They turned the TV on and were told by an aging career Washington bureaucrat, packaged as the foremost authority on endocrinology in all eighteen known universes, to mask. That was that. "But who says he's the foremost authority?" "Well...uh...uh...Would you like some more coffee? Uh, I think it might snow some..." "How do we know he's the foremost authority? Did they give a test or something?" Crickets. Dr. Goebbels never had a better day.
Alas, Franklin, it appears that a distressingly large number of people want to be told what to do, want their lives run for them, and want everyone else to know they're doing the "correct" things. This even includes some people so rich that they could afford to tell practically everyone else on earth to fuck off or go to hell. Actually, it's not just distressing--it's appalling.
The fact is that it is easier, simpler and/or more convenient to go with the flow or the crowd rather than against it, and many if not most people do it more or less automatically as if by default. This applies to many things in many areas, obviously including art, particularly contemporary art. It is both a form of laziness and a form of weakness or feebleness, but that doesn't alter its impact.
They turned the TV on and were told by an aging career Washington bureaucrat, packaged as the foremost authority on endocrinology in all eighteen known universes, to mask. That was that. "But who says he's the foremost authority?" "Well...uh...uh...Would you like some more coffee? Uh, I think it might snow some..." "How do we know he's the foremost authority? Did they give a test or something?" Crickets. Dr. Goebbels never had a better day.
Alas, Franklin, it appears that a distressingly large number of people want to be told what to do, want their lives run for them, and want everyone else to know they're doing the "correct" things. This even includes some people so rich that they could afford to tell practically everyone else on earth to fuck off or go to hell. Actually, it's not just distressing--it's appalling.
The fact is that it is easier, simpler and/or more convenient to go with the flow or the crowd rather than against it, and many if not most people do it more or less automatically as if by default. This applies to many things in many areas, obviously including art, particularly contemporary art. It is both a form of laziness and a form of weakness or feebleness, but that doesn't alter its impact.