Be Creative or Be Complacent

“Sloth makes all things difficult, but industry all easy.”
― Benjamin Franklin, Philosopher

You have a choice to face each day: make art or give into comfort and convenience.

There’s a great price to pay for making art. The necessity of discipline, the often times painful sacrifices, the immeasureable patience before seeing results (of any kind), the enduring of self-doubt, the risk of financial insecurity, the withstanding of judgement and rejection, the loneliness, the sufferance of failure (which is common for any creative), and last but not least, the insurmountable amount of time and effort required to become a true and dedicated artist. Almost everything tests the resolve and courage of an artist’s well-being; he must perservere and persist through so much just to live authentically and to make something worthwhile, a small contribution to this world before his time is up.

Now, isn’t it just so much easier — and more rational — to take the pre-approved path for what’s sold as freedom and happiness? All you have to do is give in to the authority of the system, to the authority of tradition, to the authority of institutions whose continuous propaganda surrounds us. (The latest data shows that the average city dweller is exposed to between 4000 to 10,000 advertisements daily). Yet the price for giving in to complacency is much higher than we realize. This part of the package is rarely told to us. But what is complacency? Well, it’s choosing the slippery path that’s always easier to take. Call it entropy or laziness or call it the lack of love or cynical indifference — Dante called it sloth, one of the Seven Deadly Sins — but whatever name you give it, it’s always there luring you towards the path of least effort.

The Fifth Purgatory: Wrath, Sloth, and Avarice (Greed). From Dante’s Inferno. (notice how Sloth is accompanied here in Hell by Greed and Wrath, do they lead to one another?)

The Cost of Complacency:

Conformity – first off, you become a follower. You are a copier, not a creator. You don’t lead either yourself or others. You’ve become the ultimate definition of a herd animal, easily guided and swayed towards particular types of action. In a world of powerful self-interest and propaganda, you’re sheep for slaughter, designated to serve the system by those who designed the system. And now, living more and more interactively with technology, man risks becoming no longer the artibiter/designer of his actions but a conduit of the machine. Medical studies in 2025 show that two-thirds of the time man is on autopilot, driven by habit with minimal forethought. So everyday’s thoughts are the same, everything you do is the same, you are the same. Each day is but a mere replica of the previous day.

“We live in a world of replicas, and I try desperately in a world of replicas to produce things that are not replicas of anything.” — Carl Andre, Sculptor

Stupidity – you get dumber. This sounds cruel but it’s true. Use it or lose it; that’s a fundamental law of this universe. The more you give in to comfort and convenience, the more dependent you are on outsourcing your thinking and the less able your mind becomes. The lastest studies are already showing that people born after 1980 — whose most formative years coincided with the widespread adaptation of digital technology — are demonstrating an unprecedented drop in intelligence (by 7 points per generation). Consider how frightening that is, given the average IQ was only 100 points before 1975. Digital technology (namely, the advance of algorithms and now A.I.) encourages automation so it saves thinking time but destroys thinking ability. Life, and the way of doing things, becomes not only more automated but hurried, neglective and amoral. Like art, love and goodness requires time, attention and thoughtfullness.

“The most violent element in society is ignorance.” — Emma Goldman, Writer

Weakness – you lose strength. Not just of mind but of will. When you’re always choosing what’s fast and easy, you become more impatient and unaccepting of reality or truth. The unknown and the uncomfortable disturb you. You lose the ability to tolerate difficulty, including when it surfaces in relationships. You barely try and when you do, you give up easily. You soon dread hard work or things that take time. Things you don’t understand you deem stupid, while things that make you wait are boring. You get anxious and frustrated more easily. You turn to shortcuts and easy solutions which further compounds your mounting incompetence. You’re no longer self-reliant and struggle with silence. You begin to lack the courage or will to do anything challenging.

“Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character.” — Albert Einstein, Scientist

Fear – privileged people always fear losing their advantage. Incompetent people know their privilege is short-lived. It’s like deep inside they know they’re not so capable. Instead of building skill, which takes time, they’ll choose to alter perceptions and create falsehoods to justify their actions because fear always generates stress and urgency thus amplifying their insecurity. It may seem oxymoronic but those who get used to the privilege of comfort and convenience become extremely neurotic and panicky when things don’t go their way. Like the bully who’s actually deeply afraid inside, the slothful are often demandingly obsessed with urgency. They often become greedy, critical, defensive, irritable and angry.

