Latest / The Junto Podcast / E44: Art and Rebellion - Guarding Creativity in a Modern Dystopia

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E44: Art and Rebellion - Guarding Creativity in a Modern Dystopia · The Junto Podcast

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Hello, America. Welcome to the Junto podcast, where we promote the practical
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applications of critical thinking and bold creativity.
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I'm your host, Edgar Mills. Thank you for.
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Hello, good people. Welcome to episode 44 of the Junto podcast.
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I appreciate you for listening. So today we are going to jump into the dark
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projections of a dystopian future.
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And we're going to compare and contrast some things with our own modern dystopia.
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But mainly we're going to talk about how suppressing
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organic creativity crushes the soul and why we should guard ourselves with our
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own art and music and even our journey for self-discovery,
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how we should guard our creative side.
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You all know that I analyze things through lenses of libertarianism and individualism
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and even struggling Christianity.
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I'm flawed in that capacity, but still, I like to try to see that perspective.
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The goal of everything I deliver is always to kind of seek objective truth and
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common ground amid the chaos, whatever chaos is going on.
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So let's jump in. In this modern world we live in, especially in America and
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westernized countries, Big Brother is omnipresent.
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Big Brother looms.
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He's on every street camera, every store, on your phone and your computer,
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any government building for sure.
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Stadiums, banks, even the ATMs got a big camera right there, front-facing camera.
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Big brothers everywhere.
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And these dystopian societies that I'm going to be talking about,
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they like to sort of erase the individual in favor for the collective,
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all in the name of the greater good, you know.
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So-called activists, which we'll call the collective,
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they like to don their masks and grab their Molotovs and go spark party manufactured
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revolution wherever they're directed. Okay.
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Now, famous dystopian stories that we know, like 1984 from George Orwell,
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or Anthem from Ayn Rand, was one of her earlier works.
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And the movies like V for Vendetta is a pretty good one.
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And then the often underappreciated Equilibrium, which my wife and I just watched,
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and it kind of sparked the idea to do this podcast.
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They all have a common goal. If you look at the commonalities through those,
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they're all a little futuristic for sure, and they all have an overbearing centralized authority.
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And the common goal from those authorities is they like to erase the individual
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identity and replace it with a collective identity.
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And in the process of that, the authorities ban classic literature,
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and they will destroy classic works of art, and they outlaw music.
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And why is that common through all of these things, or through all of these dystopian stories?
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Those things that I just named off.
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They stir emotion. Yeah, they stir emotion.
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And then that emotion within an individual sort of shapes their unique identity.
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And their unique identity leads down the road of individuality.
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Now, collective protests and stuff like that stirs emotion too.
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But the emotions that they stir are envy and outrage and anger and things like that.
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And that's, well, there's no real beauty in that.
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And there's no peace in any of that.
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Opposite that, though, a symphony, for instance, and I've been to a few,
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it will elicit emotions.
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But those emotions are very personal and very unique to the individual, right?
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I may be listening to some piece by Mozart, for instance, and I may hear some deep sorrow or anguish.
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Whereas another man sitting right next to me may hear and feel some sort of,
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I don't know, like triumph and over struggle or something like that.
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It really just depends, you know, on you.
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At any rate, it will move you and make you feel some way.
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Now, these dystopias we're talking about, and they're not too distant in the future, by the way.
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These authoritarian regimes, they like to flatten out humanity into just obedient masses, right?
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The subjects to whatever the crown is, whatever the corporation that's running the show, whatever.
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They like to turn the masses into just a mindless collective,
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just a bunch of NPCs just milling about, waiting to be told what to do.
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And they strip away all of these examples, and many of them,
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not just those examples, but many of them, They strip away individuality,
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and they strip away that what I will call a divine spark of free will that we
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all inherently possess as human beings.
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And that as a Christian, I believe God bestowed upon us as a gift of free will.
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And these books and movies they're not just stories folks they're what I think
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are very very perceptive almost.
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Sadly say almost clairvoyant warnings to us, the modern reader,
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especially for libertarians like me, right?
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Libertarians who prize personal liberty above all things.
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Yeah, these stories, especially from, I think Iron Rand wrote Anthem quite possibly in the 30s.
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Now, I'm going to look that up real quick to see when that was written.
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There's a movie out there called Metropolis that was, I want to say 1929.
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I don't even think they really knew what communism was at that time,
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and still they were describing it to a T.
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Let's see, when was Anthem written?
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1938. Yeah, that's right now i'll
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i'll say that like equilibrium and some of
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these other sort of futuristic v for vendetta
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even demolition man guy if you ever watched the stallone the 80s demolition
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man it still had all the underpinning they're they're all similar stories the
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modern ones are but even the older ones still had some very disturbing parallels
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but yeah i believe that these.
