On Intellectual Laziness, Idiots, and Encouragement

I’m currently stuck in Great Falls on my way back from Chicago. On the trip home, I started and finished reading Empire of Illusion by Chris Hedges (a Colgate alum, just like Max and Calvin will hypothetically be). It addresses the role that junk culture (reality tv, porn, sensationalist media) and hard-line social stratification have in sedating Americans in to inaction while the country falls to pieces in almost every sense of the word at the hands of big business. There is very little I could say about it that would match the amazing level of analysis that Hedges goes in to, so I’ll spare you a long and clumsy dissertation for right now. Everyone should read it. Seriously.

The book has made me keenly aware of how intellectually lazy I’ve been for the past few months. I have a massive amount of plans and ideas that I’ve been embarrassingly slow to act on. My art blog sits completely abandoned and this blog is filled with reactionary rambling and curse words. It’s a hard book to read for somebody who wants to be in the entertainment industry like I do. The industry likes to pump out lowest-common-denominator work to take in the rubes, and that’s something I have no interest in but will actively have to avoid. I’ve always tried my best to be discerning in the media I choose to expose myself to and in what I’ve produced, but I need to tighten the screws a little. If I don’t strive for sincerity, nothing I do can mean anything. I suspect Mr. Hedges would think that I was a lay about with little regard for the benefits of education or the opportunities I’ve been given and a bad attitude, but I’m trying to be a better member of society and you should, too.

Something Empire of Illusion has inspired me to do is to start finding and writing about fine and media artists who are doing things on their own terms, not hurting anyone, and not letting the bottom line get in the way of doing good work. I feel like that’s a pretty common thread I look for in the art I like, so I already have a lot of people lined up to show you. I also plan on pumping out a lot more art, so maybe you’ll like some of that.

I’ve already gotten more response to this blog than I have from Perpetual Motion, as far as followers and reader response goes, so keep it up. I know there are a lot of blogs out there and I don’t really know how many people have actually seen this, but I promise that Max, Calvin, and I are not all of those other bloggers. We’re smart and we won’t post pictures of our babies and little dogs. If you’ve kept up with us so far, please stay with us. I’ll keep contributing and I’ll try to whip Calvin and Max in to shape. We’re lazy and disaffected youth who only know satisfaction from quantifiable rewards, so please keep encouraging us.

Speaking of questionable media sources, read this Butte news anchor’s blog.

On the other side of the coin, here are two blogs from Butte’s intelligentsia that hopefully prove we aren’t all a bunch of cavemen here in The Great Frozen North.