“The anxious life… is a series of embedded urgencies.” — Mark Fisher

Closed thinking – a complacent mind never thinks outside of the box. As modern man has become more externally focused he depends more on outside things; his sustenance, his pleasures, his security, and his escapes are all external. What appears as an array of choice in a commoditized society is merely a buffet of limited options. It’s all illusion. Where as the creative person exercises resourcefulness (an internal action), the slothful man seeks resources (an external approach). He inherently prefers standard solutions over extending the effort to innovate new ones. Thus, he will always choose efficiency over effectiveness and the familiar over the unusual. He thinks in terms of gains and losses while the process, the journey, means little to nothing to him. In fact, in his eyes, everything either good or bad comes from the outside. There is no accountibility. He knows no such thing as humility or penitence. Locked into his beliefs, he’s confident he’s right while being unknowingly asleep.

“He who looks outside dreams, he who looks inside awakens.” — Carl Jung, Psychologist

Vacuity – a life of convenience and continuous comfort always carries that feeling of emptiness. Without the expenditure of effort and the test of time, the mind will ultimately struggle to find real value. We all have experienced that it feels much better to build something versus when we merely buy it. Pleasure and joy are not the same thing. Commitment of time and energy is directly proportional to meaning and genuine satisfaction. The slothful mind can’t see that or won’t. He’d rather sit there and complain about his woes. And to fill that hole in his heart, he can look towards the multitude of addictive and pain-relieving substances or activities offered to him. Distraction and escape become the perpetual patching and repatching of a wound that only gets deeper and harder to repair. Meaningfulness alludes him.

“I am interested in art as a means of living a life; not as a means of making a living.”
― Robert Henri, Artist

Enslavement – the complacent man is perpetually trapped. When he becomes accustomed to the fast and easy way, he doesn’t realize he’s inside an echo chamber that reinforces his thoughts and behaviours so he becomes ever more reactive rather than contemplative. Dependent always on the external, he has taken away all agency over his own attention, action and attitude, the very things he actually has at his disposal. Now with the arrival of A.I. he will be coerced more and become more accustomed to utitilizing artificial digital imagery, outsource thinking to and communicate with artificial entities, confusing them all with what’s real. Without risking effort, he risks instead complete psychological imprisonment. The drive towards optimization is modern man’s search for the holy grail. Effort is a dominion of man’s imprint on this universe, without such arduous exertion he is but a spectator-passenger and not a participant. He may be breathing but he’s rarely present and thus, hardly free.

“(Artistic freedom) is a difficult kind of freedom that seems more like an ascetic discipline…such freedom assumes a healthy mind and body, a style that would reveal a strength of the soul and patient defiance. Like all freedom, it is a never-ending risk, a grueling experience, and that is why today we flee from such risk, just as we flee from freedom, which demands so much of us, and instead rush headlong into all kinds of enslavement, to at least obtain some comfort in our souls.” — Albert Camus, Writer

Favorite Films: True Originality

We are due for a good review and recommendation of some great films. This time it’s films that I feel are genuinely original — movies that defy anything that has either come before it or even after. Genuinie creativity is so hard to find today. Bombarded by sequels, remakes and re-fabricated fusions of ideas stolen from other films disguised as originality, today’s movies feel both boring and chaotic, with many lacking either imagination and cohesive storytelling/direction. Here, we’ll look at films whose execution is as original as its ideas and, despite the passage of time, hold together and age better than so many films being made today.

Let The Right One In (Directed by Tomas Alfredson, 2008)

Swedish director Tomas Alfredson’s film is perhaps the most original take on the vampire genre I’ve ever seen. It’s both surprisingly touching yet starkly brutal. It carries none of the sensationist memes that typically accompany this genre. A film starring essentially two child actors, it’s easy to forget the complete submersion one feels when watching their performances. It’s a story of growing up, loneliness, friendship and young love set in a secluded little town in Sweden. It’s not the typical setting for any kind vampire or horror movie. Things look so normal yet there’s this eery quietness to the atmosphere. Shot during winter, where one feels both the isolation of its inhabitants and the coldness in the air, danger lurks unsuspectedly. The horror lies not in the shadows, as the murders happen in plain site, but rather out in the open, like how a child sees the world, almost innocently. While there is inevitable violence, it’s a story that’s built through careful character development rather than breathtaking action. I don’t want too give much away except to say that its ideas, characters and narrative are so original and interesting that I couldn’t help but marvel at the seemless clarity in the storytelling, most of it told visually. Here, you’re caught surprisingly empathetic to the protagonists while being glued to their journey, one that culminates into an ending that’s both brilliant yet inevitable.

