Friends,
Romans,
Countrymen,
Lend me your Ears.
I have for the longest time been hesitant to express certain thoughts and opinions by way of blog post, however the time as of late has taught me otherwise. The internet is the future of all things, for better or worse. Literature and philosophy are not dead despite what many people think and say, but rather it is going through a reformation, a sort of technological renaissance if you will, an online Enlightenment. Thanks to our modern sense of global communication we now have two things, 1. International dialogue on race, gender, sexuality, and basic human rights and rights violations, 2. A public whose suppressed sexuality is coming out in spades, and we have people like Nina Hartley and Lisa Ann among several others to thank for it.
What I am writing to you here I do not expect to go viral, nor do I intend to answer any of the problems society faces. I will talk about these problems, however I acknowledge that one man alone cannot change the world with a simple text. That is not to say that a man cant change the world with a text at all, the operative word in that sentence was not “cannot” but it was “alone.” The greatest men and women of action have never been the people who acted alone, literally none of them. A very intelligent woman once told be, “The strongest bridges are the ones with the most support.” Look at our heroes of history, yes Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King Jr, and Ghandi are all people whose individual stories stand out, but remember that all leaders would be nothing without their people holding them up.
So what are the intentions of this long winded introduction, this tangent contemplation of things NOT to come? Well, if I am to be honest, my intentions are as humble as they come. All that I wish to accomplish with this text is to have one person, just one, be introduced to thoughts they have never had before. I do not care if these thoughts are positive or negative reactions to my work, as long as there is a reaction there is thought, and with every decent thought there is a lesson learned. At least their is supposed to be for the balanced mind.
This I feel is the problem with modern society, there is what the Shogunist Japanese would call a lack of center in people in modern society, with which comes a lack of discipline, with lack of discipline comes lack of understanding, with lack of understanding comes a lack of empathy, with a lack of empathy comes division, and with division comes lack or even destruction of balance. This is what the corporations and the greedy hands of government and Wall Street have figured out, they understand our lack of balance and they exploit it, they even encourage it by propagandizing body image and race. Politicians and the media create mountains out of anthills because of the repressed sexuality that encourages the woman’s shrinking size of choice and the male hyper-sexual tendency to consume porn and indulge in domestic violence and even rape. Misogyny is encouraged because it is divisive and creates biased square pegs of societal gender roles that paint men as violent beings and women as weak and helpless. I know Men who wouldn’t harm a fly and Women who make their livings as soldiers, fire fighters, body builders, and UFC fighters, far from being weak and helpless.
Our society encourages racism, it encourages the divisive dialogue of George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin. It encourages the non existent standards of what constitutes “blackness” and how skin tone is used as a degree of measure of so called blackness. Just go on twitter and count the tweets about “light skinned niggas” and one can see how we have imbedded racism within the very races we are oppressing. The constant flow of “#oomf” and “#ratchet hoe” tweets show how much farther we have to go to progress past sexism and rape culture, that is if our blatantly one sided structure of rape law and the more than constant attacks on Women’s bodily rights aren’t enough to convince you.
I say we intentionally, by the way. Despite my progressive tendencies, I must acknowledge the fact as a white upper middle class male I have an obligation to history and society not exploit my privilege and in fact I have the duty to use my privilege to end my privilege. I want to see to it the privilege I have is not a privilege bestowed just upon straight white men with money, but is an inalienable right of men, women, and everyone outside and in between of every race and sexuality.
Sometimes it makes me sad our society is so one sided, so excessively binary and lacking in balance and center. Other times it makes me angry, and others it makes me laugh in hysterics. I cope using many different channels, but the time has come to vent all such thoughts into this one. I guess that is the only thing Im trying to get accomplished with this blog post, to get all these sporadic thoughts that have been floating in my thoughts into one avenue.
Futile or not its very therapeutic, I cannot vouch for the benefit of art as therapy enough. This is another problem we are facing, we do not live in a society that encourages artistic expression enough. Rather the constant attacks on arts in education proves that we are not living in a society that encourages creative individualist thought and expression, but that is a rant for another post. I also must make the point that I am convinced that we also live in a society that goes so far as to define what is and isn’t art. Art is like god, both can be whatever the individual imagines or wishes them to be.
Art can be anything, from our traditionalist notions, to the more modern concepts such as film or videos. Yet who is anyone to say sex is not art, one could debate the positives and negatives of the porn industry for days on end, what must be stated is that these people who do choose to express themselves sexually and explicitly should not be a source for attack. Pornography does a public service and allows the individual conflicted or confused about their sexuality to explore and discover types of sex they might be afraid of or unfamiliar with but curious about. This is an important need in a society that suppresses sexuality seen as “different” or “wrong.” If these people didn’t have the variety of channels to explore when they are other wise being forced to suppress themselves they would most likely commit suicide, in fact several still are.
Art can be sex, it can be film, it can be science, it can be anything. That is the point of that earlier tangent, not just to explicate our growing sense of sexual revolution but to explicate how the global sense of communication is introducing people across the world to new arts and thoughts, and sexuality. All of these things are factors that revolve around the internet and our new sense of globalized culture. Among the negatives are the growing division between from the haves and have nots, and the forgotten people in the middle. On the positives we are finally starting to free our minds sexually, and we are being introduced to thoughts, ideas, art forms, and most importantly information, that we would otherwise be unexposed to.
So where do we go from here, what is the point of this out of work author sitting here on his computer, blatantly stating the obvious in these tangental sentences? We continue the dialogue, we continue to share our thoughts, our ideas, or lusts and loves, our expressions so that we may grow. So that society may grow. If I have provoked thought in you in any way by having you read this, you have grown and so has the world around you.
Welcome to the online Enlightenment, let us disprove our distopian paranoia and progress, looking back only to learn, and grow.
James J Jackson 