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Authoritarian centralized tyrannical even governments and whatnot that's that's
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the first thing they try to do is crush individuality and then take away your free will yep.
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And throughout some of these stories what,
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Why did they suppress creativity? Why? Well, creativity basically is free thinking, right?
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That's being a free thinker to create and action. That's what it is.
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Creativity is free thinking. Free thinking leads to strong individual opinions on things.
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Next thing you know, you're an individualist.
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Imagine if you will a near future where i
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don't know department homeland security or the federal bureau of investigation
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or i'm going to throw an imaginary one out there what if what if they're an
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agency called the contraband enforcement
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bureau and they were out there executing no-knock raids at 3 a.m.
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In America, looking for literature or albums or CDs or paintings.
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And in this near future, essentially emotions, like in the movie Equilibrium, were outlawed.
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But at minimum, dissent is outlawed, right?
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Now, a lot of you out there right now believe that if you express,
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well, you don't believe it,
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you say it, but you don't believe it, that if you express dissent toward the
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current sitting government, that you'll be murdered or arrested and all that,
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and that some of the actions are illegal, which that's, there's a lot of gray area,
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excuse me, and a lot of nuance going on out there with what's happening with
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the immigration stuff right now.
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But imagine if they had the authority to do that all the time,
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every time for not just immigration, but for you owning a piece of fine art.
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It's possible, is it? I don't know, man. I think it is.
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Individuality crushed under collective boots. Good people.
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And dig this and dig it good. It don't matter if the boots on your neck are red or blue, folks.
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It don't matter. So if you're a collectivist, if you're on the socialism and
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communist train, you just think those boots aren't going to be on your neck.
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If it's your side, you're dead wrong.
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And I'll give you an example. What's good? UK.
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Leftists in the UK, the government is jailing people for just social media critiques
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of the government actions surrounding immigration.
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You write something ugly about it. It ain't even got to be foul language or
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anything. You just write some strong disagreement with the government, they roll you up.
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Madness. Why would the government ban these kind of things?
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So we're looking at the movies and we understand it, right? But why would the
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government ban these types of things?
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Because a symphony, good people, can stir the heart. A novel can intelligently
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and artfully question authority.
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A sculpture can inspire a rebellion.
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When I was young, I don't know, 12 or 13, there was a giant statue of Atlas
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outside of a business. And this was in Forest Park, Georgia.
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And I saw that statue daily. And it was one of those things that sometimes when
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I was riding my bike, I would go and just kind of check it out and look at it.
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It was very majestic. It was big. It was huge.
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And majestic strength. It embodied strength, Atlas, holding the heavens upon his shoulders.
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That statue when I was 12 and the feelings that it invoked and me are still with me folks.
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And for some reason, it had a profound effect. And to that end,
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even today, right now, in fact, I have a giant chest tattoo of Atlas, dead center of my chest.
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An idea that has been with me since the age of 12.
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Art can move you, good people, if you allow it, if you're open to it.
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But as a radical individualist, which I am, I see clearly the ultimate tyranny, right?
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The ultimate tyranny is that this government or any government is stealing and
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suppressing our God-given imagination and our free will.
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In 1984, the book 1984, Orwell's protagonist was Winston, right?
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And Winston, he clings to his words.
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He found a little spot in his apartment where he could be out of the eyesight
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of the camera and he would write.
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In Equilibrium, Sean Bean's character, he clung to poetry.
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And before he was executed, he read a passage.
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And that passage was this. But I, being poor, have only my dreams.
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I've spread my dreams under your feet Tread softly Because you tread on my dreams This is from W.B.
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Yates' poem He Wishes for the Closs of Heaven,
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And what that passage alone shows Is a very deep vulnerability and tenderness
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And that's a vulnerability and tenderness That we are all capable of I know some of us,
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especially in my line of work see vulnerability and tenderness as a weakness and a crutch.
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But you can learn to.
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Those and, yes, even compartmentalize them, but they're a piece of you.
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They exist. What do you think they do or not?
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And art will bring that out and maybe even teach you to appreciate things like you haven't yet.
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So these fictional accounts I'm speaking of here, how do they parallel our modern
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more slightly more subtle dystopia,
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We don't have a lot of overt bans in America. We don't need them.
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Well, except England, ironically, but besides that.
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No, we don't need them.
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Our chains are far more subtle. Social media is what keeps us sedated and compliant.
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Yeah, social media. 20 years ago, you would have said just the media.
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The mainstream media but it's true though social media is just a hyper hyper version of that right.
