Damon is a gifted actor. In my opinion, he needs someone to write better lines for him.
As he himself points out, he's pretty much captive to what they tell him to say, whether he understands or not. But in a way he represents of all in the postmodern world. We want to think of ourselves and intellectual and smart. We seek to advocate for justice and equity. But life is complex and we are busy. We are captive to what is told to us, and the information that actually makes it way through the digital smokescreen to us, and what is put forth to us as the truth. We depend on existing institutions and pop culture to guide us. No matter how deeply we strive to honor the truth, we inevitably wind up embracing politics and intellectualism far beyond our actual understanding. We defend its truth and righteousness in alignment with pop culture figures whom we admire.
In the era of open liberal societies and middle class prosperity, the biggest challenge for the Establishment has been the long-term control (and even subversion) of democracy. This control was necessary for the common good of all, as they saw it, to keep democracy and the world from destroying itself. Most liberals today have come around to embracing this idea in some form. Many would agree that, truth be told, an intellectual elite should run the world. All thinking men and women agree on the important things, after all, and the masses obviously can't be trusted to do the right thing--according this line of thinking.
One masterstroke aspect of this Establishment control is the absolute long-term obligation to sustain and cultivate the only intellectually (and socially) acceptable opposition to the Establishment itself (see: Always be on both sides).
The Establishment is very weak now. It is running out of decent spokesmen. The scripts are old and tired, with too many plot holes. The people aren't diverted and enthralled, as they once were. They have options.
From an artistic point of view, going forward, new stories will need to be written, ones with a fresh vigor of perspective gained from being open to re-interpretation and re-evaluation of things we already think we know.
The hero's journey may be a constant throughout the millennia, as is human nature itself, but the particulars of the narrative will need to be refreshed in countless new ways that shed light on the very lessons of history that we are now in the process of learning.
Art will flourish again as people embrace the historical-emotional wisdom that is the reward of having lived through the Establishment era. A new golden age of art will come about as those lessons of history are connected to the actions of characters in stories whose journeys we can follow, and with whom we can find sympathy.
We need new narratives. Without new ones, we would be stuck with the old ones, even as we know they are full of plot holes and half-truths. Unless new coherent story lines are elucidated that draw together human actions over time, in a way that reveals new and even uncomfortable understanding, we will stay mired in the old ones by default, retracing the save grooves without revealing any new truth. At least the old ones have the ballast of time-sculptured coherency. New story lines will have to match that, at the very least.
Civilization is crying out for us to move on somehow from this era. Art, which includes story telling, has an absolute obligation to help make this happen.
It will incumbent upon future story creators to bring to life characters in an honest and fair way that sheds light on the truth in such a way that true wisdom can be harvested, in audiences not even born yet.
All human institutions are subject to corruption over time. What actually happened in the past? What went right? What went wrong?.
Seek truth, and you will find beauty.
Just remember: no art without suffering. That's the Law of Creativity.
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| Choosing the Red and White Roses by Henry Payne (1868–1940). c. 1908. Depicts a scene from Henry VI, Part 1 by William Shakespeare. (copyright) "Since you are tongue tied and loath to speak,/In dumb significants proclaim your thoughts."(ll.25–26) |
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