• We live in an age of prosperity, but it doesn’t give us what prosperity should

• There’s a difference between consumerist choice and meaningful choice

• We live in an era of risk aversion, which is not actually virtuous

‘It’s not what you think but how you think.’ A principle I learned from Christopher Hitchens.

• Virtue-signalling and politically correct box-ticking is not virtue nor can it be sufficient for moral behaviour. Moral behaviour requires an active transformation of the inner experience that then reflects itself in human action. Political correctness requires a transformation of the outer behaviour with the assumption that this is what will make a person good.

• This is why it matters how we think more than what we think, because the inner process of reason and imagination are what matter the most in a moral action.

• The danger (and power advantage for some) of political correctness lies in the fact that it allows someone to pretend they are moral, without ever doing the really hard work of changing themselves and thinking for themselves. You can be dangerously dysfunctional and yet still pretend to be moral.

• Examples of this are:

  Corporate Social Responsibility - virtue signalling about green food or energy even as you destroy the planet.

  Harvey Weinstein - saying all the right feminist things while systematically abusing countless victims.

• Virtue is not virtue if it is not arrived at through an authentic, participatory process. We might call this ‘critical thinking’. Obedience to principle is different than obedience to human power.

• Critical thinking includes imagination and creativity as well as analytic thinking.

• If someone is disallowed the space to critically analyse even the most basic or obvious presumptions then you know you are in the thrall of ideological thinking. Good example of this is Jordan Peterson’s criticism of Judge Kavanaugh.

• Policing speech in any way erodes democratic and public life. If people are not allowed to think for themselves, to make mistakes, think creatively, then even if they behave in harmless ways, they are not true citizens. Authenticity is a necessary prerequisite for The Good. For citizenship.

• We have to arrive at ethical decisions because we understand that they are right, not because someone told us so.

- This is at least as old as Aristotle.

- It’s also the basic distinction between Old Testament and New Testament in ethics.

Enchantment:

The artist’s job is to stay enchanted. Craft means nothing without a nourishing of the imagination.

How do you stay enchanted today?

• Create your own discipline, your own routine. Otherwise you fall into someone else’s. ‘If you stand for nothing you fall for anything. ‘ Your own creative rituals become your force field.

• We have to be on top of blocking out distractions - social media, but also real world environments.

• We need to be schizoid. To be both our own adult parent and a Peter Pan. Non artists can’t understand that at all.

Staying clear of distractions is one of the hardest problems. Here are some strategies:

• Live in the country - not as doable as it sounds for most people, and there’s a danger of isolation. Also, only worth it if you have ‘fuck-you’ money.

• Form your own community. This is getting harder and harder. Democratising art is great, but it has created a competitive squabble not for art, but for the life that art supposedly provides. You have to deal with hipsters and yuppies, who are threatened by genuine artists.

• Make everything in your life an art form. Become a proper bohemian in other words. Paint your own wall art, make your own designs, mend your own clothes. The problem is that this has been taken over by yuppies now as well. And as such, comes with its own threat of conformity. And conformity kills art. The way to distinguish between bohemianism and yuppy hipsterism is fashion. Yuppies adopt boho things when they are fashionable. A true bohemian, however, is not worried about being ridiculous. In fact it’s the mark of a true bohemian that they are prepared to encounter ridicule in the name of their own self-expression. None of this is as easy as it sounds.

Some thoughts on a curious busking experience:

1. Old man, a hobo, but not a junky. A very authentic human connection between artist and listener.

2. The opposite of the moronic hipster, careerist attitude, and the opposite of the culture of suspicion and paranoia that pervades social media and the culture at large

Some thoughts on Nigel Farage:

1. I went to talk on how social media companies are silencing people on the right.

2. He argued for a Bill of Rights for digital user. However, he didn’t really seem to have a personal vision.

3. The general atmosphere was careerist and again, suspicious. A lot of what is happening on the right is piggy-backing on issues like free speech to further an economic agenda.