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Endless feeds endless algorithms that build up our echo chambers and that throw fuel on the flames of
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political rants and tribal wars and red team, blue team,
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and all that drowns out like independent, proper independent voices.
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You see the most popular, even on social media, even on podcasts,
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the most popular stuff is all like political commentary, really.
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And then there's like pop whatever
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stuff but i think even then
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i think political commentary and culture war
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commentary is the most common or the most popular stuff out there and then because
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we're consumers right and all these platforms and whatnot you get you get these
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10 15 second viral clips that enrage us and get us all hating each other, like just in a minute.
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And then the next thing you know, they vanish, poof, like smoke.
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Three, four days later, yeah, the video's out there. Anything on digits stays
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on digits. It's there forever. But...
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Not getting pushed down your throat it's gone after a few days
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because it's getting less clicks and then
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the corporate media like the the mainstream media they'll twist
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and spin these hyperbolic narratives you
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know for same for the clicks for the
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commercial economic benefits there and their
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narratives especially mainstream media they
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push group think over truth big style they
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aim to tell you how what and how to think exactly what you should think and
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what you should think about it so over the decades we've swapped our meaningful
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and soulful experiences of interacting with art so like these quick these quick fixes,
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from the social media and we're hypnotized by the screens and those screens
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that's just turning us into the data. We have become the data.
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And to the government, we've always just been the data.
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And all of this is contrary to my sense of self-reliance, right? It's just.
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This belittles our universal, I'll say it again, universal call as humans to
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seek out beauty in God's creation.
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Look for the beauty in God's creation, not the quick hits on the social media.
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And here we are in America. We're not commanded by some malevolent dictator yet, yet.
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But we are seduced 24-7 into conformity. We don't need a dictator to make us conform.
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Social media has done it for us. Two different paths, right?
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Dictatorship or brain melt. It's two different paths, but it's getting the same
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results. And that is compliance.
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All right. That went a little hard. Ease back a little bit.
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I'm going to express what I believe to be our need as a human race here,
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but especially in America,
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to embrace the fine arts, true art, historic art, and not even historic,
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I mean, even modern art, but embrace art. Right.
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The artists, the creators, and I mean real creators.
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We have to attempt to break free from this government and corporate-fueled hypnotism
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and all this frigging pre-packaged and pre-fabricated content that we consume
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every minute of the day. We got to try to break from that.
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And it's very simple, folks. We just need to stop and smell the flowers.
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And I mean quite literally.
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Soak in nature soak it
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in and then yes dive into
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fine art classical music ballet symphonies
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and all these things i'm talking about these aren't
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these are no longer luxury things here
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now yes the elite class probably want them to be
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exclusively theirs right but this
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is the modern age these things aren't
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just luxuries for for the elite anymore what they
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are now for us is alternative arts that are you know
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kind of rooted in history but but
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it's art that celebrates individual skill definitely bold creativity and and
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i would say celebrates even yeah deep emotions deep exclusively human emotions deep.
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These arts have the capacity and the ability to snatch us away and out of the
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digital prison that some of us live in.
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And these arts let us, and I'm saying let, they don't force us.
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They let us appreciate a ballet's grace or a symphony's building crescendo that will, like.
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Yeah, no shit stir your soul.
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And for me, from my flawed Christianity,
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I believe these fine arts reflect God's gift and God's artistry that is within us all.
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We all have some gift. It might not be playing the piano or a violin,
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but we have it, though. We have the gift, a gift.
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And not only Christianity, right, but as an objectivist, which I consider myself
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as well, these fine arts reflect sort of a triumph of mankind.
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They celebrate love and victory and even loss and beauty and all kind of things,
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much like you might find described in I Love the Fountainhead by Ayn Rand.
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And they talk about the monument that he builds to mankind, yeah, to the triumph of man.
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What we take in now, folks, is pretty shallow. The social medias are pretty shallow.
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Now, you can get in there and you can go down rabbit holes and you can find
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some meaningful things.
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But generally speaking, it's all for the clicks. You'll look at a thing for
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a few seconds and move on.
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Fine art, be it whatever it is, the fine arts, they spark emotion.
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They spark creativity even.
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And those things are counter to this current shallowness.
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They're counter to the current shallowness that in some cases are,
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you know, might be eating away at some folks.
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So what else is prevalent in the modern day? I'm talking about the sort of,
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I want to say, historically, traditionally fine arts, right?
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Versus what's so prevalent today, artificial intelligence, right? Yeah.
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And think of masterpieces, right? Think of Da Vinci's Mona Lisa.
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It's one of the most famous paintings ever.
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I mean, why do you imagine it's one of the most famous paintings ever?
