It is weird to recognize that this grand age of Endless Growth! and No Limits! is being run on shoddily produced recycled content from the recent past. From the sexual stereotypes in trans mania to the Cold War in Ukraine to comic book superheroes now fighting evil on movie screens. All the vapid reboots, rewrites, and now AI generated creative content (based, of course, on rearranged inputs from the past!) worries me. Is it simply corrupt and lazy supply or are consumers really demanding this garbage? (Apparently so, in some cases. In others it's passive acceptance.) The backlash and compromise over Roald Dahl's classic books being wokewashed was somewhat heartening, but that was a small skirmish in the War on Humanity (on the Imagination and Creativity fronts) that ended in a draw. Others are lost daily.
As always, Mary, I can count on you to beautifully articulate thoughts that are only half formed in my own mind. I often think the significant political gaps between rural and urban (at least here in the US) is partly due to urban disassociation from 'obdurate demands of reality' as you put it. When you live in the country, close to Mother Nature, you come face to face with her implacable disregard for certain human values and vanities. Facts harder to grasp when sitting in your favorite coffee shop reading the NYT sipping your grande mocha latte, light on the sweetener, skim please and no whip.
Best of luck on your book launch. I will read that.
Subsidized insect-burgers and “edible vat-grown tumours” are what will make me vegetarian, unless I can fish or kill my own food. And that might be the whole point of the exercise for all I know. On the pluss side I'm adept at dealing with materiality, so that's a comfort.
"Today, everything that’s most lively in contemporary politics concerns the slippage between culture-as-metastasis and the obdurate demands of reality."
Much of your writing concerns the necessity of constraints - even creativity requires some order. Isn't leveraging (not repeating - the "new" Lord of the Rings is not an actual reboot but new stories using the existing framework) an existing world honoring this perspective? Yes, it will probably be poorly done due to commercial interests, but it is I think entirely possible that a LoTR-adjacent story would be worth our attention.
The reason we don't see inspiration and creativity IMO is that the marginal costs of supply have plummeted and the time it takes to wade through it all is cost prohibitive on the demand side. So we increasingly turn to the curators of our age - Netflix, Amazon, Disney. But inspiring, creative, insightful work is out there to be found! Indeed, substack has become my first stop in the morning.
I look forward to reading your book, best wishes for its launch!
Yet another instance of the hopes for unbridled human 'liberation' not panning out. It seems that increased leisure time in a society leads to a fall, rather than a rise, in creative output. Or it at least causes the society to be inundated with and suffocated by uncreative content. I wonder whether the blame lies more with the creators or the audiences. I think that the sense of eternal security offered by the modern world is incompatible with either party willingly kicking themselves out of their comfort zones.
Every good wish for the launch, Mary. I hope your book gets many readers. I will certainly be one of them.
It is weird to recognize that this grand age of Endless Growth! and No Limits! is being run on shoddily produced recycled content from the recent past. From the sexual stereotypes in trans mania to the Cold War in Ukraine to comic book superheroes now fighting evil on movie screens. All the vapid reboots, rewrites, and now AI generated creative content (based, of course, on rearranged inputs from the past!) worries me. Is it simply corrupt and lazy supply or are consumers really demanding this garbage? (Apparently so, in some cases. In others it's passive acceptance.) The backlash and compromise over Roald Dahl's classic books being wokewashed was somewhat heartening, but that was a small skirmish in the War on Humanity (on the Imagination and Creativity fronts) that ended in a draw. Others are lost daily.
You deserve a good launch, Mary. Your thoughts are brave and profound.
(I'm going to order your book now.)
As always, Mary, I can count on you to beautifully articulate thoughts that are only half formed in my own mind. I often think the significant political gaps between rural and urban (at least here in the US) is partly due to urban disassociation from 'obdurate demands of reality' as you put it. When you live in the country, close to Mother Nature, you come face to face with her implacable disregard for certain human values and vanities. Facts harder to grasp when sitting in your favorite coffee shop reading the NYT sipping your grande mocha latte, light on the sweetener, skim please and no whip.
Best of luck on your book launch. I will read that.
Has someone told George Monbiot about the "edible vat-grown tumours" yet?
Subsidized insect-burgers and “edible vat-grown tumours” are what will make me vegetarian, unless I can fish or kill my own food. And that might be the whole point of the exercise for all I know. On the pluss side I'm adept at dealing with materiality, so that's a comfort.
Good luck with the book, Mary!
"Today, everything that’s most lively in contemporary politics concerns the slippage between culture-as-metastasis and the obdurate demands of reality."
Much of your writing concerns the necessity of constraints - even creativity requires some order. Isn't leveraging (not repeating - the "new" Lord of the Rings is not an actual reboot but new stories using the existing framework) an existing world honoring this perspective? Yes, it will probably be poorly done due to commercial interests, but it is I think entirely possible that a LoTR-adjacent story would be worth our attention.
The reason we don't see inspiration and creativity IMO is that the marginal costs of supply have plummeted and the time it takes to wade through it all is cost prohibitive on the demand side. So we increasingly turn to the curators of our age - Netflix, Amazon, Disney. But inspiring, creative, insightful work is out there to be found! Indeed, substack has become my first stop in the morning.
I look forward to reading your book, best wishes for its launch!
Yet another instance of the hopes for unbridled human 'liberation' not panning out. It seems that increased leisure time in a society leads to a fall, rather than a rise, in creative output. Or it at least causes the society to be inundated with and suffocated by uncreative content. I wonder whether the blame lies more with the creators or the audiences. I think that the sense of eternal security offered by the modern world is incompatible with either party willingly kicking themselves out of their comfort zones.