Inside My Brain

A few weeks ago I did something that sparked some deep thoughts. I stopped at a red light.

Prepare yourself: You're about to take a journey inside my head.

I slowed down as I approached the red light and joined a group of cars waiting there. No traffic was coming the other way but we still had a red light. Annoying. There were no police officers around at all, and no possibility at this intersection that one could be hiding nearby. But still, we all just wait.

My thoughts drift to all the popular dystopian novels I've read and all the end-of-the-world movies I've seen. They're mostly based around the theme that without strictly enforced order humans descend into madness. Is that true? Could this simple red light be a symbol of how easily controllable the human race is? If we lost just this one restraint, would we be unable cope?

Loki claims in The Avengers that the natural state of humans is to kneel. That we're better off that way, and that true freedom is not having to think for ourselves. To quote him exactly, "Is this not your natural state? It's the unspoken truth of humanity, that you crave subjugation. The bright lure of freedom diminishes your life's joy in a mad scramble for power, for identity. You were made to be ruled. In the end, you will always kneel."

But perhaps this stop light proves the exact opposite. This could be what Thomas Hobbes refers to in his Theory of Social Contract. Do all these cars sitting here at this red light have an unspoken agreement to honor a pledge we never really made to sit here at this red light until it turns green, even if no harm would come from going now? I half expect a car to run the light and destroy my train of thought. But it doesn't happen.

So which is it? And why? The implications to that answer are massive. Our government is based in part on Hobbes' theory. Our societal structure revolves around that idea. But if that's the case, than doesn't that mean we really are sheeple so easily controlled by a class of overlords parading as elected officials? No, now I've gone too Libertarian. The proper balance here is ....

I jerk to my senses as a horn behind me blares. I pull through the intersection thinking, "And this relates directly to the gun control debate ..."

The Purpose of Entertainment

I consider myself an artist. An entertainer of sorts. Or at least, that's what I hope to be someday. So naturally, whether it's music, film, books, or any other form of entertainment, I have very definite feelings about whether or not I think something is "good" - which says something, because I'm typically not that opinionated of a person. I guess I just can help it with this.

Barney Fife and his famous bullet.

One of the things I've been thinking about a lot recently is the purpose of entertainment. I saw a picture of Don Knotts' grave the other day. The inscription reads, "He saw the poignancy in people's pride and pain and turned it into something hilarious and endearing."

To many people, Don Knotts is Barney Fife. But if that quote is accurate, which I imagine it is, than Knotts was much more than a bumbling character in a T.V. show. He was a genius.

Rothko with one his paintings.

You see, the purpose of art is extremely important. Knotts saw a world of pain and sought to make it a little more beautiful - mission accomplished. Latvian-American painter Mark Rothko, on the other hand, looked at the same world and bitterly painted artwork for the Four Seasons restaurant of which he said, "I hope to paint something that will ruin the appetite of every [expletive] who ever eats in that room." Charles Dickens tried to change Victorian England, skewering corrupt politicians, the elite upper class, hypocrites, and pretty much everybody else who crossed him until he made his point and saw change accomplished.

Something all three of those men had in common, no matter what their perspective or purpose, was that they each dealt with the world as they saw it. That used to be the purpose of art. But somewhere along the way, we lost that. Entertainment is no longer about looking at the world around us and figuring out how to understand it.

Now, it seems entertainment is either about forgetting there's a reality around us (pick a sitcom), or wallowing in our misery (pick a modern dystopian novel).

Have we completely lost our will to face reality? Am I totally off base here? I don't know. But these are the things I think about as I analyze what I see. One thing I do know: entertainment shouldn't just let us escape from the world for a little bit; it should send us back to that world better people than it found us.