It’s odd trying to create art in a time of so much fear.
John Lennon has at least one song which I won’t name. I’m pretty sure that when he was writing it, he felt he was pushing boundaries and trying to open people up to new ideas. I imagine he was, at that. But I’m pretty sure even someone of his stature couldn’t do that today.
I quite like Damon Knight’s 1959 book “A For Anything”, about a world with universal duplicators which could even duplicate each other, meaning essentially unlimited prosperity. (Or the potential for it.)
And in that world, a ruling class emerged, which controlled the machines and wouldn’t let ordinary citizens use them. In fact, even the rich seldom used them–because duplicating was easy, it was considered low-status in that book. It was an artificial scarcity, one based around social taboos and armed enforcement as opposed to actual poverty.
We have, if not universal duplicators, certainly tools, information, and easy access to technologies beyond those envisioned by most futurists.
And most people are scared that they’ll say or do something wrong with those tools, and be attacked for it.
They’re potentially right, too.
Times of repression are normal in human history… not desirable, but normal. They do go ‘way, eventually…but not, usually, without a fight.
That’s okay. Creation is always a struggle.
