Literature is no longer powerful and thus no longer dangerous. But the conformist agency that Rousseau ascribed to literature in his First Discourse (arts and letters, Rousseau wrote, “lace garlands of flowers over the iron chains with which men are burdened”) is still abroad in the world. Television is the first art today. Is the collaborative nature of the medium accelerating the conformity? Is the fact that TV is written in “rooms,” that is, by groups, making our culture more “groupy” and less heroic? The few heroic moments that appear in the culture now, I would argue, are almost always sentimental and deliberately false, meant to stand as symbols, not to be believed in as actions possible in the world. We are meant to believe only in moments when the hero bows to the group. In
"It seems incumbent on me either to conform or to express disagreement—out of the hope of triggering a new conformism but this time in my favor, or my team’s favor. The independent mind who doesn’t tweet is the new unheard tree falling in the forest."
I imagine that this observation struck a lot of your readers. I've been thinking about it off and on since receiving your email. I heard a rather prominent movie director (of course now I can't think of who it was) tell his interviewer (Terry Gross) that he wasn't on Twitter. My first thought was "Good for him." (I'm not on Twitter either.) My next thought was "He's a middle-aged white male; of course he has the privilege not to need Twitter to find an audience." My third thought was "Do I really believe that? Or is it just a sentiment I think the Twitterverse would generate?" Then, "Oh wait, I don't have Twitter. I don't need to give a shit what the Twitterverse would say. But still...do I believe that? I can't tell anymore...."
"It seems incumbent on me either to conform or to express disagreement—out of the hope of triggering a new conformism but this time in my favor, or my team’s favor. The independent mind who doesn’t tweet is the new unheard tree falling in the forest."
I imagine that this observation struck a lot of your readers. I've been thinking about it off and on since receiving your email. I heard a rather prominent movie director (of course now I can't think of who it was) tell his interviewer (Terry Gross) that he wasn't on Twitter. My first thought was "Good for him." (I'm not on Twitter either.) My next thought was "He's a middle-aged white male; of course he has the privilege not to need Twitter to find an audience." My third thought was "Do I really believe that? Or is it just a sentiment I think the Twitterverse would generate?" Then, "Oh wait, I don't have Twitter. I don't need to give a shit what the Twitterverse would say. But still...do I believe that? I can't tell anymore...."