Zom-B said:
Therumancer said:
To be honest just about every creator of note has been the same way, it takes strong positions to create things of worth. With western society largely split 50-50 between the left and right wings, it's not surprising that your seeing a lot of creators coming from the right wing camp, even if the left wing generally dominates the media. To an extent what your seeing with Phil Fish is the pendelum starting to swing back the other way, with people who don't entirely follow the left wing ideas of political correctness increasingly speaking their minds despite this.
I'll also say that creators are almost always arseholes. You'll find that a lot of the great writers, painters, and creators throughout history are not only complete dillweeds by today's standards if you read about them, but were also on the fringes of society during their own time. If you judge people by having opinions, even in their work, that you don't agree with, chances are your likely to wind up appreciating very little. What we're seeing here is a matter of the current counter culture (yes, right wing is the new counter culture, due to the left wing having gained media prominance) increasingly speaking out, which is why awareness of this kind of thing and what creators think (which isn't always PC) is making the news.
I don't agree with you and a lot of what you're saying is the old idea of the "tortured genius" or the idea that you have to be crazy or an asshole to be creative.
First of all, for example, Orson Scott Card's Mormon faith and alleged homophobia (I've read about the whole thing and it's hard to say if he's truly homophobic or just unwilling to accept it. Regardless.) have nothing at all to do with Ender's Game, which is a really good book, that is really well written. Simply having strong position on something doesn't equate to creativity.
Second, just because we only hear about the crazies, the assholes, the bigots in creative fields doesn't mean that there aren't many genial, friendly and liberal people plying their craft without offending people or acting insane.
Perhaps you'll disagree, but I imagine that for every "dillweed" creative type you find, I can name one that isn't. All we may find out is that all sorts of people are creative in different ways and it doesn't take mental illness or xenophobic attitudes to be successful in an artistic or creative field.
As for your ida of the pendulum swinging, I agree, somewhat. It does swing, but each swing towards the right, towards bigotry and racism, towards radical conservatives to fundamental religion is lesser than the last one and of shorter duration. I've read some interesting theories that the current antics of the Republican Party in the USA are sort of a last gasp of crazy before their rhetoric is shouted down by a majority of accepting, liberal and reasoned people who are fed up with their ideas.
The point is more about people judging works by the creator and his sentiments, than being part of a counter-culture being a nessecity. We seem to more or less agree, going by your example with Orson Scott Card, his political sentiments, even that might come out in his work, in no way invalidate the work itself, no more than the utter insanity and political radicalism of many great artists did theirs.
As far as the right wing/left wing pendelum, your incorrect for a number of reasons, the most important of which is simply that there is no clear majority on either side. Right now the left wing has gained control of the media which presents that illusion, just as the right wing at one point had it and created the perception that it was totally inassailible.
Despite my generally right wing leanings, I tend to believe that things work best from a poisition of balance. In general society functions most efficiently when the right wing dominants most of mainstream society, and the left wing forms a substantial counter culture to stand it off to some extent. What we've seen recently with the situation being the opposite has been responsible for a lot of the problems we're seeing within society.
In general one of the big problems facing us right now is the classic choice between "what is right, and what is easy". For all the failings of the right wing(and there are many) one of the biggest failures of the left wing is for people to use it's positions of tolerance and interpetations of it's morality as an excuse to not have to do anything. Dealing with a big issue like say kicking illegal immigrants out of the country, forcibly if nessicary, or enforcing a "zero tolerance" policy on the black counter-culture and it's anti-societal position, all invariably lead to Joe Schmoe having to get off his tubby butt and do something, or to be put into a position where he might be affected by the crossfire of dealing with a big issue as the people being targeted object (in large numbers, for it to be a big issue). As a result the left wing position of "let it all go" and ignoring the big issues for them to hopefully sort themselves out is popular. This can also be said for issues of international relations where again, it involves direct action by the US and might lead to things like a draft (which people will always oppose).
Decades ago, the situation was differant with the left wing having to be a lot more active, and work to promote it's opinions and goals. It's sentiments work best in that format, as opposed to someone just being able to sit back and use "tolerance" as an excuse for doing nothing and maintaining a problem. Something that is easy to do when it doesn't directly effect them.
To put it into perspective, if we were to take actions against the black counter culture for reasons like those presented by Bill Cosby and others, and do things like selectively ban rap and hip hop music with anti education/society assimilation messages, force black kids into school, removing their right to drop out, and greatly upping anti-truancy laws and their penelties in various areaa (ie not only patrolling for youth in the inner cities, but also taking stronger actions against parents, including prison time, if their kids don't attend shcool) and similar things, the left wing would generally object, ultimatly because all of the song and dance aside, this involves too much in the way of action that could (and would) blow back in the short term regardless of the long term benefits.
Any big issues is debatable, and the specifics aren't the point, one of the reasons why the country remains so divided is that the left wing is not especially good at actually doing anything, and a lot of it's support today simply comes from people who want what is the path of least resistance. The reason why the country remains so divided with a 7% lead being "huge" and elections increasingly divided on a knifes edge, is because for all of the popularity the left wing has enjoyed, it's support has been eroding as problems remain unresolved. Things like the increasing "black conservative" prescence are based largely on points like the one above about addressing the black counter culture, which includes a lot of media that demonizes becoming educated and fitting in as a normal person, and glorifies either being at the very top or bottom of the societal pyramid exclusively. Hence why you have increasingly used identifiers pointing toward the "black counter culture" where it used to just be "black culture", you have a lot of blacks themselves increasingly want to see most rap and hip hop (or at least the common messages conveyed in that format) banned, at least for a while, to hopefully get the youth back on track since those very messages and people who believe them (in general, not in a literal "I must shoot everyone" sense) has probably been doing more to hold back the merger of Black America into society than all of the pressure by "whitey" that has ever existed.
