neoliberal political puppets need some of us. We provide the intellectual and creative software for their media hardware to carry on the charade of freedom, equality, levelling up and all the other dross of the illusions they spin about how we must hope for a better tomorrow. There is a part of this charade which is not dissimilar to the Christian construct that we must be obedient to our betters, knowing that if we obey in this life, the next one will be heavenly. Tosh.
If the intellectuals and artists do compromise with the business class, allowing themselves an escape to their lofts or ivory towers, they will ultimately suffer from the very lies they tried to turn away from, because they had not taken a part in confronting them.
This confrontation or resistance is vital to point out, to teach, and to propagate the ideas of justice, equality, kindness, love and collaboration needed to awaken or remind people that those are the things we should be demanding for our lives. And whether artists are successful or not in their communication, to not participate is to die creatively.
While still believing/fooling themselves as being anti-establishment, their artistic and intellectual resistance becomes passivity through the harshly eroding sands of fame and fortune. Passivity is ultimately an affirmation of the power and culture of the business class – those who destroy the meaning and nature of the artist’s work.
Artists who trade and betray their values for ‘success’ ultimately lose their original aesthetic compulsion. That is not the route to beauty, if indeed beauty only exists when sublime form is engaged with meaningful truths.
AN AFTERWORD
I know this may sound slightly innocent. Recently, after finishing my film, THIS GOOD EARTH, I was forced to confront the upsetting thought that whilst very bright people know the way to stop global warming and our assured destruction, neither the people responsible for it and those politician supposedly responsible to us to stop them, are not doing their job, and we are allowing both gangs to get away with it while holding on to their wealth and power.
This recognition has led me to ask questions beyond what I have photographed for years – the social, political and cultural lives of people living, mostly, inside neoliberal capitalist economies. These questions are now concerned with what we are as a species, and how it is that we, as a species, are blindly marching into collective suicide.
For the past 6 months I have been editing my recent film, BELONGING/BECOMING which represents many young people’s views of the world they are inheriting from us and how they choose to use creativity to both resist and to being necessary changes. It is both infinitely sad that what we are passing on is so terrible, and infinitely joyous that they are so strong in their determination to build a fair, just and kind world. That is why I whisper, “ahh capitalism” and point out the cost of business.
Please remember we are still trying to raise money to produce a well-printed hardback of my new book, which you can read more about and buy here.