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And I'm sure everybody listening to this can picture it probably pretty clear in their mind.
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And she's got this little mysterious little grin. You know, it's been for centuries.
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You know, it's been sort of a mystery.
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You know, she's got this little grin. What is it for?
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One of my favorites, what about Rodin's statue of the thinker?
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Deeply bronzed In deep thought Is it deep thought Solitary reflection Is he
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contemplating life Love What is he contemplating He's thinking,
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It's brilliant I got a little mini thinker Right on my desk It's one of my favorites
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Another one of my favorites Van Gogh What about Van Gogh's Starry Night That's
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another famous one Everybody knows it.
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Painting is almost a living thing.
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It's almost alive with the swirls and the way the yellow contrasts with the night.
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And somehow you can look at that and still see the torment of Van Gogh's torment.
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It's compelling. It's a beautiful picture.
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And taking these things in, and they demand your time. They demand your attention,
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but not for empty returns, right?
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They pull you into some emotional contemplation, right?
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You can imagine that the person who created this, what must they have been thinking?
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What was their frame of mind?
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How did they get the skill that they have to do this?
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I don't think in contrast with artificial intelligence I don't think we get
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that same pull that same depth yeah there's some AI out there that looks really
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compelling it's very detailed.
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But it's all just bits and pieces of recreation of something that was created
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by a human being no matter how good a thing looks no matter how detailed it is,
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it's only ever going to be a hollow copy
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of the real thing yeah it's
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only ever going to be a hollow copy because it
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lacks the sweat the the
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struggle the torment the little piece of the creator's soul a flawed creator
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one who's driven mad by the loss of a woman or syphilist ha ha ha ha.
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Or one who was enslaved for years.
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AI is never going to have it, folks. AI is never going to have it.
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Only real true art will have it.
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AI is just a facsimile without actual creation.
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Just like our modern consumer culture, it's quickly consumable and discardable.
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AI turns something that could be profound beauty into just instant filters,
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just instant filters to overlay on something else.
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Now, me as a radical individualist, yeah, I value authenticity over the artificial. 100% I do.
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Now, look, folks, that's not to say AI is good. It does good things.
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You can use it for very productive things.
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Social media is good it's a
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tool that helps us connect with people around
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the world instantly or relatives that we would ordinarily only see once every
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three or four years now we can just check them out on the socials say hello
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see how they're doing it's good it's good.
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We can be tracked. We can be watched. And it's not just social media that does
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that, folks. Everything, it's everything.
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But the digital age is upon us and it's not all good.
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But there's a lot of convenience that, well, is, I'd say, almost born out of
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necessity, but maybe not. I don't know.
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There's a lot of nuance to the digital modern age here. There's a lot of goodness
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and there's a lot of badness. But what can you do?
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You can make a conscious decision to consume less, less, less.
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Deliberate conscious effort to consume less digital media and free up some space
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for the real stuff, the good stuff.
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Yeah. Go, go downtown, you know, wander into an art studio or a museum.
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Yeah. Go look at some fine art, take in the textures and, and,
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and read the, the, the stories attached to them and about the artists and those things.
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Go to Woodruff Art Center for a live Mozart symphony. Oh, man.
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Again, the first one I ever went to, I was probably, I don't know,
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in middle school maybe, maybe elementary school. It's been a long time.
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But we were so, it was, we were so, the sound was so overwhelming,
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and I don't just mean loud. I mean, overwhelming.
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And you could hear every flutter of the flute and every thunder of the big,
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gigantic bass drum and every string of the violin.
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Man, it was such an experience the first time.
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Well, each time, but especially the first time.
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You were just immersed in sound and the rhythms and every detail of the music.
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And those people, and it was so professional.
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They were just, the skill was unreal.
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And even then, even then it stirred something in me, right? It stirred something in me.
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And it stirs something that the screens just can't, can't. Yeah.
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Let yourself simmer, you know, in the emotion. when.
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And look at it and take it all in. And then glance over each line and each shadow
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and look at even the cracks in the paint or the paint strokes.
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Take it all in because it's all a part of it. Let it overwhelm you.
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Yeah, let it move you a little bit. If only for an hour or two,
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you know what I mean? you're just out on a date, you know what I mean?
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But if you do this, I promise you that you will start to reclaim a little bit
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of your, well, your own emotions and of your own individuality.
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And in doing that, you're going to have a very solid protective barrier around
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your own individualism.
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And then, therefore, you're going to be more compelled to be mindful of your liberties.
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And in taking this art in, I think it draws you nearer to our Creator. Yeah.
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So thanks for listening to this episode, good people. Go forth.
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Create and feel. Yeah. I love you, folks. Take care.