So I've recently started reading the book titled above and I must say I'm actually enjoying it. It has been conferming for me a lot of the theories I've invented, adapted or adopted in the past 18 months. It is also giving me great doubts in my ability to make any real change unless I assume the viewpoint of the cultural sculptor and realize it will take a large team of specialists all chipping at the same boulder for a lifetime before the work can be fully concieved. That may be a stretch for me.
This book has eerily parrelled my journey into my current ideas of culture. From the appropriation of aesthetic with the neglect to concept that I thought I stole from the early postmodernists and applied to the ideas of consumer and political culture to the parrelles in the American past and present (WWII/Vietnam, the great depression, reliance on technologies) and even as far as my views as consumerism as brainwashing. I know that none of these ideas are original but I've reached a lot of these conclusions on my own through personal research and now this gives me the backing I've needed to have some confidence outside of my bubble.
As far as my ideas of political reform, I have been questioning them even since before I cracked this book. I've been questioning a lot of my thoughts, ethics and even practices. I realized a selfishness I had to assume to be able to keep a certain quality of life while trying to do some good (I've been shying away from the struggle but justifying it with the idea that our first purpose of life is survival but have just been using a loose definition of survival based on the cultural standards for living and my compramise with that.) Compramise, exactly what I've been doing. The authors of Nation of Rebels talks about the leftist/reformist and the incompleteness of their intention. I believe the use the idea of reform is just redecorating the cage. I've been thinking a lot lately about the idea that we shouldn't work for our government when it is designed to work for us and that is pretty much they point they make. If the culture would change the governement and corporations would have to as well. This had me considering the purpose of my work and with it being deemed political. I thought until tonight actually that it was political but now I realize that is more cultural. I've used different techniques to talk about different areas and sure many of my critiques have been strictly political but it is critiquing it in the areas of cultural mediation or control. The larger scope seems to be more of an investigation into my beliefs on culture. Now that I'm dealing with culture the idea of hippocritical/contradictory ideals is even more prevalent. Anna Vining asked me over the summer if I could things up for my utopia how would I do it and I couldn't even begin to answer her. I had no idea of any logical way to create a functional culture that would be self sustaining and still allow for the technological advances that our lives have come to depend on. I also couldn't figure out how to keep things general enough to not restrict freedom but structured enough to prevent pure chaos. This is what lead me to the idea of hippocritical/contradictory ideals. PETA allows animals to eat animals, and animals to probably eat people, but if a person even looks at a furry buck-toothed foamy mouthed rabids bucket the wrong way we are to be beaten with a leather whip they bought from the local sweatshop distibution center. We all want to live forever and cherish every life and death, but we aren't willing to consider the natural order of death and the role it has played in sustainablity of the planet/resources or the correlation of land for living and land for growing (food that is) and the neccesity for genetically altered food for higher yeilds to even begin to have enough food to feed everyone; plus they are planning on then even using up even more of that land to properly burry a body (that should rightly be allowed to decompose to restore the minerals back to the cycle) to take up even more of the land for growing. But the number one contradiction is a need for security with a lust for freedom. If we allow ourselves to try to balance out all of these ideals we will surely have either pure chaos which could still leave many in just has much fear and self-loathing as our current structures do or split into tribes that will have to work their own small power structures that may still function similarly as now. If we try to stay unified while giving everyone each of their freedoms that will eventually contradict other freedoms will leave us pretty much where we are now but with a lot more agression. Who am I to tell everyone what freedoms are correct or the proper way to live their lives. I could just consider my ideals and art as suggestions to ways of opening your mind but that seems like a timid pansy way about it. I need to find a way to justify my beliefs and a way that we can all be happy or it will just create a new form of classism.
I now understand why Sue Coe dedicates herself completely to this work of social commentary but I also understand why she says its a constant struggle and it often times is extremely difficult and unenjoyable. I'm beginning to feel some of that. I feel that until I'm justified in my work that it will be a constant struggle and become task rather than goal. Today I realized that I'm making pretentious text art for the common person. It's not visual, its not flashy, its plain and simple and confusing. I mean I like that idea, but I wonder if it will really get my point across of if I'm so submerged into my own thought if I can really connect to people outside of conversation.
I'm going to bed now but I do have to say that so far the suggestions for solutions given in Nation of Rebels has to heavy of a relience for machine to work/provide and I think that the essential nature of successfully providing for ones self gives self worth and happiness.
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sorry about the typos
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