A Clockwork Orange (Directed by Stanley Kubrick, 1971)

Stanley Kubrick’s controversial film debuted with incredible fanfare recieving both acclaim and criticism as well as intense public protest. Banned in a number cities during its release, the story portrays a young man, who along with his three companions, make up a group of repulsively cruel hooligans. This doesn’t make for a film you’d think you’d like to watch nor characters you’d like to follow. But follow them you will and into very uncomfortable settings. The film reveals what low street level evil looks like and where it lurks. It also reveals how society doesn’t know how to respond to the problems that come with this existent reality. Played by Malcom McDowell in an iconic role, Alex is into random violence, rape and Beethoven. (This juxtoposition of his interests is telling.) He ultimately gets arrested and subjected to social reform/rehab via technology. With beautiful and original costume and set designs, A Clockwork Orange creates conflict that challenges the mind of the viewer; it’s a film that you want to turn away from but can’t. Why did the director make a film about evil look so darn interesting, even visually appealing? The answer is simple: to shock us out of our naivete exposing our inclination to avoid truths, especially ugly ones that don’t align with our beliefs. Society and reality are complex. Here we witness how ideology — theories, judgements, labels and the associated automated responses — can lead to terrible outcomes and especially so when used for political advantage. Kubrick slaps this right in our face, all the way up to the ending of the movie and, in so doing, challenges our understanding of humanity.

Mulholland Drive (Directed by David Lynch, 2001)

Few films will frustrate you as much as Lynch’s Mulholland Drive (upon first viewing). I remember friends furiously debating the events, both real or imagined, and the meaning of the movie. Great films do this; they make us think and wonder about them long after they’re over. A story about a young Canadian girl (Naomi Watts) arriving in Hollywood to pursue a career in acting, the film grows into a mystery of sorts. Upon her arrival she finds a gorgeous brunette (Laura Harring) living in the home she’s set to stay in while in LA. This woman seems to have lost her memory via some kind of accident and Watts is determined to help her. The two embark on a journey to discover the truth of what happened. Beautifully acted, the apparent sweetness of Watt’s characters hides the reality of her nature while Harring plays the perfect yet twisted version of a neo-noir femme fatale. Slowly and surely we begin to see and feel that things aren’t right. We take turns questioning characters, events and the themes that lie deep in the narrative. I wish not to give anything away, for that would take away the fun, but there is so much rich symbology and visual luggage that we don’t know what’s actually important. This is both perplexing and intriguing at the same time. Truth be told, the film requires multiple viewings to understand and to catch all the intricacies in the underlying story structure. Wonderfully paced, Lynch makes you feel like you’re right there with its lead characters as you join in on her confusion. Can you handle such a mind warp?

Peppermind Candy (directed by Lee Chang Dong, 1999)

There are three great directors that have pushed Korea onto the forefront of modern filmmaking today: Park Chan Wook (Old Boy), Boon Jong Ho (Parasite) and Lee Chang Dong (Oasis). Of this trio, Lee’s films create a kind of nuanced atmosphere that’s easily overlooked compared to his contemporaries. His characters aren’t loud or charismatic nor are his environments elaborate or even playful. The world Lee creates feel shockingly and intensely real. The fantasy elements in his films lie sneakily beneath the exterior; hidden from plain site or dialogue, his themes creep subtly into your subconcious and, like in his latest masterpiece Burning, they are a slow yet inviting burn. In Peppermint Candy, the film is masterfully delivered to us in backwards order. Bit by bit, you witness more and more of the possible truths that might explain the events at the very beginning of the movie (which is actually the story’s chronological end). This is done to perfection. Each scene that arrives brings a deeper and deeper character reveal, playing out the history of one man’s complex and often painful condition. We witness hope, joy, suffering, betrayal and innocence all in one go around. It’s an amazing ride, a film that teaches us about the importance of one’s actions in the moment. Now, how many movies actually educate and entertain you at the same time?

Get Out (directed by Jordan Peele, 2017)

Finally I want to share a film that’s fairly recent, Jordan Peele’s Get Out. Peele’s writing and directing are starkly original while dealing with themes that have long haunted America’s unsettling issues of dealing with dark skin. Without preaching, he turns complexities of race into fun explorations of daily human interaction that reveals the aburdity and then flips and turns it into horror. Get Out starts out with a young man Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) and his girlfriend Rose (Allison Williams) setting out to meet her parents for the first time. During their drive out, they hit a deer. Immediately they are interogated by a white police officer, one who seems to meet the stereotype of redneck America. Rose is defensive of her boyfriend during the encounter, which carries some ominous tone thru the imagery of the dead ungulate. The scene establishes what seems to be a close bond between the two lovers, one that will protect him in the events to occur when he meets her all white family and their friends. But bit by bit things unravel and Chris begins to see and experience oddities that make him incredibly uncomfortable. As the viewer, you relate to Chris’ deeply felt fear; you know something horrible is brewing yet you don’t know what it is. Peele’s direction is both tight and metaphorical creating an atmosphere that is creepy yet funny at the same time. Get Out is a modern movie that gives today’s film lovers hope that it’s still possible to make fresh and engaging films.