I’ve been reading Below the Root recently, and last night I came across a passage that made me stop as something clicked into place in my head. It had to do with one of the characters talking about the trap of someone being purposefully honored so highly in their society. “…as Kindar, we are not prepared to question tradition. But there is a reason behind the tradition. The reason is that the Year of Honor is a trap. A beautiful trap, baited by a lure as irresistible to Kindar as is honey to a moonmoth-the lure of fame and honor and power. Thus a humble Kindar can be caught and fed on pride and power until he is as unable to live without them as a Berry-dreamer to live without his Berries. To do this takes time, and it must be accomplished before he becomes an Ol-zhaan and begins to learn their secrets.”
It was like finding the answer to a question I’d had in my head since I went to a special program in high school for the arts.
“From a managerial standpoint, people addicted to defining their lives by the stuff they buy, or by pats on the head, comprise a managerial utopia. In prison, or school, the way to this condition, this safe condition, is prepared by a drill in the extension of small privileges and honors, or the withholding of same, by punishments and rewards externally imposed until the inner ability of the human spirit to punish or reward itself –and hence be free of tutelage — is destroyed or suppressed. The animal trainers in service to the rich and powerful through history-not B.F. Skinner or the behaviorists-created this form of training.
“Reflections on School and Prison”
- John Taylor Gatto
In my experience, someone who has an interest in creativity, whether it’s cooking, sculpting, singing, writing, dancing, etc, have discovered the joy of bringing something inside of themselves out into the world. It is a place that is hard to touch by institutions, and can help protect someone from the strong influences of a structured and managed society. I’m sure many people reading this have seen that person in their math class completely removed from what is going on around them, engrossed in a drawing or writing a poem. The teacher can threaten them, take that artwork away, try to punish them, but there will always be more where that came from. It came from an invulnerable place, and it’s how that person was fighting back against a system that was relentlessly trying to crush their soul. They are the people succeeding in slipping through the cracks of administration. However, I do not think they are let go so easily.
The reason why artists are such a threat to a society that depends on people being predictable and manageable is because they understand the value of observation. It’s hard to do any kind of artwork well if you’re not good at seeing what is in front of you and processing that information in a way that expresses your personal interpretation of it. If you are used to scrutinizing the world around you, that tendency carries over to whatever you come in contact with. Not just literally what is in front of you, but also your interpretation of history, governments, advertisements, and peoples’ motives. It also helps to give you confidence in your own perception. It’s much harder to convince someone to do something simply because you said so, with no other rational explanation, if they are used to consulting themselves as the top authority in their life.
It makes sense to me now that the best way to divert people who are interested in creatively expressing themselves from launching on the world the truths that they discover is to slowly over time change their motivation from pure expression to instead seeking fame and large scale approval.
The goal of fame often requires the person to try and figure out the best way to show people what they think their audience wants to see. This is a very different motive then trying to figure out the best way to genuinely express yourself, regardless of how much the audience might like it. Fame and glory are addictive. So how do you turn artists into addicts?
In my creative writing program in high school, over those four years, there was constant encouragement and opportunity for honor and fame, which I had not expected or asked for when I entered the program. While I was being encouraged to develop my mode of self expression, at the same time I was getting exposure to the amazing feeling of being in front of a large audience, of getting a standing ovation for something I did, of competing and winning awards for my art. I realized years later that the message had not been art for the sake of being able to best articulate and express myself and my thoughts about the world, but that the reward or prize was the incredible glory and attention I would get.
So often I have heard that you can’t teach someone how to be an artist, you can only give them the opportunity and tools to develop it themselves. However, you can teach someone how to crave and feel dependent on large scale praise and fame. You get these people together with an active interest in expressing themselves, and while you give them the opportunity to develop that, you also over time, years, teach them that the main motivation for creative expression is figuring out how best to make money with it, or get the most acclaim.
The intended result after leaving this school for the arts seems for the students to go down one of two paths. The first path was to continue to desperately seek any way you could get your dose of fame and approval, using that creative energy to feed your addiction. Your artwork would be defined by the path of least resistance to the most amount of commendation. The second path was to go through a period of intense withdrawal and through realizing it would be hard to regain that level of glory you had achieved in school, have trouble finding a reason to be creative.
I ended up walking down the second path, which came very close to destroying any motivation I had to continue defining myself as an artist. If I had not had the good fortune of spending time with creative people who diligently encouraged me to express myself, I think that part of me would have been buried under the experience of living in such a structured world. I had walked away from trying to be a famous artist, but it took something inside of me giving up, some intense driving ambition, in order to feel motivated to write or sew or draw for its own sake. To decide it was important for me to create, even if no one ever saw that novel I wrote.
For me, it is no longer appropriate to doubt my own ability to accurately interpret the world around me. I believe this is the road to becoming a competent and beneficial member of my community, and society as a whole. It is not my responsibility to convince anyone that my opinion is right, that is for each individual to decide on their own. My case is for the value of people accepting their own authority in their lives, to start to trust themselves again as a valid interpreter of the world. We don’t need the nightly news, our boss, our priest, or our teacher to tell us what is important to think about. I think we can safely do that ourselves, and that society will be a much more interesting and balanced place if we do.
What does education often do? It makes a straight-cut ditch of a free, meandering brook.
Journal
-Henry David Thoreau