We don’t have free speech anymore:

• Mob culture spreads a contagion of fear from the left. Just look at the grovelling apology Norm MacDonald has had to make.

• After Charlie Hebdo, it was clear that blasphemy rules were the upper limit of what can be said and that violence was the punishment. People justifying it with ‘oil on the fire’ arguments.

• Both these factors have played into a contagion of fear. I marvel at brave voices. There is so much at stake. If you want to defend absolute free speech these days you have to accept that you are putting your life or your career on the line. There is a threat hanging over you of violence or social shame.

• Fear of success. It has robbed me of the very thing that motivated me, which was a desire to make an impact on the culture. Now, I find myself holding back, or not really wanting to expose myself. The contagion has robbed me of the very thing that gives my life meaning.

Media as a form of terrorism:

• I agree with Trump - the media is the enemy of the people. They have lost their moral high-ground. The arrogance of the anti-Trump movement is contemptible and they can’t bring themselves to learn that lesson. 
• Shame and fear are the weapon - keep people in line. Keep people voting for the state as it is - not challenging vested interests. Keep people from speaking out. Keep people bickering about trivial diversity, means they won’t be pursuing ideas diversity. Elon Musk on Joe Rogan is a case in point. The coverage of Kanye is another. 
• What is the free press? It is not just not having laws inhibiting the press, it is also no monopoly. The problem we have today is the creeping state, but it is also the centralisation of the press. 

• I use the word terrorism, because the peculiar thing about even violent terror is that it is a kind of propaganda tactic. It uses the deaths of maybe even a small group of people, to send tectonic waves of horror through the society at large. The aim is death and the medium is death. One carefully planned act of chaos and horror and can have self-multiplying effects. This is what the media does. Take down a few celebrities, and everyone else starts to live in a culture of risk-aversion and fear. 
• Is this a conspiracy theory? No, it’s just speculation. There are a lot of holes in my theory, and I don’t for a minute think I have a complete representation of the truth. But it is not outlandish to assume that vested interests, whether they are political or corporate, would protect themselves in this way. 
   

Precision in poetry

1. WH Auden school - that poetry should be as precise as prose, even as it doesn’t need to be as literal. That meaning shouldn’t work in a different way, even if the process of reference in meaning is different and more elaborate or evocative. I think this is nonsense. Poetry creates meaning in a different way. Saying that doesn’t mean I am defending obscurantism. 
2. Dylan Thomas school - the meaning is not as clear, it’s not precise. However, it has the curious effect of being more accessible. This paradox is worth considering.
3. Modern poetry is too safe. It’s like most modern poets are too scared of being accused of pretension and obscurantism, but the result is a complete distrust of the non-conceptual roots of poetry. 

Thoughts on the EU:

1. Corporate values - you can’t create a sense of community out of trade deals. 
2. The rights of citizenship are guaranteed by tradition, as much as laws.
3. Homogeneity is the opposite of true internationalism, which is unity despite cultural differences. 

If you want to support my work visit: https://www.patreon.com/jamesblackfolk

Helen Dale article from the spectator: ‘Too many artists, most of them crap.’

‘Most people are only ever going to be drones. Telling them because they starred in the high school musical or wrote the best poem in the school magazine means they’re going to make it as an actor or writer is a monstrous lie that sets them up for disappointment.

All the arts – but especially literature – have low barriers to entry. Huge numbers of people are attracted to what are seen to be glamorous fields like writing, acting, directing, and painting.

Often, this is because one person is plucked from the crowd and becomes a star – there’s nothing quite like a narrative where we get to cheer on the underdog – known in the trade as a ‘winner takes all’ market. However, the economics of ‘crowded fields’ means the larger the number of participants, the more randomness and luck play a role in determining success.’

‘There is nothing quite like seeing a modestly talented person crumple when they think an opportunity has been snatched from them when they have to go and drive for Uber or take a factory job. Even worse is the modestly talented person who persists (and persists) and is paid nothing at all while churning out content for Huffington Post.’

