Happy No Kings Day!
If you live in the United States, you know the chaos and turmoil our current administration is putting the world through (war, public executions, concentration camps, lack of due process, funding for genocides, voter suppression, and eradication of intellectualism just to name a few). Things are looking quite familiar.
It’s quite the mental exercise to keep writing and creating art during times such as these, but it is important that the arts remain one of many focal points in maintaining free expression. George Orwell, Karl Marx, Octavia Butler, and a whole host of others wrote deeply about the profound effects of authoritarian movements, erosion of public trust, and class division, and it is important that we find the parallels between their observations and today’s climate.
Authoritarian leadership (when power is concentrated in the hands of the few) is corrosive to democracy and I find it ironic that individuals who love to spitfire the importance of free speech and freedom are perfectly fine with having their own freedoms stripped away by an old fool of a man who says “I could say the stupidest things and you’d clap,” and the crowd around him claps.
This reality heavily inspired my decision to change the trajectory of my novel. I originally went the typical fantasy route of putting monarchs and nobility front and center. Then, I I thought, what if we stopped writing books about authoritarian emperors and kings and wrote about authoritarian politicians and unsavory businessmen? What if the evils are Artificial Intelligence, Monopolies, and Deregulation? What if the threats are about humans losing their dignity and autonomy? What if the degeneration of morality is a country where profits are favored over real human lives?
I don’t have enough space in my book to take every little detail of our political landscape and thrust it into my story, but I do have a backlog of ideas. There’s always something that happens here and writers are often told to write what they know. Write what they see. Write what they experience. Right now, I am experiencing anger because as human beings we can do better than what we have been doing. We do not have to accept abuse, distortion, murder, and dehumanization as the norm.
Take care today and create art. Join a cause. Be someone’s friend.
