You and Your Beer and How Great You Are

This weekend we were lucky enough to be joined by sculptor Jon Isherwood from the east coast. While his slides and comments were quite impressive, he seemed to have little to no faith in my generation as a force to be reckonded with socially, politically, or even in the world of art. Which at first might seem offensive to those of you who happen to fall into that lovely 18-30 ish demographic, But the fact of the matter is that he is kind of right. Remember when 2004 was supposed to be the year that the young voters finnaly gave a shit enough to pull themselves away from Comedy central long enough to vote against the man so many of them had sworn off? What happened? No one did, The ideals that isherwood held so strongly of one person changing the world or uniting people in the name of hope has been replaced by a bleak, gray cloud of despair... or is it simply reality? And now adays we can see it.

Jon asked me if i thought that one person can change the world.

"no" i answered, "absolutely not"
"thats awful" he replied

And its true, the most any one person has ever done to change the world is rally a group of people up and create a new faction of thought (a mob). Even that is rarely seen as a sweeping change. Can you name for me one thing that has radically changend in this country in the last 200 years because of grassroots activism?

CIvil rights, womens sufferage, vietnam, the whole no nukes thing, environmentalism, all of these things have been given to the public as a booby prize to subdue radical change. Things improve, sure, but does anybody ever get what they want, do things ever really change? I think the answer is no, not enough.

Take war and peace for example. In the last century, Evil in america hs had many faces. It went from hitler to stalin to communism, and now to terrrorism. (which i will say is a brilliant idea for the bushes, declaring war on inatimate objects and sensations ie. drugs, and terror)

We as americans need a great evil. We need something to fear, because without that there would be no defense budget, no defense contracts, and no war. people would lose a lot of money. ( not the average taxpayer, you my friend are giving your money to the cause) Nothing has changed as a result of this. we have been at war either actually or theoretically with some kind of great evil boogeyman for the last 100 years. Nothing has changed except for boogeyman and the generals.

so maybe that is it, perhaps there is no effort on our part because there have never been results from anyone elses efforts. I think that subcinciously people have realized that even in this great democracy thier voice carries little weight, and as a result they have decided to keep thier mouths shut.

tune in later for the first of my profiles on the other artists at Franconia.