Problems with democratised art:

1. We lose the hierarchy of value, so we lose the thing that makes beauty and art compelling in the first place

2. The market gets flooded, so it becomes unsustainable. It can’t support real talent, nor can it discriminate between talent and bullshit.

3. We become jaded and cynical. Nothing has the power to impress any more.

4. Also, overload can be used a form of censorship. Powerful people neutralise the power of art through democratisation.

Problems with too much exclusivity in art:

1. Creates a corrupt elite - it becomes about who you know

2. Definitions of value become too rigid. Art is linked to a healthy, adaptive culture, so we need our value structure to be challenged all the time.

3. It means that you end up treating a lack of creativity as the norm.

• The problem is not too many artists, so much as the ‘crowded field’ tends to reward careerism and journeyman achievement, rather the grandeur of ambition and nobility of soul. Creating beautiful art was always a matter of battling the odds. Now the obstacles are different, not any less challenging. What defines an artist is a seriousness of tone, a nobility of ambition.
• The anti-creativity model is often driven by a fear of it. And an obsession with ‘genius’ and ‘dazzling talent’ is very often itself a form of repression and resentment.

A final quote from Nietzsche:

‘Do not talk about giftedness, inborn talents! One can name great men of all kinds who were very little gifted. They acquired greatness, became 'geniuses' (as we put it), through qualities the lack of which no one who knew what they were would boast of: they all pos­sessed that seriousness of the efficient workman which first learns to con­struct the parts properly before it ventures to fashion a great whole; they allowed themselves time for it, because they took more pleasure in making the little, secondary things well than in the effect of a dazzling whole.’

Creativity and neurosis.

1. Aldous Huxley - a quote perfectly captures the mistake people have around performers especially. 

The challenge usually goes: 
'The urge to perform is a desire for attention. You must have some trauma or wound, something that you are compensating for.'

I’ve had this said to be consistently, from many different people. Stephen Fry talks about this with regard to wordsmithing, and it’s the same with performing. 

2. This is a myth which doesn’t actually cash out: 

- Shakespeare - The very unlikely-ness of a talent like that existing in times when poverty and danger were far greater realities than they are now, shows that it must have been in him, rather than some form of indulgence. 

- My first experience on the stage - singing folk songs at my Auntie’s wedding. I wanted to be up there, I wanted to perform, it was in me and it had to come out. 

- The level of scorn and rejection that you get as an artist proves that it can’t be a narcissistic thing. 

The point is, some people are just born that way. 

3. Creativity is a fundamental feature of humanity

- Everybody is creative, because everybody has an imagination. We have the ability to imagine the unknown, and we have the ability to empathise. 
Artists, however, are a unique breed. The desire to put yourself out there is not a defect, or a product of trauma. Anyone who tries to use their creativity to compensate for what they lack in themselves is headed for a fall. 

- People fear creativity, especially performers, because they fear the unknown. 

4. All artists must be selfish. But it is not an inward-looking selfishness. It’s the selfishness of a mother. 
 

If you want to support my work visit: https://www.patreon.com/jamesblackfolk

In this week's episode I talk about the de-platforming of Alex Jones. And I also talk about Kanye's Jimmy Kimmel interview.

Regarding Alex Jones I talk about how:

• He's said some crazy, often terrible things, but he should be allowed to
• The 'private company' defence doesn't work when we are talking about massive collusion between monopolies and their ability to control so much of public life
• This is a show of power. it's a message not just to creators but the audiences, that even a big subscriber list cannot defend you from control.

On the subject of Kanye, I talk about how:
 

• He is actually quite smart, and controls the interview
• He's got an inner ideology sensor, and his support for Trump is a reaction to automatic thinking
• He's refreshingly candid and non-PC, because he's an artist, and being an artist is about being able to express even the worst idea.

You can support me at https://www.patreon.com/jamesblackfolk