Shatterproof
People almost always form their own little world. It contains everything they need to believe in, and exludes what they don’t have to deal with. Even if North Americans watch an international news program that has a few sound bites from Israel or Africa, do they really understand what is going on over there? And will a jumbled array of images combined with a serious sounding narrative really instill them with more than superficial view of events?
Organizations and groups tend to follow suit. Edie Sedgwick’s sister once described Andry Warhol’s Factory like this, “It revolved around a dangerous, powerful man who was in control of everything in sight and who dictated the style: we do this, we don’t go to that…this is where we are secure and those people out there don’t exist.”
Once you get people who want to think for themselves, they also want to act for themselves. Confining them to narrow thought processes is a good way to control them.
My younger self hoped to shatter that bubble, yet I feel that it is made of transparent aluminum rather than brittle glass. Even the best performance might only make a small dent, leaving the world virtually unchanged in its wake. When you do get through, only a fraction of what you wanted to say is eventually absorbed by society– and they might get it completely wrong.
A certain kind of impact does make people come to their senses. It is rare that anyone comes along and speaks with that much conviction that they can turn heads. In tune with an alternative voice, people realize that there is a big, unexplored world out there. What they do afterwards is upto them, but you’ve helped them with an important step in facing reality.