Writers, it's time to burn down the TechBrogliarchy
"Genuine newness, genuine originality, is suspect. Unless it’s something familiar rewarmed, or something experimental in form but clearly trivial or cynical in content, it is unsafe. And it must be safe. It mustn’t hurt the consumers. It mustn’t change the consumers. Shock them, épater le bourgeois, certainly, that’s been done for a hundred and fifty years now, that’s the oldest game going. Shock them, jolt them, titillate them, make them writhe and squeal—but do not make them think. If they think, they may not come back to buy the next can of soup."
I am listening to the audiobook of THE LANGUAGE OF THE NIGHT which is comprised of essays by Ursula K. LeGuin and that bit by LeGuin is quoted by author Ken Liu in the introduction. It is true and it is evergreen. I will say for myself, that I cannot read the same thing over and over again, much less write it. It numbs my mind, which is ever restless and in search of more knowledge to challenge all my assumptions and biases with.
I think there is nothing wrong with readers being drawn to the familiar - with comfort food in word form. It feeds very real and valid needs or else it would not be a nearly universal desire. But what is comforting can also be numbing; can numb your intellect, diminish the complexity of your emotions; undermine your ability to stand up against a tyranny that demands that you conform conform conform yourself out of thinking, of feeling, and most especially of rebelling.
We are not now in the world we lived in even just five years ago; corporations are defunding our ability to stay alive, destroying our basic human rights as employees and laborers, putting their puppet pawns into power, and allowing democracies to fall to billionaire tech-funded dictatorships. Bigotry and hate is making a massive, blood red resurgence. And basic freedoms and rights we have taken for granted are being torn to pieces in the dark of night.
If there was ever a time that we as authors needed to write not for conformity and complacency and especially not for profit margins but instead to stoke anger and rally courage and bring forth righteous rebellion, it is now. It is right now that we must break all the rules that have trapped our creativity in cages and gagged us with censorship and transformed our work from radicalism to just another tool of conformity.
It is right now that we must take a torch to the Omelas that LeGuin had the courage to walk away from and burn the whole thing down. Your words, your art, your creativity is a match to light the fire. So throw out the distractions and strike the spark that will help bring down this whole dark empire of greed, oppression and hate.
Write as if your words have the power to change the entire world, because they do.
